Business Operations Administrator - ONS

Location

ONS operates a flexible hybrid working model across the UK, with colleagues linked to one of our contractual locations in Newport or Titchfield (Fareham)

All colleagues are required to work from their contractually allocated site for at least 40% of their working time

Induction will take place over 2 weeks and some of this time will take place on-site.

About the job

Job summary

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) is the UK’s largest producer of official statistics, covering a range of key economic, social and demographic topics. These include measuring changes in the value of the UK economy, estimating the size, geographic distribution, and characteristics of the population, and providing indicators of price inflation, employment, earnings, crime, and migration.

Business Data Operations Division (BDOD) is a large and diverse area of 400 staff collecting economic statistics survey data from over a million businesses a year.  It is the foundation for most of the ONS core economic outputs, such as Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and Balance of Payments (BOP) and as such is a great place to build your career at ONS.

As a Business Operations Administrator, you will be a member of the Operational Delivery Profession (ODP).

ODP is the largest profession in the Civil Service. ODP’s 200,000+ members work in a wide range of operational delivery roles across government, providing essential services that support and protect UK citizens at home and overseas. They help to make ONS a great place to work.

As a member, ODP supports you by providing learning and development opportunities, career pathways, tools and resources to help develop your skills and progress your career. This is an exciting opportunity to join a modern, innovative and inclusive Civil Service profession that sits at the heart of public service delivery.

Job description

As a Business Operations Administrator, your primary role will be to collect and validate a range of monthly, quarterly and annual business survey data. Obtaining timely and quality data and recording follow-up information to support any changes in that data will be key.  Customer/stakeholder engagement is also very important in this role.

A typical day will involve working autonomously to prioritise your work, making informed decisions relating to changes in data through interpreting that data and investigating anomalies. You will be expected to document all information gathered via our internal IT systems and databases and escalate any issues that you are unable to resolve.

The focus of the work may differ between posts. For example, there may be a focus on analysis, building relationship management with respondents, enforcement activities as well as supporting activities such as occasional post opening on site. You will also be expected to take part in a 5pm cover rota.

Responsibilities:

• Provide a professional and helpful interface with respondents using a variety of communication channels (i.e. telephone and written correspondence).
• Obtain and query data and deal with customer queries by telephone and in writing.
• Record all actions taken on our internal databases, maintaining accuracy and writing clearly in plain simple language.
• Make informed decisions based on the analysis of data and knowledge obtained from the Respondent as opposed to opinions or assumptions.
• Working flexibly as part of a team, maintaining a professional relationship and engagement with colleagues and customers alike.
• Making decisions relating to data changes, interpreting data and investigating anomalies.
• Ensure work is accurate and completed in a timely manner by planning and prioritising your own workload to avoid unnecessary delays or impact.
• Contribute to process reviews and continuously look for ways to improve working practices and systems and escalate issues when required.
• Be a positive role model, responding positively to challenge and change.
• Actively take responsibility for building and maintaining own training and development, reviewing progress regularly with line manager.

Person specification

Please note as part of this role, there is a requirement that you provide cover until 5pm on a rota basis 

Essential criteria:

• Confident use of the telephone and the ability to communicate effectively in writing via messaging platforms.
• Good IT skills with the ability to learn new systems and ways of working.
• Ability to work independently and as part of a wider team to enable strong working relationships.
• Strong organisational skills with the ability to prioritise, be flexible and adaptable to change to deliver within tight deadlines.
  
   

Behaviours

We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:

• Changing and Improving
• Communicating and Influencing
• Working Together

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £24,137, Office for National Statistics contributes £6,992 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides.

The Office for National Statistics is part of the Civil Service, and as such we share a number of key benefits with other departments, whilst also having our own unique offerings to support our 5400 valued colleagues across the business.

Whether you are hearing about us for the first time or already know a bit about our organisation, we hope that the benefits pack attached (bottom of page) will give you a great insight into the benefits and facilities available to our colleagues, and our fantastic working culture.

Inclusion & Accessibility

At ONS we are always looking to attract the very best people from the widest possible talent pool, and we are proud to be an inclusive, equal opportunities employer. As a member of the Business Disability Forum and a Disability Confident Leader we’re committed to ensuring that all candidates are treated fairly throughout the recruitment process.

As part of our application process, you will be prompted to provide details of any reasonable adjustments to our recruitment process that you need. If you would like to discuss any reasonable adjustments before applying, please contact the recruitment team in the first instance.

If you would like an accessible version of any of the attachments or recruitment documents below or linked to in this advert, please contact the recruitment team who will be happy to assist.

Things you need to know

Selection process details

This vacancy is using Success Profiles (opens in a new window), and will assess your Behaviours and Experience.

Security Clearance

The requirement for SC clearance is to have been present in the UK for 3 consecutive years immediately prior to applying.

A lack of UK residency in itself is not always a bar to security clearance but the Department will need to consider eligibility by exception on a case-by-case basis. You will be asked to provide information regarding your UK residency during your application, and failure to provide this will result in your application being rejected.

If you are unsure that you meet the eligibility above, please read the information available on Gov.uk on this link, or contact the recruitment email on the advert before applying to discuss, as failure to meet the residency requirements will result in your security clearance application being rejected and any offer of employment being withdrawn.

At the point of SC application, you will need to provide or give access to the following evidence:

• Departmental or company records (personnel files, staff reports, sick leave reports and security records)
• UK criminal records covering both spent and unspent criminal records
• Your credit and financial history with a credit reference agency
• Security Services records

Artificial Intelligence (AI) 

All applicants will have access to AI resources, it is therefore important to remember these tools, although helpful in streamlining the writing process, cannot fully understand the organisational context, or requirements for the role you are applying for. 

To maintain authenticity and credibility of the application process, should you choose to use generative AI tools, you need to ensure the information you provide in your supporting evidence accurately reflects your skills, knowledge, and experience. 

ONS does not advocate relying solely on generative AI to write your application. Doing so may negatively impact your chances of success during the selection process. 

If you are invited to interview, please be aware the use of AI tools is prohibited and any suspected use may result in the termination of your interview and subsequent withdrawal from the campaign. 

Please note that all campaigns may be subject to withdrawal at any stage if the internal resource position changes. 

Application Process 

Number of Stages: 2 stage process

Stage 1: Application

Stage 2: Interview

Assessment at application stage will be based on your CV and the evidence given in the 3 set questions contained in the application form. Your CV should be tailored to demonstrate any skills, knowledge and experience that are relevant to the content of the role but it won’t be scored.

In your application form you are required to answer the questions below using up to 250 words on each answer. As these responses to the questions are scored, we would recommend that you give clear examples for each including the impact of your actions. 

• In this role, we use the telephone to contact businesses.  Can you describe a situation where you have used the telephone in a business/professional setting to answer a query and/or request information.  Please include any specific skills or software you used.
• Describe your experience of working both independently and as part of a team.  
• How would you prioritise and manage your workload to ensure you complete your work on time, without compromising on quality?

In cases where there is a high number of applications the sift pass mark may be adjusted and candidates will be invited to interview in merit order, i.e. those scoring the highest. 

Should you be invited to interview, you will be assessed using various assessment techniques aligned to the new Civil Service Success Profiles, where you'll be assessed against all the behaviours outlined in the advert.
 

Interviews will be conducted by Video Conference.

Our main locations are Newport (South Wales) and Titchfield.

All successful candidates will be placed on a reserve list for up to 12 months and we aim to onboard cohorts from this reserve list on a rolling monthly basis.

The Sift will be conducted from: Wednesday 4th June 2025

Interviews will be conducted from: Monday 23rd June 2025

For the full terms and conditions of the post, please see attachment.

Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.

Security

Successful candidates must undergo a criminal record check.