Business Support Manager

This is an exciting opportunity for a skilled Higher Executive Officer to play a key role in supporting senior leadership, driving effective business operations, and improving directorate ways of working.

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.

Finance, Commercial, Audit and Systems (FCAS) and Strategy and Change (S&C). These are two small directorates but the professions and areas of expertise are diverse, making it an interesting place to work. The directorate consists of experts from Finance, Project Delivery, Commercial, Internal Audit, Risk & Assurance, Policy and more. The business areas ensures strong governance, effective use of resources and robust assurance, enabling the organisation to operate efficiently and with confidence.

Job description

As a Business Support Manager, you will work collaboratively with colleagues within the Directorate Business Support team in delivering highly effective business support activities to the director, senior leadership team and wider directorate. How your work is spread across the directorate will depend on its size and structure, and the complexity of some of the key tasks.

There will be an opportunity to join business support communities of practice, working collaboratively with business support colleague across ONS to develop and share best practice, solve operational issues, and improve processes.

The purpose of the business support function is to facilitate the smooth, efficient running of the directorate, dealing with operational matters (organisational, administrative), working collaboratively with other enabling functions (Finance, HR, Communications, Programme Management, and Risk & Assurance), and providing effective, efficient business support to the director, senior leadership team (SLT) and colleagues across the directorate.

Responsibilities:

Leadership:

Lead and matrix manage SCS Personal Assistants and business support officers, providing advice and guidance to them in completing a variety of business support activities to ensure the Senior Leadership Team are fully supported.

Stakeholder Relationships:

Build and maintain excellent stakeholder relationships across the directorate, group, wider ONS and beyond, working flexibly and collaboratively to ensure high quality delivery of corporate business priorities, and ensure collaborative working.

Directorate Support:

Under the guidance of a Senior Business Support Manager undertake activities including but not limited to:

• Corporate planning and reporting.

• Collation and delivery of key management information and briefings.

• Drafting and cascading key communications from the SLT.

• Maintenance of corporate registers, ensuring these are delivered within defined timescales and to agreed quality standards.

• Dedicated support to a division or Senior Business Support Manager as required.

• Ensure that these are delivered to time and quality standards.

Secretariat and key management meeting support:

Coordinate and oversee activity for key directorate meetings, which add value, ensuring that a secretariat or other facilitator function is provided where necessary, this may include but not limited to:

• Directorate or group management boards.

• Directorate or group briefings.

• Senior Leadership Team workshops and engagement activities.

• Directorate or group resource panels.

Team administration:

Take responsibility for ensuring that team inboxes are effectively managed, that requests and enquiries are dealt with promptly and appropriately, within SLAs (where these exist), liaising effectively across the directorate or wider organisation to resolve issues, escalating to senior managers as appropriate.

Team specific tasks

Where appropriate, carry out delivery tasks and/or managing &delivering small projects under the direction of the Senior Business Support Manageror other senior managers.

Person specification

• Excellent interpersonal skills, both written and verbal, with demonstrable experience of collaborating and engaging effectively with people across the organisation, including at a senior level.

• Demonstrable experience of establishing, building and maintaining strong collaborative and productive relationships across a broad range of customers and / or stakeholders.

• Highly effective organisational skills, with the ability to prioritise and manage multiple tasks concurrently, delegating appropriately to ensure delivery to time and quality.

• Proven ability to work under pressure and at pace, responding flexibly to changing priorities while supporting others to meet tight deadlines.

• Ability to work both independently and as part of a team, including leading others to deliver high quality outputs, taking responsibility for outcomes, with experience in a business support or similar operational role.

Behaviours

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

• Working Together

• Seeing the Big Picture

• Managing a Quality Service

• Communicating and Influencing

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £34,587, Office for National Statistics contributes £10,019 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme.

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 valued colleagues across the organisation.

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