Deputy Strategic Risk and Assurance Manager

Job summary

We are looking for an enthusiastic, organised and self-motivated team player who has experience working in a Risk or Assurance environment and enjoys working collaboratively whilst offering helpful challenge to support our organisation in effectively managing, mitigating and improving Risk Management and Assurance.

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.

The UKSA Board and its Audit and Risk Assurance Committee are highly engaged with the organisation’s risk profile and seek assurance that our strategic risks are being managed appropriately within the defined risk appetite. The Risk and Assurance team support the UKSA in ensuring that we have an effective and connected Risk and Assurance framework that is core to the provision of assurance to the Board, Audit and Risk Assurance Committee and Executive, over the management of strategic risks.

Job description

Your previous experience working in similar environments will ensure you can hit the ground running, with the support of the Risk and Assurance team and risk profession around you.

The risk profession will support you by providing learning and development opportunities, career pathways, tools and resources to help develop your skills and progress your career.

You will bring together expertise in risk, assurance and governance, and will work collaboratively with the Strategic Risk and Assurance managers, risk and control owners, and risk and assurance leads in the business to ensure that we can derive quality outcomes from the risk management process.

This Deputy Strategic Risk and Assurance Manager role will see you supporting the organisation in building its ‘second line’ ensuring that appropriate mechanisms are in place or are developed around strategic risk controls and associated assurance activities.

You will support the Strategic Risk and Assurance managers by working with stakeholders of all levels across the organisation to identify, monitor and manage risk, utilising data to analyse risk appetite, raise awareness, flag early warning of upcoming risks, and support and engage risk owners with their risk portfolio. Alongside this you will be responsible for undertaking assurance reviews which will test the effectiveness of controls and flag areas for future analysis.

You will work with colleagues to create and maintain informative and impactful assurance maps which can be used to adapt and improve assurance activities for our key strategic risks and beyond. You will support the Strategic Risk and Assurance managers by collaborating with risk and assurance colleagues across the organisation and reviewing risk tool data to gain insights into the outcomes of assurance activities to support judgements around the management of our strategic risks.

Role Responsibilities

You will:

• Collaborate closely with colleagues across the business to drive consistency and efficiency, championing the risk and assurance framework, processes and Risk and Assurance culture.
• Work with colleagues to support the development, monitoring and reporting of quality MI and key risk metrics to help support judgements around the management of our strategic risks.
• Take a pragmatic approach with risk and control owners and Risk & Assurance leads to ensure that directorate/operational risks are managed effectively, and proportionate levels of assurance are provided.
• Develop expertise in specific areas of strategic risk, working with the Strategic Risk and Assurance Managers to oversee several strategic risks and supporting them in preparing content for risk and assurance reporting, including deep dives for key governance forums, such as the UKSA Board, Audit and Risk Assurance Committee and the Executive Committee.
• Undertake assurance reviews with an eye for detail and a questioning nature to ensure you get to the root cause of issues or can uncover previously unknown concerns.
• Play an active role in collaborating with risk and assurance leads across the organisation to ensure an understanding of key risks in business areas and programmes to provide a ‘golden thread’ insight for the management of our strategic risks and reviewing key risk tool data.
• Support the provision of risk, assurance and fraud training for key stakeholders across the organisation.
• Monitoring the Risk and Assurance Team inbox, ensuring queries are responded to at pace and in line with the Risk and Assurance Team’s ways of working and framework.
• Ensure Risk and Assurance Wiki pages and hub are kept up to date with relevant information, including eLearning packages for Risk and Assurance.
• Support the ongoing utilisation of the Corporate Risk Tool, providing colleagues with guidance on use of the tool, facilitating access and working on continued maturity and improvements to the tool.

Person specification

Essential criteria

• An excellent communicator, both in writing and verbally in times of challenge, tailoring explanations to a range of audiences at all levels of the organisation.
• Previous experience working within a Risk and/or Assurance function, ideally with an understanding of managing fraud risks.
• Be able to understand and prioritise large amounts of risk data to identify themes/challenges for reporting across the governance structure.
• Self-motivated, taking an active interest in expanding knowledge of areas relating to the role and seek opportunities for improvement through continuous learning.
• Be an advocate for risk and assurance within an organisation, championing corporate approaches and the benefits of using risk management software.
• Experience using Microsoft Office packages and Power Platforms (or similar), with an ability to learn new systems and ways of working, and a working knowledge of using artificial intelligence to improve processes and enhance efficiency.

Behaviours

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

• Seeing the Big Picture
• Delivering at Pace
• Communicating and Influencing
• Working Together

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £41,985, Office for National Statistics contributes £12,163 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides (opens in a new window).

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.

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 Disability Confident Leader we’re committed to ensuring