Administrative Support

Job summary

Are you an organised, proactive individual who enjoys keeping things running smoothly and helping stakeholders get the clear, accurate insight they need? If so, we may have the ideal role for you!

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.

Census 2031 represents our most ambitious data collection project yet – a once-in-a-decade opportunity to capture a complete picture of everyone living in England and Wales. Building on the digital success of 2021, we're pioneering new ways to reach every household and community, ensuring no one is left uncounted. This vital work will provide the foundation for policy decisions, resource allocation, and community planning for the next decade.

The Operational Delivery Profession (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 an Administrative Support, you will assist and support the smooth operational running of the team and contribute to the effective capture, management, and organisation of key stakeholder needs. Your work will help ensure that decision‑makers have clear, accurate insight into what users require from our statistics.

This is a varied role in a fast‑paced environment, ideal for someone who enjoys coordination, organisation, working with stakeholders, and supporting analytical teams to deliver high‑quality, user‑focused outputs.

Population and migration statistics are among the most high‑profile outputs in the ONS. This role requires curiosity about how different data and products relate to one another, helping ensure users can easily find and understand the information they need.

You will collaborate with a wide range of stakeholders across multiple directorates and the wider organisation, supporting engagement, coordination, and the smooth running of operational processes.

Key Responsibilities:

• Secretariat support for various key group meetings, including the possibility of a Topic Expert Group.
• Provide logistical support for meetings, including calendar invites and document circulation.
• Liaise with internal teams for timely responses to queries.
• Maintain logs of stakeholder queries, user needs, and follow up actions using Microsoft Lists and other management systems.
• Support the extraction, refinement, and organisation of user needs, ensuring they are clearly documented and available for analysis by the research team.
• Maintain and update the team’s engagement tracking systems, ensuring outstanding actions are captured and progressed.
• Support the development of an internal process to help the team track alignment, activity, and operational efficiency.

Person specification

Essential Criteria:

• Strong organisational and administrative skills, with the ability to manage multiple priorities effectively.
• High attention to detail, ensuring accuracy across logs, documentation, and user-need records.
• Clear and confident communication, with the ability to liaise professionally with a wide range of vital stakeholders.
• An interest in understanding how population and migration statistics are created and used, and how user needs are the backbone to their development.

Behaviours

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

• Delivering at Pace
• Working Together
• Managing a Quality Service
• Communicating and Influencing

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £25,501, Office for National Statistics contributes £7,387 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 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.

ONS are committed to flexible ways of working that support a healthy work-life balance. ONS has already considered how this job could be right sized for applicants working flexibly and we are happy to explore options with you about working part time, in a job share or flexibly, in line with our hybrid working policies.

Things you need to know

Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence can be a useful tool to support your application, however, all examples and statements provided must be truthful, factually accurate and taken directly from your own experience. Where plagiarism has been identified (presenting the ideas and experiences of others, or generated by artificial intelligence, as your own) applications may be withdrawn and internal candidates may be subject to disciplinary action. Please see our candidate guidance (opens in a new window) for more information on appropriate and inappropriate use.

Selection process details

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

Security Clearance

For ONS the requirement for SC clearance is to have been present in the UK for 3 consecutive years immediately prior to applying and the department will consider eligibility by exception on a case-by-case basis. You will be asked to provide information