Crisis Management and Protective Security Advisor

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.

The last few years has seen an extensive overhaul of security and information management to meet the challenges of corporate and statistics transformation in technology, methods and practice, the Digital Economy Act and organisational risk appetite. The capability is evolving and expanding to address changes in threat and business direction.

Security and Information Management Directorate (SaIM) operates six key services across ONS: security risk advice and management; knowledge and information management (KIM); protective security and business resilience operations; security compliance and audit; cyber security; and Security Culture.

This role sits in the Physical Security and Business Continuity division within the SaIM directorate. This role reports into the Head of Security and Information Risk (CSO Deputy).

Job description

The role forms part of the Protective Security & Business Resilience Operations (PSBRO) Team within the Security and Information Management Division. The post reports to the Business Continuity & Crisis Management Lead, who reports directly to the Protective Security & Business Resilience Operations Principal.

The primary focus of the role is the development, coordination, delivery and continuous improvement of ONS Crisis Management arrangements, ensuring the organisation maintains effective capabilities to prepare for, respond to, recover from and learn from disruptive incidents and emergencies. The role may evolve to incident management later.

The role supports the delivery of organisational resilience objectives through the maintenance of crisis management frameworks, governance arrangements, exercising programmes, training activities and assurance processes.

Whilst Crisis Management forms the core responsibility of the role, the post holder may also provide support to wider PSBRO activities, including Protective Security, Business Continuity and organisational resilience initiatives where operational priorities require.

The role will work closely with senior leaders, business areas and external partners to ensure that ONS maintains effective response arrangements capable of supporting the delivery of priority statistical outputs during periods of disruption.

Due to the nature of the role, a minimum of 30 hours is required.

Responsibilities

• Act as a key advisor on ONS Crisis Management arrangements.
• Support the maintenance and continuous improvement of crisis management policies, frameworks, plans and procedures.
• Coordinate the development, review and testing of Strategic, Tactical and Operational response plans.
• Support the operation of Gold, Silver and Bronze command structures during incidents and emergencies.
• Help Coordinate crisis response activities during organisational disruptions.
• Develop and deliver crisis management exercising programmes, workshops and simulations.
• Support the delivery of crisis management training and awareness activities across ONS.
• Record, monitor and report on lessons identified from exercises, incidents and real-world events.
• Produce briefings, reports and management information for senior leadership teams and governance groups.
• Maintain crisis management governance arrangements and action tracking processes.
• Develop relationships with operational business areas to improve resilience and crisis response capability.
• Support organisational preparedness activities and resilience planning initiatives.

Person specification

Essential Criteria:

• Experience coordinating activities within complex operational environments, ensuring effective delivery across multiple workstreams.
• Excellent communication, stakeholder engagement and interpersonal skills, with the ability to build productive relationships at all levels.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving abilities, including identifying risks, issues and opportunities for continuous improvement.
• Proven organisational skills, with the ability to manage competing priorities, work independently and remain calm under pressure and uncertainty.
• Experience preparing reports, briefings and management information, supported by proficiency in Microsoft Office applications and collaboration tools.

Behaviours

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

• Communicating and Influencing
• Making Effective Decisions
• Working Together

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £28,138, Office for National Statistics contributes £8,151 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.

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 r