Business Support Manager

Job summary

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.

The Communications and Digital Publishing Directorate helps manage ONS’ reputation bringing together specialist communications, publishing and digital expertise to help ONS deliver its mission, strengthen leadership and employee experience, and ensure our statistics and analysis reach and serve users effectively. We also work on behaviour change activity translating ONS objectives into communications which inspire change – be that encouraging the public to respond to our surveys to encouraging engagement with our statistical tools and products. By integrating planning, insight and resources across the directorate, we ensure communications and publishing work seamlessly together, supporting colleagues, leaders and users with clarity, confidence and impact.

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 Business Support Manager plays a key role in supporting senior leadership, enabling effective directorate operations and improving ways of working. The post holder will provide high-quality business support to the Director, Senior Leadership Team and wider directorate, working collaboratively with colleagues and enabling functions across ONS.

Responsibilities:

• Lead and matrix manage SCS Personal Assistants and business support officers, providing guidance to ensure senior leaders are fully supported.
• Build and maintain effective stakeholder relationships across the directorate, group, wider ONS and external partners.
• Coordinate corporate planning, reporting, management information and senior briefings.
• Draft and cascade key communications on behalf of the Senior Leadership Team.
• Maintain corporate registers and ensure outputs are delivered to agreed timescales and quality standards.
• Provide secretariat and coordination support for key directorate meetings, boards, briefings, workshops and resource panels.
• Oversee team inboxes, ensuring requests and enquiries are managed promptly and escalated where needed.
• Support delivery tasks and small projects under the direction of the Senior Business Support Manager or other senior managers.
• Contribute to business support communities of practice, sharing best practice and improving operational processes.

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. 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.

Visa Sponsorship:

ONS is unable to offer visa sponsorship for this role. Applicants must have a valid right to work in the UK when employment commences. If you are currently in the UK on a time-limited visa, it must have at least 18 months remaining at the point of application.