JOB SUMMARY

Join our dynamic Business Continuity and Resilience (BCR) Team, a crucial part of the Risk and Resilience Directorate within the Finance Group at the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). Our team plays a vital role in ensuring the stability and resilience of DWP’s operations, which support approximately 90,000 staff, over 800 sites, and around 500 supplier contracts.

WHAT WE DO:

Preparation and Response: We work closely with stakeholders across DWP and the UK Government to prepare for, respond to, and recover from business disruptions and cross-government crises. Our goal is to maintain the continuity of critical financial, employment, and welfare services.
Crisis Management: Our team coordinates crisis response efforts, policy development, briefing, and parliamentary business handling. We collaborate with Senior Leaders, the Executive Team, and Private Office to ensure a swift and effective response to any incident.
On-Call Support: We operate a 24/7 on-call rota to manage incidents that have the potential to disrupt high-volume and essential services. This ensures that we are always ready to address any challenges that arise.
Software Implementation: We lead the implementation and rollout of the Business Continuity software tool across all business areas and sites within the DWP estate. This tool is essential for maintaining up-to-date continuity plans and ensuring a coordinated response.

JOB DESCRIPTION

As a Business Continuity Officer, the role includes:

• Gathering data and completing Business Continuity related products including Business Impact Analysis of key products and services, working closely and effectively with stakeholders, utilising our software solution (Riskonnect) to modernise our Business Continuity services.
• Testing planning assumptions through the design and delivery of an extensive exercise and training programme across all levels of the organisation.
• Supporting the development and integration of the professionalisation of Business Continuity as a specialism across government.
• Maintaining high levels of engagement with stakeholders to ensure the completion of a comprehensive assurance programme across all sites and corporate areas.
• Work with SEO leads to develop policy, standards and frameworks to effectively develop wider BC community and improve capability.

• Supporting SEO leads in the development of DWP’s operational resilience journey.

  As a Response Officer, the role includes:

• Maintaining a 24/7 scalable crisis and incident response capability, ensuring DWP priority business functions can be restored and resumed in the event of an incident or business disruption, by supporting a secretariat function for Silver and Gold Commander, such as organising and executing plans for meetings effectively.

• Working with other Government departments to consider full packages of information on issues, including situation reporting, implications, dependencies, possible solutions and consequences of decisions and solutions.
• Drafting clear and accurate briefing’s, to very tight deadlines, for both routine and ad hoc requests for Ministers and Senior Officials and ensuring that this is tailored to the needs of the audience and is factual, accurate and consistent with Departmental steers.
• Responsibility for accessing and managing all emails received in the DOC mailbox, including recording, updating ongoing activities and/or closing activities on the activity log.
• Triage of emails to gain a clear view of the activity required and its urgency.
• Storing and recording actions and decisions, along with the rationale for each decision made for future audit requirements, in line with the Information and Records Management Policy.
• Ensuring key information is stored as Registered Files as part of Information and Records.

NATIONALITY REQUIREMENTS

This job is broadly open to the following groups:

• UK nationals
• nationals of the Republic of Ireland
• nationals of Commonwealth countries who have the right to work in the UK
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities with settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS)
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities who have made a valid application for settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS)
• individuals with limited leave to remain or indefinite leave to remain who were eligible to apply for EUSS on or before 31 December 2020
• Turkish nationals, and certain family members of Turkish nationals, who have accrued the right to work in the Civil Service

Further information on nationality requirements

TYPE OF ROLE

Business Management and Improvement
Planning
Security

As a Business Continuity Officer, the role includes:

• Gathering data and completing Business Continuity related products including Business Impact Analysis of key products and services, working closely and effectively with stakeholders, utilising our software solution (Riskonnect) to modernise our Business Continuity services.
• Testing planning assumptions through the design and delivery of an extensive exercise and training programme across all levels of the organisation.
• Supporting the development and integration of the professionalisation of Business Continuity as a specialism across government.
• Maintaining high levels of engagement with stakeholders to ensure the completion of a comprehensive assurance programme across all sites and corporate areas.
• Work with SEO leads to develop policy, standards and frameworks to effectively develop wider BC community and improve capability.
• Supporting SEO leads in the development of DWP’s operational resilience journey

As a Response Officer, the role includes:

• Maintaining a 24/7 scalable crisis and incident response capability, ensuring DWP priority business functions can be restored and resumed in the event of an incident or business disruption, by supporting a secretariat function for Silver and Gold Commander, such as organising and executing plans for meetings effectively.
• Working with other Government departments to consider full packages of information on issues, including situation reporting, implications, dependencies, possible solutions and consequences of decisions and solutions.
• Drafting clear and accurate briefing’s, to very tight deadlines, for both routine and ad hoc requests for Ministers and Senior Officials and ensuring that this is tailored to the needs of the audience and is factual, accurate and consistent with Departmental steers.
• Responsibility for accessing and managing all emails received in the DOC mailbox, including recording, updating ongoing activities and/or closing activities on the activity log.
• Triage of emails to gain a clear view of the activity required and its urgency.
• Storing and recording actions and decisions, along with the rationale for each decision made for future audit requirements, in line with the Information and Records Management Policy.
• Ensuring key information is stored as Registered Files as part of Information and Records