Business Management Analyst - Central Operations

at  Bank of England

DEPARTMENT OVERVIEW

The Bank of England is the UK’s central bank. Our mission is to deliver monetary and financial stability for the British people. It is an historic institution with a rich history (over 325 years old), and important standing in UK public life. The Bank of England is a diverse organisation which benefits from different ideas being created by people from different backgrounds. Each of its 6,000 plus people are committed to public service and dedicated to promoting the good of the people of the United Kingdom by maintaining monetary and financial stability.
We are recruiting for a Business Management Analyst to join the Central Operations (CO) directorate at the Bank of England. Central Operations is integral to enabling the Bank to deliver its vital mission. It is at the heart of delivering essential services to this unique organisation. We are responsible for creating and maintaining safe, sustainable, and collaborative environments, across all our locations, to enable and protect the Bank fulfil its mission. From maintaining, enhancing, and securing the Bank’s premises and the infrastructures required to support the Bank’s critical functions, to developing and delivering data driven plans which include people, services, assets, locations, systems and technologies to further drive efficiencies and effectiveness, to creating the Bank’s sustainability strategy. We are a high performing team that has responsibility for delivering sustainable value for money solutions through strong supplier management and customer service.
We take pride in our people, with backgrounds and experiences as diverse as the services we provide. You’ll enjoy flexible working opportunities, a strong sense of community and well-being, and a collective mission to promote the good of the people of the UK. All of which add up to make the Bank a hugely rewarding place to work.

ROLE DESCRIPTION

The Operations Analyst is responsible for providing analytical support to the CO Chief of Staff, on a broad range of operational topics including providing control and reporting against the divisional budgets, business plan, risk assessment, Metrics, Talent, Training and ASR – collating, summarising and drawing conclusions from a range of MI/data sources and prompting relevant actions. It will provide basic cover for Chief of Staff on regular/standard operational processes, acting as a point of contact and fielding/escalating urgent enquires as appropriate.
This role will contribute to the smooth and successful running of CO by developing and presenting information to inform management decisions on financial and people-related decisions (recruitment etc). It will also help CO to ensure it is compliant with internal policies by producing statistics to prompt management action.

SPECIFIC RESPONSIBILITIES

• Budget Centre Control (£54m Business As Usual Expenditure c 350 headcount) 40%
• Lead role in managing the successful delivery of an Annual 3-year budget submission to support the business plan.
• Produce or coordinate the production, (from different sources of information), of reports to advise the ED and COLT on effectiveness of and progress against budget.
• Review financials monthly and quarterly, identifying the need to change the plan to meet business needs and work with CO Leadership team (COLT) to provide options to manage shortfalls or change to priorities.
• Responsible for ensuring headcount remains within target, authorising all recruitment requests via ORC.
• Ensure that strong links are created and maintained with Finance stakeholders to ensure clarity and low level of questions/reworking.
• Be aware of and suggest options for meeting needs arising from changes to Business Plan or to mitigate risks as they are identified.
• Business Planning 20%
• Support the development of CO business plan, performance data (MI and metrics) and area-wide capacity planning to feed into the Central Services Strategy Plan. This will involve working with the Chief of Staff and Central Services Business Manager.
• Track progress against the plan and with the Chief of Staff prepare presentation material for COLT for changes to recalibrate or divert resources to achieve.
• Risk Reporting 15%
• Responsible for compiling the Risk and Control Self-Assessment (RCSAs) for annual attestation by CO-ED, ensuring the results feed into business planning and prioritisation.
• Building and advising on local risk registers to identify ‘top 10’ for each COLT Member and ensure cross directorate review.
• Working with Chief of Staff, identify and report on top level CO risks and provide quarterly reports for COLT in support of the Bank governance framework making recommendations to accommodate costs where investment is required to mitigate risk.
• Own and coordinate a number of regular operational activities, as well as the CO response to ad-hoc requests from Central Services, delivering these under tight deadlines and in the appropriate format; 15%
• Provide support to the Chief of Staff in the delivery of essential operational activities (e.g ASR/moderation, talent management, compliance, metrics, risk updates) by coordinating and communicating information effectively; 10%
• Provide regular and ad hoc analysis and commentary to the Chief of Staff on a variety of operational topics spanning all areas of the team’s remit, thinking ‘outside of the box’ to challenge the assumptions and draw meaningful conclusions.Provide cover for the Chief of Staff on some operational processes, acting as a primary point of contact/escalation for senior business stakeholders (including HoDs and above) in their absence.

ROLE REQUIREMENTS

Minimum Criteria

• Good understanding of operations, and the typical activities undertaken by a COO office or Central Services area, to provide:
• context on the information being analysed;
• identification of potential skews in the data; and
• determination of appropriate courses of action.
• Ability to analyse and present financial information, compliance statistics and HR MI efficiently and effectively via charts, pivot tables etc.

• Ability to scrutinise data, identifying themes or anomalies and presenting key messages to a senior audience (up to HoD level, with some instances of presenting to Directors/EDs with appropriate support).Excellent delivery skills; able to work autonomously to deliver priorities and projects; able to be effective in collaborating within cross-area teams; able to adapt to changing priorities with excellent time management skills and the ability to multitask.

Essential Criteria

• Ability to work autonomously and on own initiative, whilst applying sound judgement on where sensitive issues might require escalation or clarification in approach (e.g., personal data, diversity issues).
• Excellent communication skills, both oral and in writing, including communicating complex and sensitive issues
• Ability to engage and influence various stakeholders up to Senior Manager level.
• Requirement to pick up complex issues quickly when covering for more senior colleagues, and act with discretion when dealing with highly sensitive information.
• Ability to join the dots on multiple issues to understand the wider impact for the business.
• Ability to identify inefficiencies and deliver process improvements.
• Requirement to establish and maintain excellent relationships with business and operational contacts.

• Good negotiation skills, with the ability to build and maintain a network across the organisation (within CO and Central Services).Ability to present sensitive or complex operational matters in a clear high-level form, understandable by colleagues with less specialist knowledge.

Desirable Criteria

• Oversight and subject matter expertise to be provided by more senior members of the team.

• Solid grasp of CO’s remit to inform judgements around scheduling of requests and deadlines, and appropriate target audiences. Guidance to be provided by Chief of Staff.Basic knowledge of other areas of the Bank and industry useful, mainly for contextual purposes.

This role offers a salary of circa £38,160 - £42,000. In addition, we also offer a comprehensive benefits package as detailed below:

• A non-contributory, career average pension giving you a guaranteed retirement benefit of 1/95th of your annual salary for every year worked. There is the option to increase your pension (to 1/50th) or decrease (to 1/120th) in exchange for salary through our flexible benefits programme each year.
• A discretionary performance award based on a current award pool.
• A 8% benefits allowance with the option to take as salary or purchase a wide range of flexible benefits.
• 26 days’ annual leave with option to buy up to 12 additional days through flexible benefits.Private medical insurance and income protection