Strategy & Planning Officer

at  Advisory Conciliation and Arbitration Service

JOB SUMMARY

This is a key role which brings detail to the big picture. You will be naturally efficient and organised – relishing creating and maintaining order. You will thrive on being tapped into what’s happening in a fast-paced environment – as comfortable running a large meeting as you are creating a new reporting template.
This role is all about coordinating, supporting and facilitating others – providing processes, plans and frameworks that reflect a range of contributions and then supporting others to achieve those plans. You will build and nurture strong relationships to support colleagues to collaborate, prioritise and then keep to deadline. By drawing together multiple inputs into coherent, quality commissions you will ensure clarity of direction and shared understanding.
You will ensure the smooth running of the Strategy and External Affairs Directorate by supporting the Director to oversee Directorate corporate responsibilities including people, culture, finance, compliance and administration. This role is particularly important as the Directorate is relatively new so existing good systems need to be maintained, processes created where there are gaps, and new strengths built in Directorate culture.
You will support strategic projects – this could be new areas Acas is developing that need scoping, shaping and project initiation and development before they are handed over to a permanent team; supporting strategy development; reviews of the organisational strategy; or tracking progress against the strategy.

JOB DESCRIPTION

• Planning and prioritisation: Manage and co-ordinate cross-Acas plans of external affairs, communications and strategy activity. Accountable for monitoring and supporting progress against our plans and ensuring dependencies are managed and change is controlled.
• Directorate management and support: accountable for running the business planning process and tracking milestones through the year; ensuring robust budget management including profiling, controlling expenditure and problem-solving; maintaining the Directorate risk register; oversight of meeting management; compiling compliance returns; Directorate business continuity lead; setting a culture of customer service in the small team.
• Directorate culture: support engagement by curating engaging meetings, organising and facilitating away days, managing the annual people survey action plan. Manage confidential activity, including the reward and recognition scheme for the directorate and staff training reports.
• Strategic projects: Accountable for supporting strategic projects as needed particularly producing timely high-quality materials to scope, shape and define projects. This may include: project initiation and scoping, desk research, organising ‘discoveries’ to marshal internal stakeholder views on the topic and producing recommendations of next steps for Acas. This could relate to supporting strategy development, reviewing the strategy or tracking progress against the strategic ambitions.
• Set up new processes across all accountabilities as needed and pursue continuous improvement.
• Potential for line management responsibility.

HOW TO APPLY

Please click on the ‘Apply now’ button.
As part of the application process, you will be asked to complete:
An evidence-based statement of suitability and CV reflecting the essential Experience requirements as listed in the Job Description. Your statement of suitability should be no longer than 1,000 words. It should avoid generalised assertions, instead including specific examples of achievements, explaining the degree of challenge, what you did and the outcomes.
A 250-word statement on the Delivering at Pace Behaviour.
A separate 250-word statement reflecting the desirable criteria.
Should a large number of applications be received, an initial sift may be conducted using the:
Lead Behaviour - Delivering at Pace.
Candidates who pass the initial sift may be progressed to a full sift of all the above requirements or progressed straight to assessment/interview.
A wait list may be utilised for this vacancy at the sift stage. Candidates who are placed on this list may be offered an interview at a later date.

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) (opens in a new window)
• 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 (opens in a new window)

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