Bristol, Darlington, Manchester, Wolverhampton Job Summary Do you bring proven experience in risk management and a proactive approach to identifying and mitigating potential challenges? Do you have strong organisational skills with the ability to coordinate across multiple workstreams? If so, we have an exciting opportunity for an Office and Risk Manager to join our team at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) and we'd love to hear from you! The Elections Directorate is responsible for a challenging and dynamic policy landscape, always in the public eye, covering electoral policy and law. This includes how elections are run, who can participate and how elections and campaigning are regulated. The Directorate delivers changes that realise the Government Manifesto Commitments and other Ministerial priorities (e.g. introduction of Votes for 16- and 17-year-olds, improvements to elector registration, revised list of Voter Identification that electors produce at polling stations, etc.). It is anticipated that this work will form part of the Government’s Major Projects Portfolio, which comprises the largest, most innovative and highest-risk projects and programmes delivered by Government. The Directorate works closely with electoral-sector stakeholders (the local council teams that run elections). This role is central to strengthening the resilience, coordination, and strategic capability of the Elections Office Team. The postholder will lead on risk management and other cross-directorate functions, including PA coordination, and service continuity, enabling the Head of Office and wider leadership to focus on strategic priorities. The role offers a unique opportunity to work alongside each division and the programme team to shape and embed best practices across the Directorate. If you would like more information about this role please reach out to the vacancy manager Maggie Dalby: maggie.dalby@communities.gov.uk. Job Description As the Office and Risk Manager your responsibilities will include: Risk Management – Draw on MHCLG risk management standards to create and maintain a directorate-level risk register. Coordinating division-level business as usual (BAU) risk inputs alongside programme-level risk escalations. The postholder will provide regular reporting and assurance to senior leadership, ensuring we are identifying, mitigating and escalating risks where necessary, including to the Group-level Portfolio Board. They will also lead on the roll out of the MHCLG Delivery and Risk Manager tool for BAU across the directorate. PA Function Management - Coordinate and standardise PA support across the Directorate, providing resilience/cover for where needed. Directorate Coordination - Oversee and maintain key directorate wide resources, including but not limited to, induction packs, mailing lists, organograms and agendas. As well as supporting the planning and delivery of directorate awaydays. Leadership Support - Support the Head of Office as required, providing service continuity and a link between Programme Management and BAU. As the Office and Risk Manager your responsibilities will include: Risk Management – Draw on MHCLG risk management standards to create and maintain a directorate-level risk register. Coordinating division-level business as usual (BAU) risk inputs alongside programme-level risk escalations. The postholder will provide regular reporting and assurance to senior leadership, ensuring we are identifying, mitigating and escalating risks where necessary, including to the Group-level Portfolio Board. They will also lead on the roll out of the MHCLG Delivery and Risk Manager tool for BAU across the directorate. PA Function Management - Coordinate and standardise PA support across the Directorate, providing resilience/cover for where needed. Directorate Coordination - Oversee and maintain key directorate wide resources, including but not limited to, induction packs, mailing lists, organograms and agendas. As well as supporting the planning and delivery of directorate awaydays. Leadership Support - Support the Head of Office as required, providing service continuity and a link between Programme Management and BAU. Person specification Experience in risk management and governance processes. Strong organisational and coordination skills across multiple workstreams. Ability to lead and influence across teams without direct line management. Excellent written and verbal communication skills. Proven ability to manage competing priorities and deliver at pace. Alongside your salary of £40,669, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government contributes £11,781 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides. Learning and development tailored to your role An environment with flexible working options A culture encouraging inclusion and diversity A Civil Service pension with an employer contribution of 28.97% Selection process details 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 for more information on appropriate and inappropriate use. CV Declaration As part of our pre-employment checking process, we will be using your CV to confirm your job history. Please note that by providing us with your CV you are consenting to us using the information enclosed as part of the checking process. Unless stated otherwise in the advert, your CV will not form part of the assessment but will be used for information purposes and only shared with the panel at interview stage. Our application system is designed to remove as much bias as possible from the recruitment system – this means that a hiring manager does not know your name, your details, see your whole application in one go (or have your CV at review stage unless stated otherwise). Your answers are randomised and chunked up. This means that each assessor views sets of responses to each question rather than seeing a candidate’s full application. The science behind this is that recruitment can be subject to ordering and fatigue effects and we want to reduce this as much as possible. Most of our campaigns utilise multiple assessors and so it is possible that each of your answers would be viewed by different assessors. When Writing Your Application, Remember the assessor won’t be reading your answers sequentially do not assume that the same assessors will have read all of your answers if talking about something in your first answer, make sure that you write the second answer as if you had not written the first (and so on!) At sift, we will be assessing Behaviour 1 (lead behaviour) Changing and Improving Behaviour 2 Working Together Behaviour 3 Communicating And Influencing Behaviour 4 Managing A Quality Service There is a 250 word limit per question. In the event that we receive a large number of applications, we may conduct an initial sift using the lead behaviour listed in the advert. Candidates who pass the initial sift may be progressed to a full sift or progressed straight to assessment/interview. The interview will be of a blended nature consisting of the following Success Profile elements: Behaviours: Communicating and Influencing, Working Together, Managing A Quality Service, Changing and Improving. Experience: Experience questions will be based around the essential skills and criteria as listed in the job description Strengths: The strength-based questions will require natural responses from the candidates. In the full campaign we will test the below Success Profile elements: Behaviours: Communicating and Influencing, Working Together, Managing A Quality Service, Changing and Improving. Experience: Yes Strengths: Yes We do not consider direct CV applications to our Recruitment mailbox – you must apply for this role via the application link on Civil Service Jobs Please note that near miss offers may be made at the lower grade to candidates who do not meet the grade criteria for this campaign. SEO Salary The salary for this role will be £40,669 (National). For existing civil servants, the usual policy on level transfer and promotion will apply and is non-negotiable. If you apply for a role that requires a transfer of location, for example if you are transferring from London to a National location, your salary will be adjusted in accordance with our policy on transfer between HQ pay ranges. Please note that the average employer pension contribution is based upon the National minimum salary for this role. Should your agreed starting salary for this role be different, the average employer pension contribution will be calculated accordingly. If you are a Secondee, this will not apply as you will remain on your home organisation’s terms and conditions. Benefits Transfers across the Civil Service on or after 4 October 2018: Any move to MHCLG from another employer will mean you can no longer access childcare vouchers. This includes moves between government departments. You may however be eligible for other government schemes, including Tax-Free Childcare. Determine your eligibility at https://www.childcarechoices.gov.uk For further information about the benefits available to MHCLG employees, please see the attached Candidate Pack. Location Manchester Wolverhampton Darlington* Bristol There may be opportunities for candidates to work flexibly depending on the business needs. This will be discussed with the vacancy manager on a case-by-case basis if you are successful for the role. Please note: The Darlington Economic Campus (DEC) is a pioneering new cross-government hub which will bring together people across departments and public organisations to play an active role in the most important economic issues of the day. The work of the Campus will make a real difference to people both across the UK and internationally. There will be substantial career opportunities and exciting prospects - a career at the Campus means you will be working at the heart of Government, with access to the benefits and fantastic opportunities offered by the civil service. For further information on the DEC, please take a look at the attached DEC candidate pack. Sift and Interview Dates Sifting is envisaged to take place w/c 22/09 with interview dates to be confirmed. All interviews are currently being held remotely via videocall. Reserve List In the event that we identify more appointable candidates than we currently have posts available, we will hold applicant details in a reserve list for a period of 6 months from which further appointments can be made. This may include roles at a lower grade. Candidates placed on a reserve list will be informed of this. Those candidates who do not wish to remain on the reserve list should contact recruitment@communities.gov.uk to be removed from the reserve list. Candidate Pack Information Please see attached Candidate pack for further information. The candidate pack contains information about the CS Commissioners appeals and complaints procedure. Before starting your application it’s very important to make sure that you are eligible to apply and meet the Civil Service nationality requirements. All candidates are expected to read the information provided in the MHCLG candidate pack regarding nationality requirements and rules Internal Fraud Database The Internal Fraud function of the Fraud, Error, Debt and Grants Function at the Cabinet Office processes details of civil servants who have been dismissed for committing internal fraud, or who would have been dismissed had they not resigned. The Cabinet Office receives the details from participating government organisations of civil servants who have been dismissed, or who would have been dismissed had they not resigned, for internal fraud. In instances such as this, civil servants are then banned for 5 years from further employment in the civil service. The Cabinet Office then processes this data and discloses a limited dataset back to MHCLG as a participating government organisations. MHCLG then carry out the pre employment checks so as to detect instances where known fraudsters are attempting to reapply for roles in the civil service. In this way, the policy is ensured and the repetition of internal fraud is prevented. For more information please see - Internal Fraud Register Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment. Security Successful candidates must undergo a criminal record check. People working with government assets must complete baseline personnel security standard (opens in new window) checks. Successful candidates must undergo a criminal record check. People working with government assets must complete baseline personnel security standard (opens in new window) checks. 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) Working for the Civil Service The Civil Service Code (opens in a new window) sets out the standards of behaviour expected of civil servants. We recruit by merit on the basis of fair and open competition, as outlined in the Civil Service Commission's recruitment principles (opens in a new window). The Civil Service embraces diversity and promotes equal opportunities. As such, we run a Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) for candidates with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria. The Civil Service also offers a Redeployment Interview Scheme to civil servants who are at risk of redundancy, and who meet the minimum requirements for the advertised vacancy. The Civil Service Code (opens in a new window) sets out the standards of behaviour expected of civil servants. We recruit by merit on the basis of fair and open competition, as outlined in the Civil Service Commission's recruitment principles (opens in a new window). The Civil Service embraces diversity and promotes equal opportunities. As such, we run a Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) for candidates with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria. The Civil Service also offers a Redeployment Interview Scheme to civil servants who are at risk of redundancy, and who meet the minimum requirements for the advertised vacancy. Diversity and Inclusion The Civil Service is committed to attract, retain and invest in talent wherever it is found. To learn more please see the Civil Service People Plan (opens in a new window) and the Civil Service Diversity and Inclusion Strategy (opens in a new window). This vacancy is part of the Great Place to Work for Veterans (opens in a new window) initiative. Once this job has closed, the job advert will no longer be available. You may want to save a copy for your records. Contact point for applicants Job Contact Name : Maggie Dalby Email : maggie.dalby@communities.gov.uk Recruitment team Email : recruitment@communities.gov.uk