Job Profile

Core job information
Job Title / Office Manager/Senior PA to Institute Director
Dept./School/Inst. / Barts Cancer Institute / Section/Centre/Unit / Director’s Office
Career Family / Professional / Grade / 5
Working hours per week / 35 / Appointment period / Permanent
Reports to (job title) / Institute Director
Institute Manager/Assistant Manager / Current location / Charterhouse Square
Job purpose (Why does the job exist? What is it there to achieve or deliver?)
To manage the administrative function of the Director’s Office, coordinating the provision of an efficient and effective administrative and PA service, ensuring the smooth running of the Director’s office. This involves the line management of the Work Experience Receptionist, two Administrative Assistants and mentoring six other administrative staff in the Director’s Office.
To perform a diverse range of administrative and secretarial activities and duties, encompassing a number of areas of responsibility, exercising considerable initiative, judgement and adaptability to decide on appropriate courses of action to react to changing circumstances.
To work as the most senior member of the Institute’s administrative and secretarial team, being mutually supportive and covering duties as necessary during colleagues’ absences and at times of additional pressure, as directed.
Knowledge, Skills & Experience (work experience, qualifications, specialist training, key skills, disposition)
Requirements / Essential/Desirable
Qualifications /
  1. Graduate(2ii or above) or equivalent
  2. GCSE (Grade C or above) or equivalent in English and Mathematics
  3. RSA/OCR typing certificate, Level 3” or equivalent (typing speed of at least 60 wpm)
/
  1. Essential
  2. Essential
  3. Essential

Experience /
  1. Ability to exercise authority and provide leadership
  2. A successful and effective decision maker, capable of following through objectives in complex and challenging situations
  3. Significant secretarial/administrative experience in a busy executive setting. Experience of working as a PA at Director/equivalent level
  4. Significant experience of managing an executive office and team
  5. Extensive experience of managing decision-making Boards and committees work, including detailed and accurate minute taking
  6. Line management of staff
  7. Accounts experience, including ordering, invoice payment and financial record keeping
  8. Experience of working in higher education or NHS
/
  1. Essential
  2. Essential
  3. Essential
  1. Essential
  2. Essential
  1. Essential
  2. Highly desirable
  3. Desirable

Knowledge, skills & abilities /
  1. Ability to work unsupervised, prioritise a varied workload and to work under pressure to meet deadlines
  2. Excellent organisational skills
  3. Proficient IT skills, including Microsoft Office - Word, Excel (intermediate level), Outlook and databases
  4. Excellent written, verbal and numeracy skills
  5. Attention to detail
/
  1. Essential
  2. Essential
  3. Essential
  4. Essential
  5. Essential

Attitude & disposition /
  1. Excellent interpersonal skills, being able to establish and develop good working relationships, at all levels, internally and externally
  2. Self-motivated
  3. Calm and friendly manner
  4. A professional approach to work
  5. Able to exercise considerable initiative and maintain confidentiality
  6. Diplomatic and tactful
  7. Good team member
  8. Flexible and co-operative
/
  1. Essential
  2. Essential
  3. Essential
  4. Essential
  5. Essential
  6. Essential
  7. Essential
  8. Essential

Other circumstances /
  1. Willingness to work on different sites
  2. Willingness to work flexible hours, with some evening and early morning work required
/
  1. Essential
  2. Essential

Main Duties and Responsibilities of the Role
Senior PA Duties
To manage the Director’s and Institute Manager’s e-mail, diary and appointments, ensuring effective use of time and preparation of papers, presentations and relevant information in advance.
Secretariat for the Executive and Governance Boards, providing high level support to the Chair and the Board, ensuring all associated paperwork is prepared and disseminated, and monitoring follow up as appropriate, and providing detailed, accurate minutes in a timely manner.
Prepare correspondence, working papers, reports and presentations for the senior management team.
Office Management
To be directly responsible for the Director’s Office, managing the office and workload independently, with minimal supervision, to ensure it runs efficiently and professionally, commensurate with a senior executive office. This includes day-to-day management of a Work Experience Receptionist to ensure all objectives are in hand and will be met by the required deadline. It also includes line management and oversight of the work of two administrative assistants.
To act as the main point of contactfor the Director’s Office, both internally and externally, acting with diplomacy and tact and with assertiveness to shield the Director, Institute Manager and Assistant Manager from constant and inappropriate disruptions. To deal with a wide variety of telephone and personal callers, and liaising with other College and School Departments to ensure good communication.
Diverse range of office management duties, encompassing a number of areas of responsibility – multi-tasking.
To use skill and judgement to determine which communications must be referred to Senior Management, which can be dealt with by other staff or to provide responses where appropriate.
To line manage the Work Experience Receptionistand two administrative assistantsin the Director’s Office, ensuring that theirworkload is appropriately organised.
To manage an Administrators’ Forum for the Institute, with regular meetings to provide an informal forum for information exchange between the Centre Administrators and the Director’s Office, and to provide mentoring for the Institute’s other administrative and secretarial staff to assure high level standard of administrative support across the Institute.
To liaise, at a senior level, with internal bodies(Institute Directors and Managers, Vice-Principal Team, Estates, HR, Finance & IT department) and external (CEO and Medical Director Office and other senior staff in NIHR, NHS, MRC, CR-UK, PCUK, PCRF, Academy of Medical Sciences and other Universities both within UK and worldwide).
To assist with budgetary control of the Director’s Office finances, including processing payments and maintaining accurate financial records of all financial transactions. Authorised signatory for non-pay expenditure and direct responsibility for the Purchase Card accounts (for the Director, Manager and Office Manager) and expense claims.
Working Environment (knowledge of special working practices, breadth of management skill required, customer impact, responsibility, efficiency)
Apply professional expertise and broad management experience, and use independent judgement, to manage unforeseen situations and medium term developments, and to deliver effective and efficient services throughout the Institute.
Generate original ideas and innovative solutions, where precedents may not exist, through the provision of appropriate in-depth specialist, broad management, knowledge and advice.
Identify additional service requirements and co-ordinate and design the service delivery and office management to maximise service quality, productivity in efficient manner.
Ensure professional and quality service standards are maintained and applied within the Director’s Office and the Institute.
Freedom to Act & Decision Making (depth of control, supervision received, use of judgement & initiative, analytical ability)
Use professional knowledge and experience to identify issues which might have a broad impact across the School and College.
Advise on the need to assess complex situations, information or data and propose the application of innovative solutions with broad impact.
Manage monitoring procedures and make appropriate interventions to meet both internal and external requirements.
Provide advice on the analysis and interpretation of information and data, on the sourcing of additional related information where appropriate, and on reporting progress to senior management (Director, Institute Manager, Assistant Manager) to support the resolution of issues or problems within the professional area.
Plan and organise individual activity with an appreciation of longer term issues, ensuring plans complement and feed into broader operational plans.
Project manage specialist and professional activities to facilitate major service and operational changes with broad impact.
Communication & Networking (liaison with others, type and level of communications)
Represent and promote the work area (and QM) at both internal and external meetings and events to ensure that Institute issues are appropriately represented and acted upon.
Contact with other areas of QM to develop new and improve processes and supporting system.
Interact internally and externally to coordinate original ideas and practice developments.
Maintain external links with professional and specialist bodies or groups.
Finance/Resource Management (budgeting, forecasting)
Manage and monitor resources and budgets within allocated projects where appropriate to ensure maximum value is delivered for resources deployed. Authorized signatory limit for non-pay expenditure in the amount of £5k.
Contribute to resource and budget planning within the Director’s Office.
People Management (supervisory responsibility, human relations skills)
Managethe Work Experience Receptionist and two administrative assistants.
Act as a mentor to other BCI colleagues (mainly sixCentre Administrators) which may involve training them to support and develop their professional effectiveness.
This job description sets out the duties of the post at the time it was drawn up. Such duties may vary from time to time without changing the general character of the duties or level of responsibility entailed. Such variations are a common occurrence and cannot of themselves justify a reconsideration of the grading of the post.
Organisation Chart