Job Description

Commercial

The Ministry of Justice has one of the largest and most complex spending profiles in central government. Each year we spend more than £5 billion with our suppliers and it’s our job to help coordinate the sourcing of what we need. We support the management of our contracts across the department, its agencies and non‑departmental public bodies.

Commercial is responsible for coordinating procurement and contract management across the MoJ, its agencies and non-departmental public bodies. Commercial is organised into category teams, each with an interesting portfolio of contracts and diverse customers and suppliers to manage. We also have systems, programme management office, supplier relationship and risk management teams who work across all areas.

The National Distribution Centre

The National Distribution Centre (NDC) provides a critical logistics and supply chain service to all public sector prisons including the collection, storage and delivery of a wide range of products. Products stored and carried include goods from commercial suppliers, raw materials into workshops and a wide range of internally manufactured products. As part of the Ministry of Justice, the site also supports other front line delivered services where required.

The in-house NDC fleet is designed to operate on a specialised demount system which is largely governed by challenges that arise from physical vehicular access restrictions across the prison estate, necessitating a mix of vehicle types and heights. The fleet delivers to the public sector prison estate on a national 5 day working week basis, operating a single shift system, supported by nights out as and when required.

The current logistics and supply chain solution for prisons has been operating in much the same way for many years. Challenges including prison capacity increases, aging technology, limited space and sustainability pressures are all contributing to an environment where specific focus needs to be given to the future shape and scale of the logistics function, to deliver transformational change linked to the adoption of new technology and the efficiencies that can be delivered.

Logistics and Supply Chain

The Logistics and Supply Chain function sits within the Commercial Directorate within the MoJ. The Ministry of Justice has one of the largest and most complex spending profiles in central government. Each year we spend more than £5 billion with our suppliers and it’s our job to help coordinate the sourcing of what we need. We support the management of our contracts across the department, its agencies and non‑departmental public bodies.

Commercial is responsible for coordinating procurement and contract management across the MoJ, its agencies and non-departmental public bodies. Commercial is organised into category teams, each with an interesting portfolio of contracts and diverse customers and suppliers to manage. We also have systems, programme management office, supplier relationship and risk management teams who work across all areas.

Role Summary

The Business Support Officer is a new role within the Corporate Compliance Team which supports the department by delivering most of the core business functions, (including, governance, finance, commercial, property, human resources, security, and project delivery), essential services that our organisation relies upon to function. The postholder will report into the Health & Safety Manager but will assist across all functions within the business.

Please note this role requires full time attendance on site is therefore not suitable for hybrid or remote working.

Key Responsibilities

Typically, the key responsibilities in this role will include (but are not limited to):

Service Delivery

• Responsible for the day to day running of the NDC reception, greeting visitors and issuing passes.

• Working quickly and to strict daily deadlines, ensuring that all tasks are completed as instructed and allocated.

Finance & Procurement:

• Oversee the ordering of protective & workwear clothing and other items for store use. Maintain the procurement processing procedures.

• Maintain stock at appropriate level with regard to usage and procurement costs. Keep costs to minimum by effective and efficient ordering. Adhere to mandatory contracts, Finance and procurement rules.

• Achieve highest levels of quality, service and, customer service & satisfaction, through excellence in all areas of responsibility.

• Monitor transactional activity and ensure all paperwork, such as purchase orders, delivery notes, picking sheets, transport records, etc, is completed, checked and forwarded where necessary, ensuring any files, records and, correspondence are saved and stored appropriately.

• Provide secretarial support to the Senior Management Team, including maintaining the admin functional mailbox and conference room bookings.

Performance Measurement

• Timely completion of performance monitoring returns.

HR, Staff Performance and Development

• Manage the transactional activity associated with the Corporate Compliance Team. This includes ensuring the following paperwork is complete, checked, systems updated and ready for onward transmission where applicable:

  • Training / Learning & Development

  • Attendance Management

  • Payment Plus hours

  • Work Life Balance

  • HR - Entry & Exit Processes

  • Staff Engagement

  • Staff Reward and Recognition

  • Staff Leave

  • Employee Relations

• Be responsible for the management of all staff within their area. This includes staff performance, development and annual appraisal through to sickness absence management.

Health, Safety and Welfare

• Respond to identified hazards. Support the Health and Safety Manager in creating a safe working environment for staff, visitors and contractors by adhering to Health and Safety legislation, ensuring Safe Systems of Work (SSOW) and Risk Assessments (RA) are followed, and by reporting any incidents to the Health and Safety Manager.

• Maintain excellent levels of housekeeping in your own area of responsibility.

Other support service tasks

• Contractor management - booking routine pre planned maintenance and reactive works

• Undertake occasional warehouse duties including picking, packing, unpacking and sorting as required.

• Assist with completion of annual stock take.

The duties/responsibilities listed above describe the post as it is at present and is not intended to be exhaustive. The job holder is expected to accept reasonable alternations and additional tasks of a similar level that may be necessary.

Essential Criteria

Essential skills

• Strong grasp of Microsoft Office programs, particularly Outlook.

• Excellent track record of being highly organized with a focus on supporting the delivery of varying workloads to deadline.

• Team Player who builds excellent work relationships with colleagues of all grades.

• Confidence to highlight potential conflicting issues/priorities and a record of collaborating with others to ensure these are resolved.

Desirable Criteria

• Business Support or Diary Management experience.

• Desire to build experience and develop capability for a team and themselves.

• Evidence of recognising inter-dependency of work.

• Experience of identifying and implementing process improvements.

• IOSH Managing Safely qualified or a desire to work towards gaining the qualification

• Knowledge of Microsoft SharePoint and Bright Sign Technology

Application Stage

An initial sift will be performed against the following elements and will be assessed against the Civil Service success profiles framework:

Experience

• CV

• Statement of Suitability (between 500 - 750 words): this should be based around the key responsibilities and essential criteria

Behaviours

We will assess your application on the following behaviours. Please use the STAR method in your examples.

• Communicating and Influencing

• Changing and Improving

• Managing a Quality Service

Please note in the event of a large number of applications being received we may run the initial sift against CV, Statement of Suitability and lead behaviour of Managing a quality service.

If shortlisted, you will be invited to an interview and will be assessed on the selected success profile elements at the interview stage.

Interview stage

There is one interview stage for this vacancy which will be held in person and as part of the interview process you will be required to provide evidence on the following, and will be assessed against the Civil Service success profiles framework:

Behaviours

• Communicating and Influencing

• Changing and Improving

• Managing a Quality Service

Experience

Strengths maybe assessed at the interview, and these are not shared in advance.

To learn more about the Civil Service success profiles framework and how they are assessed please click here.

Please use STAR approach to structure your examples for both the application and interview for behaviours. Using the STAR method can help you give examples of relevant experience that you have. It allows you to set the scene, show what you did, and how you did it, and explain the overall outcome.

Situation: Describe the situation you found yourself in. You must describe a specific event or situation. Be sure to give enough detail for the job holder to understand.

• Where are you?

• Who was there with you?

• What had happened?

Task: The job holder will want to understand what you tried to achieve from the situation you found yourself in.

• What was the task that you had to complete and why?

• What did you have to achieve?

Actions: What did you do? The job holder will be looking for information on what you did, how you did it and why. Keep the focus on you. What specific steps did you take and what was your contribution? Remember to include how you did it, and the behaviours you used. Try to use “I" rather than “we" to explain your actions that lead to the result. Be careful not to take credit for something that you did not do.

Results: Don’t be shy about taking credit for your behaviour. Quote specific facts and figures. Explain how the outcome benefitted the organisation or your area. Make the outcomes easily understandable.

• What results did the actions produce?

• What did you achieve through your actions and did you meet your goals?

• Was it a successful outcome? If not, what did you learn from the experience?

Keep the situation and task parts brief. Concentrate on the action and the result. If the result was not entirely successful describe what you learned from this and what you would do differently next time. Make sure you focus on your strengths.