JOB DESCRIPTION

People & Capability Group

People and Capability is here to support the organisation by enabling its people to be the best that they can be. We are continuously reviewing and enhancing the services we provide across the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) to ensure the delivery of high-quality services for our customers.

As a department, we are going through a period of significant transformation and our people services are at the forefront of enabling that change. MoJ People and Capability is a team of 1,400 committed and capable professionals delivering people services across the Justice family. At the heart of delivering these services, are our people.

Information about the MoJ and its priorities can be found at www.gov.uk/government/organisations/ministry-of-justice/about

SCS HR

The Senior Civil Service (SCS) HR Team sits within People & Capability and provides specialist HR advice and strategic support for the SCS across the Ministry of Justice. Our remit spans recruitment, onboarding, talent and succession planning, performance, development, engagement and strategic workforce planning, working closely with senior leaders, HR colleagues and business areas to support effective people and workforce decisions.

This is an exciting time to join the team as we strengthen our strategic workforce planning capability and support the Department’s future SCS leadership workforce. The role will help bring together workforce planning, succession, talent insight and evidence-led products to improve the quality, consistency and action focus of senior workforce discussions.

About the Role

The role will lead development of integrated workforce planning, succession and talent insight for the SCS workforce, providing flexible capacity to build the baseline, forward view and core products needed to support senior decision-making during the six-month stand-up period.

Main Activities / Responsibilities

The job holder will be required to undertake the following duties and responsibilities:

• Develop the SCS workforce baseline and forward view, drawing together workforce, recruitment, succession, talent and diversity data.

• Build demand, supply and scenario analysis to identify future workforce pressures, capability gaps, recruitment dependencies and location risks.

• Support critical role identification, successor mapping and assessment of pipeline readiness, including ready-now and ready-later coverage.

• Analyse workforce, talent and succession data to identify risks, gaps, diversity impacts and targeted intervention opportunities.

• Develop clear senior-facing products, including workforce summaries, succession risk assessments, pipeline insight and options for action.

• Work with HR Business Partners, Groups and functional partners to gather inputs, test assumptions and improve consistency of workforce and succession returns.

• Support development of standard templates, definitions, reporting products and governance materials to embed a “less but better" operating rhythm.

• Maintain links to Places for Growth, transformation activity, talent interventions and resourcing decisions so insight is joined up and action focused.

• Key outputs:

• SCS workforce baseline and forward view.

• Demand, supply and scenario analysis.

• Critical role and succession pipeline insight.

• Talent, readiness and diversity risk summaries.

• Senior governance packs, briefings and decision products.

• Standardised templates, definitions and reporting products.

Occasional travel will be required to attend team meetings, stakeholder engagement events and wider departmental activities across Ministry of Justice sites.

Management of Resources

Working across a flexible team, you will partner with HR Business Partners, groups and functional leads to strengthen workforce and succession planning, challenge assumptions and improve decision-making through high-quality insight. There is also potential to line manage one HEO, helping to build capability and drive high-quality delivery.

Essential Criteria

• Good understanding of workforce planning, succession planning, talent management or organisational change.

• Strong analytical skills and ability to interpret workforce, talent or HR data.

• Strong stakeholder engagement skills, with confidence gathering inputs, testing assumptions and influencing quality conversations.

Desirable Criteria

• Experience working with data, dashboards, trackers or reporting products.

• Experience developing insight, briefings or products for senior stakeholders.

• Experience of working across multiple priorities and connect activity across workforce planning, talent, succession and resourcing.

Please note that whilst we don’t assess or score ‘desirable’ criteria, we may consider evidence provided that demonstrates meeting the desirable elements of the role, only after essential criteria is assessed and where there is a need to differentiate between closely scored candidates. 

Application process

You will be assessed against the Civil service success profiles framework.

Sift

Behaviours / Experience

Please provide examples of how you have met each of the behaviours below:

• Seeing the Big Picture (lead)

• Changing and Improving

• Communicating and Influencing

Please refer to the CS Behaviours framework for more details, including by grade:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/success-profiles/success-profiles-civil-service-behaviours#why-we-assess-behaviours

Experience

Please provide a statement of suitability covering the essential criteria of the role in 500 words.

If we receive a large number of applications, we will carry out an initial sift on the lead criteria of Seeing the Big Picture.

Candidates invited to Interview

Please note that interviews will be carried out remotely via MS Teams. During the interview, we will be assessing you on Behaviours and Strengths from the Success Profiles framework.

Behaviours

• Seeing the Big Picture (lead)

• Changing and Improving

• Communicating and Influencing

For any enquiries please contact Naz.Tully@justice.gov.uk and Stacey.Muncaster@justice.gov.uk.