Ministry of Justice

Overview

Join over 79,000 staff at the Ministry of Justice and help us make a positive and meaningful impact to the lives of thousands of people and the environment.

The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) is a major government department at the heart of the justice system where we work to protect and advance the principles of justice. The MoJ has one of the most diverse and complex estates in Government – covering a property portfolio including Prisons, Probation centres and approved premises, courts as well as the offices of the HQ and Arms Length Bodies.  The MoJ Property Directorate is a supportive, people-focused organisation that provides high quality, easy-to-use services for customers, and positive, collaborative working environments for staff.

The MoJ is continuously dedicated to building staff capability and promoting staff wellbeing, with aspirations to be the best that we can be as individuals and as a directorate. We offer a range of development opportunities including accredited training courses, a work-life balance that works for you, a generous pension and staff discount voucher schemes.

 Team Overview

Climate Change and Sustainability Unit

You will be part of a lively and creative multidisciplinary team responsible for the delivery of key MoJ sustainability priorities. The MoJ intends to be a sustainability leader within Whitehall, and as such, seeks high performing and highly motivated individuals to inspire and deliver meaningful environmental improvements. We work collaboratively across our areas of expertise to deliver positive environmental outcomes across a large range of themes including:

• Meeting the Greening Government Commitment targets (GGC)
• Energy management & decarbonisation/net zero
• Climate change adaptation and resilience
• Waste management and circular resource models
• Water efficiency
• Sustainable construction
• Sustainable procurement
• Biodiversity protection and enhancement.

The Climate Change and Sustainability Unit is responsible for embedding environmental sustainability across MoJ, its agencies (including prisons, courts and probation centres) and its Arm’s Length Bodies. Sustainability needs to be embedded across the department’s policy making, operations, finance, governance, estates and commercial activity. Working in a large and diverse organisation presents the team with huge scope to deliver national scale sustainability leadership.

Although this role will be part of MoJ and the CCSU, the Sustainability Lead role will be embedded day-to-day in the Synergy Programme Team in the Department for Work and Pensions.

Synergy Programme:

An exciting new role is available in the Synergy Programme, a cross-departmental group formed in response to Government Business Service’s request for individual departments to group together in ‘clusters’ to drive efficiencies, increase buying power and improve the quality of shared service to our end users – our people. 
 
The Synergy Programme is the largest of five departmental clusters, comprising the Ministry of Justice, Department for Work and Pensions, Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Home Office. The Department for Work and Pensions hosts the Synergy Programme. Your work will impact Shared Services arrangements and support almost a quarter of a million officials and public servants across the four departments and arm’s length bodies who deliver some of the most vital public services in our country. 

The success of the programme is crucial, as Civil Servants rely on shared services to provide business critical tools in human resources, finance, payroll and procurement. It affects everything we do, from joining a department as a new starter, the way we claim for expenses, how we buy goods and services such as our laptops and canteen provisions, to the way we receive our pensions when we retire. 
 
Alongside the impact on business-critical services, the Synergy scope offers the opportunity to drive and embed sustainable change across HR, finance, and procurement shared services. The UK government has pledged to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050. This has been underpinned by statutory change and Government sustainability commitments in public services, as set out in the Greening Government Commitments and Greening government: ICT and digital services strategy

As such, sustainability is one of six objectives for Synergy, to “embed sustainability throughout the programme”. The programme is striving to adopt an ambitious approach for sustainability, from how we select the partners we choose to work with, to the technology and business design principles it adopts. We are working with and seeking suppliers who share our sustainability ambition, and will help us design and deliver sustainable services, underpinned by sustainable technologies within a culture that values and prioritises sustainability. 

If you’re someone who can use your experience to drive Synergy’s sustainability ambition, we want to hear from you. But most importantly, we’re looking for applications from people who can also demonstrate a passion for our core ambition - delivering a once in a generation, transformed service that Civil Servants will use as a result of the Synergy Programme.

 Job Description, Duties and Responsibilities

This role will be a key member of the Synergy Design Senior Management Team, working alongside the Product Leads to continue to mature, design and embed sustainability into everything we do.

The role holder will drive forward the programme’s sustainability direction and, amongst other things, champion sustainability across the functional areas to help realise the programme’s sustainability objective. They will work closely with within the programme to influence how and where sustainability is included in functional work and with key stakeholders across the government community to leverage their knowledge, existing work and ensure effective data, roadmaps and partnerships to enable the change required.

The role holder will ensure the Synergy Programme achieves its strategic sustainability objectives for the government departments within the Synergy cluster.

Key responsibilities

-          Lead the Synergy Sustainability Team and direct the programme of work, centred around the five Strategic Sustainability Objectives.

-          Set strategic direction and mature how sustainability is considered within the Synergy Programme including in functional work, data and digital, future procurement and organisational design.

-          Deliver environmental stewardship across the Synergy Programme, including sub-programmes, to ensure sustainability is mainstreamed and considered within the governance of design, build, implementation and strategy.

-          Foster positive engagement in sustainability within and external to the programme.

-          Work closely with key, senior stakeholders cross-government to build understanding and engagement in Synergy Programme sustainability objectives, approach, technology solution and continuous improvement.

-          Continue to build a measurable view of the benefit opportunities attained from sustainability improvements to feed into the Synergy current and future business cases.

-          Work within the Synergy Programme to define data requirements and key performance indicators (KPIs), based on a scientifically robust evidence base of data. Lead on enabling the implementation of this data requirement and KPIs

-          Define a clear roadmap and trajectory for step changes with our suppliers and the commitments made to shared services sustainability (including social value) performance

-          Lead procurement activity from a sustainability perspective, coordinating and refining tender document and requirements, evaluation of tender responses, negotiating with potential suppliers to drive ambition and best practice for sustainability within substantial government contracts.

-          Define and manage work with specialist 3^rd parties and assurance partners who will provide us with the advice and insight needed to realise our goals.

-          Lead on enabling capture and continuous improvement of Synergy sustainability opportunities, being the focal point for Synergy team and stakeholder learning and development and establishing and growing Synergy’s sustainable community culture

-          Play an active role in the cross-government community to further the sustainability agenda, sharing best practice for embedding sustainability within the shared services context.

-          Act as an ambassador, delivering opportunities to augment sustainability literacy and promote the green agenda, building relationships to support this.

Skills and Experience

Candidates should be able to demonstrate the following:

Essential

-          Previous experience of setting direction, developing, influencing and implementing sustainability strategy and delivering it (Lead Criteria)

-          Experience of embedding sustainability principles into new ways of working, ideally in functional areas such as HR, finance or procurement.

-          Effective stakeholder management skills, including experience of influencing stakeholders who have diverse perspectives.

-          An understanding of the Greening Government Commitments, the principles of the Government Digital Service and sustainable technology.

-          Proven experience of driving organisational behavioural and cultural change for sustainability.

-          A proven track record in communicating complex information to a range of audiences via appropriate channels.

-          Experience of working with external suppliers to accelerate sustainability performance (including social value) throughout the tender process and delivery of large-scale contracts.

-          Strong analytical skills and experience of applying scientific knowledge to inform approach and decision making.

Desirable

-          Experience of working in the public sector and/or an established network of sustainability professionals.

-          Knowledge and experience of sustainability thinking and application in a Corporate Services, Shared Services or Back-office enablement setting and/or transformation programmes.

-          Experience of monitoring, building relationships and working with suppliers on social value model commitments.

-          Experience of relevant Circular Economy practices.

Qualifications

Demonstrated deep expertise in sustainability – which could be gained through formal education such as a degree in a relevant discipline and /or accreditation via a recognised professional body (such as IEMA, ISSP, CEnv, IfS) as well as experience from working to drive sustainable change.

Behaviours

We will assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:

Leadership

Communicating and Influencing

Delivering At Pace

Working Together

Flexible working hours

 The Property Directorate offers a flexible working system in many teams.

Requests for reduced hours contracts will be considered in line with business needs.

 We welcome and encourage applications from everyone, including groups currently underrepresented in our workforce and pride ourselves as being an employer of choice. We are happy to accommodate any reasonable adjustments you may require during the selection process. To find out more about how we champion diversity and inclusion in the workplace, visit: https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/ministry-of-justice/about/equality-and-diversity

The Directorate is supportive of and encourages flexible working.

Non-civil service candidates will start on the pay band minimum.