Senior Programme Support Administrator - Higher Education Futures Institute - 42783

Position Details

Higher Education Futures Institute - Academic Services

Location: University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham UK

Full time starting salary is normally in the range £25,506 to £27,399, with potential progression once in post to £31,718.

Band 500

Full Tim, Permanent

Closing date: 4th September 2022

Our offer to you

People are at the heart of what we are and do.

The University of Birmingham is proud to have been a part of the City of Birmingham and the wider region for over 100 years, and we are equally proud to be recognised as a leading global university.  We want to attract talented people from across the city and beyond, support them to succeed, and celebrate their success.

We are committed to helping the people who work here to develop through our sector-leading Birmingham Professional programme which provides all professional services staff with development opportunities and the encouragement to reach their full potential.  With almost 5,000 professional services jobs in a wide-range of functions in Edgbaston and in our campus in Dubai, there are plenty of opportunities for you to be able to develop your career at the University.

We believe there is no such thing as a typical member of staff and that diversity is a source of strength that underpins the exchange of ideas, innovation, and debate.  We warmly welcome people from all backgrounds and are committed to fostering an inclusive environment where diversity is at the heart of who and what we are, and how we work.

Supporting our people to achieve a healthy work/life balance is important both to our employees and to the success of the University and, depending on the role, we offer a variety of flexible working arrangements. We therefore welcome discussions on all forms of flexible working.  In addition, you will receive a generous package of benefits including 40 days paid holiday a year, one paid day a year for volunteering, occupational sick pay, and a pension scheme. We also have three high quality subsidised day nurseries.

The University is situated in leafy Edgbaston and there are excellent transport links to our beautiful campus, including main bus routes and a train station on site.  On campus we have a state-of-the-art sports centre with pool, shops, places to eat and drink, our own art gallery, museum and botanical gardens.

Find out more about the benefits of working for the University of Birmingham .

Background

The Higher Education Futures institute (HEFi) was established in 2018 to support staff involved in teaching and supporting learning in all aspects of their professional education practice. HEFi integrates digital education support and academic professional development within one team. You will be a member of the HEFi Administration Team, providing support to the senior leadership team and leading on a number of core activities that support HEFi's mission to support staff to deliver innovative and inclusive research-intensive teaching

Role Summary

You will join a professional services team which is passionate about providing excellent administration support for students and staff.

Duties may vary between teams, but you will have the opportunity to contribute or take a lead in all aspects of administration supporting the delivery of our teaching and research programmes for students.

You will work closely with a diverse group of people including managers, academic staff and students to deliver the annual cycle of teaching and learning related activity.

Typically reports to a Programme Manager and provides education support for one or more teaching programmes.

Main Duties

• You will undertake complex diary management and meeting planning, usually 6-12 months ahead, making decisions on the best use of time. This will require you to understand the priorities and deadlines you and the senior leadership in HEFi are working to and will involve developing relationships across the University and beyond.
• You will arrange complex UK and overseas travel, including booking flights, hotels, transfers, and organisation and planning of itineraries, ensuring best use of time and taking into account budgetary constraints.
• You will be expected to exercise your judgment on a wide range of complex queries and correspondence, or on the direction of work in relation to HEFi within parameters set by your manager and the senior leadership team. On a day-to-day basis you will be expected to resolve more complex queries without necessarily referring to your manager, exercising judgement to redirect queries to senior colleagues where appropriate.
• If you have a supervisory role, you will line manage your staff taking responsibility for co-ordinating and prioritising the work of others. If not in a supervisory role you will still be expected to act as a role model and coach members of the team.
• You will maintain high profile working relationships with key stakeholders on your own initiative, fielding enquiries and ensuring that appropriate information is disseminated to stakeholders as appropriate.
• You will be involved in organising events (eg the annual HEFi Conference, HEFi Festival, Teaching and Learning Awards, and other CPD workshops) including booking a venue, sending invitations, arranging refreshments, liaising with speakers, manage bookings, co-ordination of colleagues, advertising, collating feedback and reporting back.
• You will manage some smaller projects on your own initiative, but will also carry out desk research and source data from internal and external sources in order to contribute to wider projects.
• You will be expected to use a variety of complex University systems and processes to research, analyse and interpret complex data, producing bespoke reports as required. This may include identifying and resolving issues with the data.
• You will support the management, development and implementation of operational processes and systems and, in particular, will have oversight and management of the HEFi website.
• You will process more complex data (which may be financial, HR, student-related or other), monitoring accuracy, chasing up missing information, and resolving any issues as appropriate.
• As required, you will provide a professional secretarial service to relevant committees and meetings, including proactive preparation and collation of meeting-related papers, working collaboratively to determine what information might be required in advance of a meeting, articulating clear deadlines for submission and proactively chasing where necessary. This may include attending meetings to provide high-quality committee support, taking minutes and following up as appropriate.
• You will support equality and values diversity, moderating own behaviour to avoid unfair discriminatory impact or bias on others.

You may be required to be responsible for one or more of the following:

• Monitoring budgets including processing payments, authorising expenditure, raising concerns where finances are not in line with the budget,
• Pocuring goods and services through the University system,
• Updating and writing contents for the department's communications eg intranet pages,
• Dealing with health and safety and facilities issues,
• HR-related tasks such as managing staff absence, induction, or dealing with leavers
• Dealing with arrangements for international visitors
• Monitoring internal procedures/compliance and ensuring these are followed and disseminated as appropriate.

Person Specification

• Educated to A Level standard, or equivalent level 3 qualification such as a Level 3 NVQ, or level 3 national diploma or relevant work experience evidencing the skills and ability to undertake the role.
• Highly proficient IT skills, in particular the ability to handle complex electronic diaries and emails, the wider MS Office suite of programmes including excel and powerpoint, and some experience of using an enterprise resource planning package. The post holder should also be confident and able to quickly learn new IT skills and software packages as required.
• Proven ability to plan ahead and anticipate requirements, proactively planning own (and sometimes others' workloads) to manage time effectively, progress tasks concurrently and work to deadlines.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills, including the ability to write for different audiences, and to required deadlines.
• Excellent interpersonal skills. The postholder must inspire confidence and command authority with a range of colleagues and provide excellent customer service at all times.
• A high degree of professionalism, tact, and diplomacy, and the ability to exercise discretion regarding the handling and management of sensitive information/issues.
• A high degree of initiative, personal judgement, resourcefulness, flexibility, and a self-motivating approach.
• Ability to work effectively in a large, complex organisation, and to develop a good understanding of how the University and higher education institutions work.
• Ability to understand policy and procedures and how to apply these.
• Understands the importance of equality and diversity in the workplace.
• Ability to identify and respond to equality and diversity issues in line with relevant policies and procedures.

Informal enquires to Louise Staffell, email: l.staffell@bham.ac.uk