Business Support Team Leader

The Plant Health Forestry team supports healthy trees, woods and forests, now and in the future. We work together to prevent entry, provide early detection, and minimise impacts of harmful tree pests and to ensure traceability of forestry planting material. Interception, identification, eradication, control and management of pests is fundamental to the Government’s commitment to preparing for future climate change and developing green and healthy places to live. 

Plant Health Forestry, consisting of policy and operational team members, is geographically dispersed with individuals based in a variety of locations. We work with a wide range of partners, stakeholders and customers including other teams within the Forestry Commission, Forest Research, the Devolved Administrations of Wales and Scotland, other Government Agencies, trade and industry bodies and businesses within various sectors that include importers, processors, forest management companies and landowners.  

Plant Health Forestry is part of the Forestry Commission’s Forest Services, the Government’s forestry experts, responsible for enabling landowners and managers, businesses, civil society organisations, and local communities to protect, improve and expand England’s woodlands. We achieve this through regulation, incentives and advice. 

For this post, we are seeking an experienced manager, with a collaborative and empowering working style, and a good eye for process, to join our business support hub, which supports the delivery of the Forestry Commission’s specialist plant health operations.

The post holder will manage the day-to-day work of the business support team, ensuring that we have oversight of volumes of work, are tracking progress, and know how we are performing.  They will work closely with the business support manager to provide leadership and development for our administrative officers and to support effective collaborative working and staff wellbeing.   They will also act as the lead, within the team, for interceptions of controlled timber and wood products.  We are growing the team and going through a period of change to establish new ways of working.  This means we are looking for someone who can be flexible in their approach and can quickly form excellent working relationships with people at all levels of the team and wider organisation.

Key Work Areas: 

• Line management: Act as line manager for up to five administrative officers, ensuring clarity of roles, responsibilities and standards, identifying potential, and supporting their development in line with business and individual needs.
• Oversight of work distribution: Oversee the allocation of work across the team, keeping workloads and resources under review to ensure business priorities are understood and met, cross-cover is in place where necessary, and work is distributed fairly.
• Interceptions: Act as the lead within the team for handling documents relating to interceptions of controlled timber and wood products, recording and updating records and case files, and liaising with DEFRA for information and action.
• Reporting: Maintain oversight of the team’s progress against its key activities and be able to report on volumes and backlogs at weekly, internal meetings. Work with the business support manager to develop and report on KPIs and statistics relating to the business support team’s work.
• Mailboxes: Contribute to a review of future arrangements for managing our (currently) two shared mailboxes, maintaining an overview of the volumes and types of email, and acting as an escalation point where necessary. Alongside other team members, participate in providing responses to enquiries received, and contribute to developing a library of responses to frequent enquiries.
• Business improvement: Work with other members of the team to ensure our team’s business processes are clearly defined. Keep processes under review, and identify, test and implement process improvements. 
• Ways of working: Organise and lead business support team meetings so that they have a balance of formal content, information sharing and informal content, to assist with team communication and cohesion.
• Learning and development: Work with the business support manager to identify and address any team learning requirements.  Support the team to adapt to new ways of working using Office 365 and SharePoint technology.
• Information management: Lead on arrangements for information management within the business support team, including SharePoint and paper records.
• Comms support: Act as the Plant Health Forestry lead for updates to Gov.UK, coordination of Plant Health newsletters, and Mailchimp surveys.
• Health & Safety: Act as the business support team’s overall lead for facilities, accommodation, and health and safety.
• Project work: As required, lead on, or participate in, workstreams or projects related to the work of the business support team, both within Plant Health Forestry and the wider Forest Services.
• Other activities: You may be asked to help the wider team for example, to arrange meetings, produce agendas and draft minutes or action points or to provide cover for absence (following appropriate training and guidance) raising purchase orders, or undertaking processing of incoming and outgoing invoices.

ESSENTIAL

• Strong leadership skills, with experience of leading a team or teams, and experience of managing staff
• Strong organisational skills, with the ability to prioritise and track one’s own, and others’ work
• Good communication skills – able to explain complex information or processes in a clear way
• Competent IT user with a good working knowledge of standard MS Office applications including Teams, Outlook, Excel, Word and preferably PowerBI.
• Experience of preparing short reports for managers, including some simple data analysis and identification of key trends.
• Positive, can-do attitude and proven problem-solving ability.
• Excellent interpersonal and customer service skills.
• Experience of handling customer queries over the phone and in writing.

DESIRABLE

• Experience of working with teams and colleagues who are geographically dispersed.
• Experience of working within the UK forestry or environmental sector.
• Experience of analysing and improving business processes

We’ll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:

• Managing a Quality Service
• Leadership
• Changing and Improving
• Communicating and Influencing
• Developing Self and Others

We only ask for evidence of these behaviours on your application form:

• Managing a Quality Service

• A Civil Service pension.
• A range of family friendly benefits.
• An environment with flexible working options.
• Learning and development tailored to your role.
• A culture which promotes a diverse and inclusive work environment.
• A range of wellbeing benefits including discounted Civil Service Healthcare, access to an Employee Assistance Programme 24/7, Bike to Work Scheme, plus many more.
• 25 days annual leave, with 1 additional day for each years’ service up to 5 years (pro rata), plus 10.5 bank holidays/privilege days (pro rata).
• Ability to buy or sell 5 days annual leave. 
• 3 days volunteering per year (pro rata).

We aim to provide a great place to work, whichever location you work from. Blended working forms part of our flexible and inclusive approach to future ways of working. It is an informal arrangement which gives you the option to work some of the week from home, and some of the week from our Forestry Commission workplaces, subject to role requirements, business needs, and regular review. Informal blended working arrangements will be available as agreed with the line manager. Further information will be available for candidates invited to interview.

Job contact :

• Name : FS Recruitment
• Email : fs.recruitment@forestrycommission.gov.uk

Recruitment team

• Email : fcerecruitment.grs@cabinetoffice.gov.uk