Finance and Commercial Readiness Officer (Ref: 81497)

We encourage applications from people from all backgrounds and aim to have a workforce that represents the wider society that we serve. We pride ourselves on being an employer of choice. We champion diversity, inclusion and wellbeing and aim to create a workplace where everyone feels valued and a sense of belonging. To find out more about how we do this visit: https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/ministry-of-justice/about/equality-and-diversity.

Overview

The Ministry of Justice works to protect the public and reduce reoffending, while endeavouring to provide a more effective, transparent, and responsive justice system for everyone who uses or encounters it. We are responsible for prisons and probation services in England and Wales, and for the courts and tribunals in England and Wales and (in some cases) in Scotland. 

The Synergy programme has been set up to transform Shared Services in Finance, Commercial and HR, across a cluster of four government departments; Ministry of Justice, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Department for Work and Pensions and the Home Office. 
 
This is a fantastic opportunity to join the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) Synergy team as a Finance and Commercial Readiness Officer. The Functional Readiness roles are based within the functional teams they are supporting, to be closer to their main stakeholders. The Readiness roles will be dealing with change being delivered by the Synergy Programme (procuring our new Finance and HR system and Business Processing Service) as well as leading on delivery of our own MoJ Synergy portfolio of projects, to be delivered in readiness for the new system and service.

Role Summary 

The post offers an exciting development opportunity for the successful candidate to utilise their finance and continuous improvement expertise to manage projects (and tasks within bigger projects) to support MoJ Finance readiness for the new system. This includes research and analysis of different ways of working, data uses, etc. to develop conclusions and proposals for streamlined and more efficient practices.
The role will give the post holder an excellent opportunity to understand the range of improvements being taken forward and learn first-hand about how to use project management to make positive change happen. Utilising their excellent organisational and interpersonal skills, to work in a fast-paced environment over the finance, commercial and change disciplines, they will enable the smooth running of the portfolio of projects (supporting teams, colleagues, project managers and business leads), by managing and co-ordinating essential project management processes, like risks and issues logs, plans and reporting.
Drawing upon your knowledge and experience, you will also have a key role in co-ordinating MoJ Finance and Commercial functional stakeholder engagement for Synergy design of the new system and service; ensuring the right stakeholders are included in the Programme and Project fora and design proposal reviews.
 
Role Responsibilities 

Key tasks include:

1.    Business Analyst / Project and Product management: To be in the best position to ‘adopt’ the new system in a couple of years, a portfolio of readiness activities have been identified.
Working with key stakeholders from across finance and commercial (internal and external to MoJ), the post holder will lead projects to gather and analyse data on different ways of working, establish any best practices, understand business change impacts and benefits, to make recommendations, develop proposal papers for Board approval and implement (or work with Project Managers on bigger projects to support implementation). 

2.    Planning and Scheduling: The programme comprises a range of projects and workstreams of activity. Implementing and maintaining appropriate systems to co-ordinate these effectively is key to the programme’s control and management.  
•    The post holder will lead on planning activity for the portfolio of finance readiness projects, supporting senior management to identify options to optimise delivery through resource smoothing, resource levelling and rescheduling of activities.

3.    Governance, Monitoring and Reporting: The programme and its projects are governed and overseen by several Boards and Authorities that meet regularly.  These ensure the programme is delivering its objectives and making good progress. To support the Boards and Authorities to carry out their roles, the programme produces various documents for their meetings.
•    The post holder will create and maintain Programme Management (PMO) tools for each new project in line with established standards (e.g. plans, RAID and benefits logs). Working together with the leads of the different projects, the post holder will track and update on progress, to provide governance update reports on performance, risks and delivery against milestones.

4.    Stakeholder Engagement and Communications: Effective communication about the Programme, its progress and benefits are a key part of the programme’s responsibility and essential for the successful achievement of its aims and objectives. The programme affects the entire MoJ Finance and Commercial Function, including all those who deliver its services and all their customers.  
•    As well as establishing effective stakeholder relationships for their own projects, the post holder will lead on finance readiness communications. Including creating and maintaining a communications plan and co-ordinating updates for regular programme communications, helping maintain its effective connection with its all its stakeholders. This includes acting as the focal point for project and programme responses to requests for information.

5.    Risks and issues: Effective delivery of the programme’s projects and workstreams is heavily dependent on how well it understands and controls it’s risks.
•    The post holder will identify risks and manage and maintain risks and issues logs for all readiness projects in progress. Managing potential risk areas, working with risk managers, and escalating as appropriate.
 
Essential Skills

To be successful in this role, candidates will have (lead criteria in bold):

•    Strong ability to analyse and interpret data from a number of different sources, in order to make a judgement on proposed best practices and impacts.
•    Experience of government or large corporate finance systems and processes.
•    Effective stakeholder engagement; experience of working with a broad set of finance and non-finance stakeholders to get results, especially in a fast-paced environment of change, in order to understand data and business impacts and gain buy-in to proposals for best practice.
•    Highly organised with good planning skills, attention to detail and ability to co-ordinate several activities in the same time frame. 
•    Experience of working well across a number of teams and grades, contributing to an inclusive working environment, in order to deliver on time and drive project reporting deadlines.
•    Strong written and verbal communication skills with the ability to tailor messages for the audience, and effectively engage with and influence stakeholders.

Desirably, candidates will have:

•    Experience of change delivery or change management. 
•    Knowledge/experience of managing large scale projects and programmes. 
•    MS Office 365 experience; including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, MS Projects SharePoint and MS Teams Skills.
•    Prince 2 Foundation or Agile Foundation.

Behaviours Required 

Success Profiles create a fairer and more inclusive method of recruitment by enabling us to assess the range of experiences, abilities, strengths, behaviours, and technical/professional skills required for different roles. This flexible approach to recruitment focuses more on finding the right candidate for the specific role. To find out more about Success Profiles to support your application please click here for further guidance.

To apply, you will be asked to submit a CV and 1000 word statement of suitability. 

Your Personal Statement should demonstrate how you meet the criteria set out within the Essential Skills.

Should a large number of applications be received, an initial sift may be conducted using the lead criteria.

Candidates who pass the initial sift may be progressed to a full sift, or straight to interview. 

At interview, we will select based on both strengths and behaviours. Interviews will be conducted online using MS teams. The behaviours assessed areas follows.
•    Leadership
•    Communicating and Influencing
•    Delivering at Pace 
•    Working Together 

Sift and interview dates to be confirmed. 

The evidence you provide in your application must relate to your own experiences. If evidence of plagiarism is found your application will be withdrawn

Please refer to the Civil Service Behaviours Framework, which can be found here, to complete this application:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/717275/CS_Behaviours_2018.pdf

Reserve / Merit List

Where candidates meet the minimum criteria for the role but are not first placed, they will be held on a merit list. If there are further vacancies for HEO roles within the Future Finance MoJ Synergy Team in the next 12 months, candidates may be taken from the merit list without running a new recruitment campaign.

Training 

The Ministry of Justice is committed to staff development and offers an extensive range of training and development opportunities.

Networks 

The opportunity to join employee run networks that have been established to provide advice and support and to enable the views of employees from minority groups to be expressed direct to senior management. There are currently networks for employees of minority ethnic origin, employees with disabilities, employees with caring responsibilities, women employees, and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender employees.

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

• Leadership
• Communicating and Influencing
• Delivering at Pace
• Working Together

• Access to learning and development
• A working environment that supports a range of flexible working options to enhance your work life balance
• A working culture which encourages inclusion and diversity
• A Civil Service pension with an average employer contribution of 27%
• Annual Leave
• Public Holidays
• Season Ticket Advance

For more information about the recruitment process, benefits and allowances and answers to general queries, please click the below link which will direct you to our Candidate Information Page.

Link: https://justicejobs.tal.net/vx/candidate/cms/About%20the%20MOJ

Job contact :

• Name : SSCL Recruitment Enquiries Team
• Email : Moj-recruitment-vetting-enquiries@gov.sscl.com
• Telephone : 0845 241 5359

Recruitment team

• Email : Moj-recruitment-vetting-enquiries@gov.sscl.com