Senior Administrator (MHM and BRC) - College of Life and Environmental Sciences - 101901 - Band 500

Position Details

College of Life and Environmental Sciences

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 Time, Fixed Term contract up to July 2026

Closing date: 3rd July 2023

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

This post is funded by the recent significant government investment in mental health research infrastructure via the Mental Health Mission (under full external comms embargoed) to the Midlands Translational Research Centre of Excellence, led by the University of Birmingham and aligned to the NIHR Mental Health Translational Research Collaboration. It is additionally funded by the Oxford Health Biomedical Research Collaboration (BRC) award to the University of Birmingham.

In its ‘ Life Sciences Vision’report, the UK government shared plans to make the UK the most attractive place in the world for Life Sciences innovation. These plans were summed up in a set of ‘priority statements’ – also known as ‘Missions’. The Mental Health Mission https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-to-use-vaccine-taskforce-model-to-tackle-health-challenges ) will increase capacity in mental health research through providing relevant training and creating better systems to support industry led research and investment across the UK. Specific focus will be paid to addressing areas of unmet need and high burden of mental illness.

The post holder will primarily support the Midlands Translational Centre Lead and Co-Lead (Professor Rachel Upthegrove and Professor Steven Marwaha) with one day a week (flexibly) used to support relevant BRC activity.

Role Summary

As a senior administrator within a team you will provide support for a broad range of administrative duties, some of which may be complex. You may also be responsible for managing other staff or for supporting colleagues and sharing knowledge. You will be able to use your wide range of skills, both technical and administrative, and have the opportunity to lead on specific tasks within a team. In order to flexibly use resource you may be given the opportunity to work in different areas of the department or wider University.

Main duties

• You will be able to deal with complex systems and procedures and will be expected to offer advice on these, including deciding on the response to more complex queries.
• Undertake complex diary management and meeting planning. This will require you to understand the priorities and deadlines you and your manager(s) are working to and will involve developing relationships across the University and beyond.
• You will be expected to exercise your judgment on the answer to queries or on the direction of work within parameters set by your manager. On a day to day basis you will be expected to resolve more complex queries without necessarily referring to your manager.
• 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.
• 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 may be involved in organising events including booking a venue, sending invitations, arranging refreshments, liaising with speakers, manage bookings, co-ordination of colleagues, advertising, collating feedback and reporting back.
• Will manage some smaller projects on 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, analyst and interpret complex data, producing bespoke reports as required. . This may include identifying and resolving issues with the data.
• Support the management, development and implementation of operational processes and systems.
• 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.
• Provide specialist advice and training to colleagues on area of activity.
• As required, provide a professional secretarial service to relevant committees and meetings.
• 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,
  • procuring goods and services through the University system,
  • updating and writing contents for the department’s communications e.g. 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.
  • Supports equality and values diversity, moderating own behaviour to avoid unfair discriminatory impact or bias on others.

Required Knowledge, Skills, Qualifications, Experience

• 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.
• Minimum of grade C/4 in Mathematics and English at GCSE or equivalent.
• Experience of working with budgets and finance reporting.
• 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.

Dimensions
This role will require the exercise of personal initiative within and beyond the department. May manage a team or budgets.

Planning and organising
The role is required to work independently on daily, weekly and monthly tasks but also on projects with medium-longer-term horizons without daily supervision. May manage others staffs’ workloads.

Problem solving and decision making
They will work with direction from management but with a significant degree of autonomy. They will deal with more complex queries and be expected to resolve any problems in their area of responsibility. They may also manage the workload of others or coach others to achieve results.

Internal and external relationships
This role will be liaising with internal colleagues and stakeholders, likely to be University-wide and with external stakeholders.

Informal enquiries to Rachel Upthegrove r.upthegrove@bham.ac.uk

View our staff values and behaviours here

Valuing excellence, sustaining investment

We value diversity and inclusion at the University of Birmingham and welcome applications from all sections of the community and are open to discussions around all forms of flexible working.