Office for National Statistics
Operational Support Manager
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Locations
The locations for this role are Newport, Titchfield (Fareham), London, Manchester, and Darlington.
This role is aligned to ONS hybrid working principles, which are based on attending the office with purpose. The postholder will be expected to contribute to the organisation’s overall 40% office attendance, in line with business and role requirements.
Due to workforce controls, you can only select Manchester, London, or Darlington if you are an existing ONS employee contracted to that location. If you are not contracted at one of these sites, these options are not available to you.
Applicants who select a location they are not eligible for will be removed from the recruitment process and will not be considered for alternative locations.
The induction process for the role will be conducted in person.
Job Summary
Join the busy Population Statistics Directorate delivering transformation projects while helping teams embed a culture of continuous improvement in the development and production of population statistics. Our work supports and delivers the estimation of the size, geographic distribution, and characteristics of the population, including migration, providing vital evidence for policy development, public service planning, and decision-making across the UK.
As an operational support manager, you will work with a diverse range of stakeholders, coordinating activities across multiple workstreams to ensure successful delivery. You will be responsible for helping to establish policies and procedures, ensuring that working practices including issue management are monitored and documented, making use of available information to inform work and drive performance and improvements to systems / services, and gather metrics for reporting and future improvement opportunities.
This is a unique opportunity to develop your operational support career while contributing to innovative research, development, and production activities that will help shape the future of population statistics.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) is the UK’s largest producer of official statistics, covering a range of key economic, social, and demographic topics. These include measuring changes in the value of the UK economy, estimating the size, geographic distribution, and characteristics of the population, and providing indicators of price inflation, employment, earnings, crime, and migration.
Job Description
The Operational Support role can have a wide range of responsibilities and will require the ability to support the team leads and wider teams in the day-to-day activities. You will be responsible for administrative tasks, operational management, improvement of processes, and ensuring the effective running of operational services and delivery.
Key Responsibilities:
- Collate and produce management information while reviewing and monitoring value.
- Assisting with the creation and on-going support for Operational Continuity plans and business rhythm documentation.
- Managing agenda coordination, meeting schedules, and completion of notes & actions, ensuring the key actions are managed and monitored through agreed systems.
- Record and ensure appropriate management of operational delivery risks.
- Build and maintain good working relationships across forums to provide support to colleagues.
- Managing the inbox and housekeeping of associated SharePoint sites.
- Develop and maintain subject matter expertise where needed of ONS Systems.
- Work collaboratively with teams to enable system and data changes.
- Seek opportunities for continuous improvement of processes and systems.
- Provide monthly MI, giving metrics to ensure performance issues are accounted for.
- Develops and manages issues escalation process, tracking issues through to resolution working with operational teams.
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Person Specification
Essential Criteria:
- Proven experience of building and maintaining effective working relationships with colleagues and stakeholders, collaborating across teams to deliver high-quality services and outcomes.
- Demonstrated ability to lead, motivate, and support teams, providing clear direction, promoting an inclusive culture, and ensuring the achievement of performance targets and operational objectives.
- Experience of identifying opportunities for continuous improvement, using feedback, problem-solving skills, and innovation to enhance services, processes, and team performance.
- Strong analytical skills with experience of interpreting and presenting data, including producing management information, dashboards, and insights to support decision-making, service delivery, and performance improvement.
- Ability to make informed decisions and deliver results at pace, assessing risks, managing competing priorities, and providing clear, evidence-based recommendations in challenging or time-sensitive situations.
Behaviours
We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:
- Delivering at Pace
- Communicating and Influencing
- Making Effective Decisions
- Managing a Quality Service
Salary and Benefits
Alongside your salary of £34,587, Office for National Statistics contributes £10,019 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides (opens in a new window).
The Office for National Statistics is part of the Civil Service, and as such, we share a number of key benefits with other departments, whilst also having our own unique offerings to support our valued colleagues across the organisation.
Whether you are hearing about us for the first time or already know a bit about our organisation, we hope that our careers site will give you a great insight into the benefits and facilities available to our colleagues, and our fantastic working culture.
Inclusion & Accessibility
At ONS, we are always looking to attract the very best people from the widest possible talent pool, and we are proud to be an inclusive, equal opportunities employer. As a Disability Confident Leader, we’re committed to ensuring that all candidates are treated fairly throughout the recruitment process.
As part of our application process, you will be prompted to provide details of any reasonable adjustments to our recruitment process that you need. If you would like to discuss any reasonable adjustments before applying, please contact the recruitment team in the first instance.
If you would like an accessible version of any of the attachments or recruitment documents below or linked to in this advert, please contact the recruitment team who will be happy to assist.
Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence can be a useful tool to support your application, however, all examples and statements provided must be truthful, factually accurate, and taken directly from your own experience. Where plagiarism has been identified (presenting the ideas and experiences of others, or generated by artificial intelligence, as your own), applications may be withdrawn and internal candidates may be subject to disciplinary action. Please see our candidate guidance (opens in a new window) for more information on appropriate and inappropriate use.
Selection Process Details
This vacancy is using Success Profiles (opens in a new window), and will assess your Behaviours and Experience.
Visa Sponsorship:
ONS is unable to offer visa sponsorship for this role. Applicants must have a valid right to work in the UK when employment commences. If you are currently in the UK on a time-limited visa, it must have at least 18 months remaining at the point of application.
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Right To Work And Nationality Requirements:
To work at ONS, applicants must meet the Civil Service nationality requirements, satisfy UK right to work requirements, and, where applicable, meet the relevant security clearance requirements.
If you are unsure whether you meet the appropriate right to work or security clearance eligibility criteria, please refer to the guidance on Gov.uk or contact the recruitment email provided in the advert before applying. Failure to meet these requirements will result in your application being rejected and employment offers being withdrawn.
Security Clearance:
For ONS, the requirement for SC clearance is to have been present in the UK for 3 consecutive years immediately prior to applying, and the department will consider eligibility by exception on a case-by-case basis. You will be asked to provide information regarding your UK residency during your application, and failure to provide this will result in your application being rejected.
If you are unsure that you meet the eligibility above, please read the information available on Gov.uk on this link or contact the recruitment email on the advert before applying to discuss, as failure to meet the residency requirements will result in your security clearance application being rejected and any offer of employment being withdrawn.
At the point of SC application, you will need to provide or give access to the following evidence:
- Departmental or company records (personnel files, staff reports, sick leave reports, and security records)
- UK criminal records covering both spent and unspent criminal records
- Your credit and financial history with a credit reference agency
- Security Services records
Applicant Support
Number of Stages: 3 stage process
Stage 1: Civil Service Judgement Test
Upon submission of Part 1 your application form, you will be sent an invitation to complete Civil Service Judgement online tests.
There will be full instructions on how to complete each test, including an opportunity to practice before undertaking the actual test. These tests are not time-limited.
If you pass a test, you will then receive a further invite to complete each subsequent test if there is more than one for this vacancy. If you fail a test, your application will not proceed to the next stage.
If you pass all tests for this vacancy, you will be invited to complete the final stage of your application, this is where you will provide information such as your work history, skills, and experience and Personal Statement.
Please note the deadline for the test is the same as the application deadline: Friday 18th September at 23:55 pm.
Stage 2: Application
The assessment process at the application stage will be based on your work history, skills, experience, and personal statement. It is important that your application is tailored to highlight the skills, knowledge, and experience relevant to the role.
A personal statement is required at the application stage, the maximum word count allowed is 1250, which should not be exceeded. You should provide evidence for each essential skill criterion listed in the person specification. As these criteria are scored, it is advisable to give clear examples for each one, including the impact of your actions, ideally utilising the STAR technique (Situation, Task, Action, Result).
Please note that Success Profiles Behaviour examples are not required at this stage of the application process.
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