Careers at MI5, MI6 and GCHQ
Payroll Officer
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Payroll Officer
Locations: Cheltenham
Salary: Cheltenham £37,723
Flexible working: Due to the nature of the work, home working isn’t available. However, we recognise the importance of a healthy work-life balance and offer a variety of flexible working arrangements, including full-time, part-time and compressed hours. We also support flexible start and finish times to help you balance your personal and professional commitments.
About us
MI5 keeps the country safe from serious threats such as terrorism and attempts by states to harm the UK, its people and its way of life. We carry out investigations by obtaining, analysing and assessing intelligence, and then work with a range of partners including MI6 and GCHQ, to disrupt these threats. Through our protective security arm, we provide advice and guidance to government, businesses and other organisations on how to keep themselves safe. A role in MI5 means you'll do unique and challenging work in a supportive and encouraging environment, making a real difference to UK national security.
The role
As a vital member of our HR department, you’ll help ensure colleagues in the UK and abroad are paid accurately and on time. You’ll respond to policy queries, processing HR requests and offering general guidance as part of a supportive team dedicated to delivering a great experience for our colleagues.
Day-to-day, the work involves speaking with colleagues across the organisation who need advice, support and timely action on their requests. This includes managing and prioritising a range of tasks, processing HR requests, responding to policy queries and providing clear guidance, while ensuring all actions are completed promptly and in line with compliance standards. There is also a clear focus on improving our processes and working closely with teams across HR, including Pensions and Finance, as well as Payroll teams at GCHQ, MI6, and HMRC.
A period of four years within the HR department is required for this post. During this time, you’ll have opportunities to move into different roles across the department, allowing you to develop new skills and gain broader experience. After this period, further progression, either within HR or across the wider organisation, will be shaped by your interests and the direction in which you’d like your career to grow.
For the Cheltenham position, the post is based in GCHQ’s offices in Cheltenham, while employment is with MI5.
About you
You’ll need a minimum of one year’s experience in payroll and be confident in the fundamentals of the role, including using online systems (with training) and working in line with compliance requirements. As many of our queries involve working with numbers, such as calculating payments, you’ll also need to be comfortable handling basic data and machine intelligence. Your written communication skills will be key, as a large part of the role involves responding to colleagues’ queries, explaining specialist terms and providing clear, helpful answers via our online ticketing system. Effective verbal communication skills will also support collaboration with HR colleagues, both within Payroll and across the wider team.
Since our colleagues are our customers, you’ll be motivated to provide an excellent service, using your initiative to identify and implement solutions. Adaptability is also important, as the role requires moving between tasks and prioritising effectively, while working collaboratively and supporting teammates.
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Training and development
We’re passionate about your development and provide a range of opportunities to help you grow. You’ll get a full induction and training to ensure you feel confident carrying out your day-to-day responsibilities, along with opportunities to gain experience across different HR disciplines. There is also the option to complete internal and external training courses relevant to your role, and access to a mentor who’ll support and encourage your ongoing development.
During your time in the team, there may be opportunities to study for a CIPP or CIPD qualification, depending on available funding. You’ll also have the freedom to shape the direction of your career and apply for roles across the organisation, including within our wider corporate services functions.
Rewards and benefits
You’ll receive a starting salary of £37,723 in Cheltenham or £40,428 in London, plus other benefits including:
- 25 days’ annual leave, rising automatically to 30 days after 5 years' service, plus an additional 10.5 days of public and privilege holidays
- Opportunities to be recognised through our employee performance scheme
- A dedicated development budget
- An interest-free season ticket loan
- An excellent pension scheme
- A cycle to work scheme
- Facilities such as a gym, restaurant, and on-site coffee bars (at some locations)
- Paid parental and adoption leave
Equal opportunities
At MI5, diversity and inclusion are critical to our mission. To protect the UK, we need a workforce that truly reflects the society we serve. This includes diversity in every sense of the word: people from different backgrounds, ages, ethnicities, gender identities, sexual orientations, ways of thinking, and those with disabilities or neurodivergent conditions. We therefore welcome and encourage applications from everyone, including individuals from groups that are currently under-represented in our workforce, such as women, people from ethnic minority backgrounds, people with disabilities and those from low socio-economic backgrounds.
Visit our website to find out more about our culture, working environment and diversity.
We’re Disability Confident
MI5 is proud to have achieved Leader status within the Department for Work and Pensions’ Disability Confident scheme. The scheme encourages employers to think differently about disability and take action to improve how they recruit, retain and develop disabled people. As a Disability Confident organisation, we aim to ensure that a fair and proportionate number of disabled applicants who best meet the essential criteria for this position, assessed at sift, are offered an interview, if it is practical for us to do so. This is known as the Offer of an Interview. To secure an interview for this role, the minimum criteria (in order of application process) are:
- You'll be required to reach the minimum pass mark for the online Situational Judgement Test (SJT), which assesses criteria important for all roles in our organisation.
- Solid foundational experience, with at least one year of working in payroll.
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There is a wide range of extra support available throughout the recruitment process to enable you to do your best, visit our How to Apply page for information on the reasonable adjustments we can offer.
What to expect
Our recruitment process is fair, transparent, and based on merit. Here is a brief overview of each stage, in order:
- An initial online application form including pre-screening questions to ensure you meet our eligibility criteria.
- Online Situational Judgement Test (SJT) in which you rate the appropriateness of responses to a series of short scenarios.
- Application sift, looking at your motivation for the role and the organisation.
- A virtual interview.
- If successful, you’ll receive a conditional offer of employment subject to vetting.
Please note: You must successfully pass each stage of the process to progress to the next. Your application may take around 6 to 9 months to process, including vetting, so we advise that you continue any current employment until you have received your final job offer.
Before you apply
To work at MI5, you must be a British citizen or hold dual British nationality. Read about our eligibility criteria.
This role requires the highest security clearance, known as Developed Vetting (DV). It’s something everyone in the UK Intelligence Community undertakes. Find out more about the vetting process.
Please note we have a strict drugs policy. Once you start your application, you must not take any recreational drugs, and you’ll be required to declare your previous drug usage at the relevant stage.
Before applying, we recommend setting up a separate email address for your contact with us to ensure your personal and application correspondence remain separate. Try to avoid including identifying features in your email address, such as your first and/or surname and date of birth. This is good practice and will help you manage your application with us more securely.
This role is based in either Cheltenham or London, so you’ll need to live within a commutable distance. Please consider any financial implications and practicalities before submitting an application, as we do not offer relocation costs.
We offer reasonable reimbursement of travel costs for candidates attending in-person appointments during the recruitment and vetting process. Full details will be provided with your interview or assessment invitation.
Reimbursement is discretionary and will only be made in line with the Candidate Expenses Policy, as amended from time to time. Candidates must book their own travel, using the most economical option, and provide original hardcopy receipts for reimbursement.
Please note: You should only launch your application from within the UK. If you are based overseas, you should wait until you visit the UK to begin your application. Applying from outside the UK will affect our ability to progress your application. You should not discuss your application other than with your partner or a close family member.
Right to withdraw statement
Please be aware that we reserve the right to bring forward the closing date for this role once a certain number of applications have been received. Please be mindful of this and submit your application at your earliest convenience to avoid disappointment.
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