Executive Assistant - Islington council

Placed: 06/12/17
Region: United Kingdom
Category: Jobs


Content of the advertisement:

PRIMARY JOB FUNCTION

Provide high level strategic, proactive and confidential secretarial support to the Corporate Director of Public Health and Public Health Management Team. This will include diary management and the general management of the public health business support systems.

Oversee the management of the departments decision making processes and ensure that the requirements of the corporate processes are met.

Undertake liaison with Members, MPs, Clinical Commissioning Groups, Public Health England, The Association of Public Health and other key stakeholders, on the Corporate Directors behalf

To act as a broker or intermediary between managers and Senior Officers within the department.

Lead on or support a variety of specified public health projects as designated by the Corporate Director of Public Health within the department, working effectively with senior project managers.

DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

Personal Support to Director of Public Health

1. Manage the Corporate Director of Public Healths emails, responding to enquiries, writing replies or dealing with emails on the Corporate Director of Public Healths behalf. Ensure that all replies to correspondence meet appropriate standards.

2. Ensure that all enquiries from Members, the public and other colleagues and partners are responded to in a timely manner, delegating to departmental leads where appropriate.
3. Manage the Directors diary, arranging appointments and multi-agency meetings on their behalf, including the co-ordination and booking of venues/meeting rooms, refreshments, travel arrangements, attendance of other participants. The post-holder should use their judgement and initiative to schedule and prioritise competing meetings.

4. Support the Corporate Director of Public Health in their day-to-day duties, ensuring that they are able to make best use of their time and energy. This includes ensuring that they are aware of their daily schedule and upcoming important tasks, that papers are available suitably in advance and that all correspondence, emails and calls are screened, filtered and redirected as appropriate.

5. To be the first point of contact for the Directors visitors welcoming them to the office, providing refreshments as required and exercising consistently high standards of tact and diplomacy.

6. Act as a gatekeeper filtering callers and visitors and exercising judgement with regard to whether they require the Directors personal attention and the degree of urgency involved.

7. Manage annual leave and training requests for the Corporate Director, maintaining records in her calendar and making her aware of any potential issues.

8. Ensure that actions delegated by the Corporate Director to other managers and staff in the Department are progressed.

9. Draft, compose and/or type confidential/complex documents, ensuring correct and appropriate layout, accuracy, language, tact and diplomacy. Prepare presentation slides and notes for the Corporate Director of Public Health.

10. Provide support for the Corporate Director of Public Healths meetings, ensuring the minutes are issued in a timely manner and that actions are progressed. Manage the agendas and forward plans and the submission and approval of reports to these meetings.

11. Receive and manage all post addressed to the Director, dealing appropriately with any urgent matters, items for signature and confidential correspondence, as well as using own judgement to divert items to the appropriate staff members, where they do not require the Directors personal attention.

12. Establish and maintain effective relationships with colleagues, Members and contacts in partner organisations, representing the Director and the Department in an approachable and professional way.

Brokering, championing and service improvement

13. Mitigate the interaction and relationships between corporate support and compliance functions (e.g. Democratic Support Services, Contact Islington, policy & Performance) and PH managers and Chief Officers. Achieve a reasonable and agreed balance between meeting the needs of 'the centre' and those of PH service providers.

14. Champion the integration of the public health team, across Camden and Islington, within the department and within both Councils, helping to build and maintain its presence within both organisations.

Public Health Forward Programme of Key Decisions

15. Ensure the Councils political decision-making and scrutiny processes are met by the department.

16. Support the Councils and Public Healths decision making and report processes by ensuring that the departments Forward Plan is kept up to date and key decisions recorded.

17. Ensure that appropriate procedures are in place and adhered to in relation to alerting managers of the deadlines, approval and submission of reports for committees. Provide advice and assistance to authors to resolve any difficulties that arise.

18. Liaise with Member Services in Islington and Democratic Services in Camden and the Directors Support Team to ensure that procedures are working effectively and to resolve any problems with the submitted reports.

19. Ensure that Council Questions and Motions are responded to in an appropriate and timely way.

Human Resources and training

20. To be a contact within the department for HR and recruitment queries, dealing with or looking into them or directing public health staff onwards as appropriate. Where appropriate the post holder should act as an intermediary between staff in public health and HR.

21. To ensure all recruitment business cases are properly approved by the public health management team and that HR are notified promptly of any decisions to recruit.

22. To ensure the departments training policy is kept up-to-date and that it is followed appropriately, including organising the annual panel to agree extended training.

23. Hold records of all training undertaken by public health staff, including internal, external and extended courses. Ensure these are kept up to date and monitor trends.

General:

24. To prioritise conflicting demands, work effectively under pressure, and use excellent time management skills to meet deadlines.

25. To provide administration assistance to project managers in the department as required.

26. Dealing with telephone and email enquiries from staff, public and outside agencies in a professional, courteous manner.

27. Provide assistance to other members of the department with Microsoft Office programmes and IT support.

28. Work as an effective member of the administrative team, providing cover for other members of the team, at lunchtime and during times of annual leave or sickness and working together in a collaborative way in order to maintain the smooth operation of both the Camden and Islington offices.

29. To achieve agreed service outcomes and outputs and personal appraisal targets as agreed by the line manager.

30. To maintain up to date with procedures and practices and to contribute ideas for system/process improvements to increase efficiency offered by new technologies, new ways of working and changes in work processes.

31. Develop and maintain a good working knowledge of the departments teams and functions and how it links with other departments and partner organisations.

32. To undertake training and constructively take part in meetings, supervision and other activities designed to improve communication and assist with the effective development of the post and post holder.

33. Undertake duties having regard for Health and Safety legislation and the Councils related policies.

34. To consistently demonstrate commitment to the Councils core values of public service, quality, equality and empowerment.

35. To carry out duties and responsibilities in accordance with the Councils Dignity for All policy.

36. Ensure that duties are undertaken with due regard and compliance to the Data Protection Act and other legislation.

37. To undertake any other minor duties and tasks as may be necessary from time to time, as requested by the line manager.

EDUCATION and EXPERIENCE
Experience of providing personal support to high-ranking managers or executives in a large and complex organisation.
Experience of dealing with customers and other members of the public, in person and writing, including correspondence and complaints.
Experience of producing high quality briefing notes, reports and communicating complex information concisely.
Experience of developing effective relationships with officers at all levels, partners and elected representatives.
Experience and understanding of managing complex political interfaces
KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS and ABILITY
A good knowledge of local authority functions, structures and decision making processes.
An appreciation of the strategic and operational issues facing London local authorities, particularly in relation to environment and regeneration issues.
Excellent written and verbal communication skills. This must include the ability to write effective reports and correspondence and to make effective presentations to a variety of audiences.
Ability to draft complex briefing papers, for the Director and Assistant Directors
Understanding of equality and diversity issues in respect of service delivery.
Ability to provide pro-active personal support to high-ranking managers or executives to ensure best use of their limited time and energy.
Ability to work as part of a Team and to manage, document and administer work efficiently and in a manner that supports shared responsibility for tasks.
Excellent IT skills and the ability to make good use of Microsoft Office and other programmes.
Ability to prepare and compose documents for a variety of audiences using appropriate/correct language, layout, grammar and spelling

Price / Salary: £17 - £17.50/hour