• Job Description

  Req#: R0000701
  Personal Assistant (PA)

  Bristol

  £30,388 - £31,789

  Plus generous civil service defined benefit pension

  We are the independent regulator of higher education in England.

  We aim to ensure that every student, whatever their background, has a fulfilling experience of higher education that enriches their lives and careers. We also care about supporting and developing our staff, working together to achieve more than each of us can do alone.

  We’re proud of our people, our culture and the benefits we offer. At the OfS we want to create a welcoming and engaging working environment which is free from discrimination. We particularly welcome applications from people with a disability or impairment, those who identify as lesbian, bisexual, gay or transgender, and those from a black, Asian and minority ethnic background, as these groups are under-represented within our workforce.

  We’re looking for skilled, committed people who care about students and their experience of higher education. Join us and you’ll be part of an energetic, forward-looking organisation with high ambitions and big opportunities for our people.

  Job Summary

  The administrative resource unit (ARU) is a large team of professional administrators who provide a range of admin support across the organisation. Although you will be based in one directorate, the ARU is a flexible resource, moving to meet business need and adding variety and skills to the day job.

  Job Description

  The aim of the role ‘Personal Assistant’ is to provide proactive, high quality and effective support to senior manager/Director. Key responsibilities include; ensuring that the senior manager/Director can carry out their own roles as effectively as possible; solving day to day problems and contributing to continuous improvement of their area of work; making decisions on diaries without reference to manager; performing initial research to assist manager responding to stakeholders; and taking forward improvements to organisational processes as appropriate. The role requires effective communication with stakeholders to effectively deliver the responsibilities of the administrative function.

  The key person attributes to fulfil this role are:

  • strong written and verbal communications skills
  • discretion
  • attention to detail and organisational skills
  • flexibility and team-working
  • knowledge of relevant software and word-processing programmes.

  About you

  The Office for Students culture is based on the values and competencies of Ambition, Diversity, Learning and Openness. The behaviours we demonstrate when we do our job is as important as getting the job done.

  • Ambition – seeing the bigger picture, making effective decision, delivering at pace
  • Diversity – inclusive leadership, interact respectfully, value differences, give access to opportunity
  • Learning – developing self and others, challenging and improving, managing a quality service
  • Openness – Communicating and influencing, collaborating and partnering ,inclusive leadership

  We also use enablers to evaluate your strengths and ask that your application describes what you’ve done and how you’ve done it. The enablers for this role are:

  Knowledge and Learning

  • Actively takes responsibility for finding out information
  • Takes responsibility to obtain, develop, organise and share knowledge and information that may be of use to others, ensuring it is accurate and up to date

  Planning

  • Plans and prioritises tasks successfully, taking account of others’ needs as well as own
  • Takes account of foreseeable risks
  • Resolves competing priorities within resources available, in the light of others’ priorities and work life balance

  Communications

  • Manages own time to allow opportunities for effective communication with others Communicates to all parties in a way which creates a positive impression of the OfS
  • Speech is clear, concise, of appropriate complexity and tailored to the audience. Content of speech is accurate
  • Writing is clear, concise, of appropriate complexity and tailored to the audience(s). It follows house style and uses correct grammar. The content of writing is accurate

  Relationships

  • Aware of how one prefers to relate to others and where necessary, adapts personal style to achieve best results
  • Takes into account others’ perspectives
  • Negotiates optimum outcomes and secures understanding from those with whom one may not agree.

  Working for us

  
  The OfS regulates the higher education sector on behalf of all students. We value diversity and the wealth of perspectives, experience, and ideas that it brings to our work, and we strive to embed equality of opportunity in everything we do.
  
  We recruit based on fair and open competition and welcome applications from candidates regardless of age, disability, race and ethnicity, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, religion or belief, sex, sexual orientation and socio-economic background.

  We love working flexibly because we know that it helps us all to do our best work. We’ve created a set of principles to shape our approach to flexible and hybrid working, which our teams then use as guidance on how they deliver their business goals. This would usually mean working from the office for two days in a typical week.

  Closing date for applications: 8 October 2023

  Interviews: week commencing 23 October 2023

• About the company

  The Office for Students is a non-departmental public body of the Department for Education, acting as the regulator and competition authority for the higher education sector in England.

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