Business Support & Finance Officer Apprenticeship

Contents

• Location
• About the job
• Benefits
• Things you need to know
• Apply and further information

Birmingham, Cardiff, Darlington, Edinburgh, London, Salford

About the job

Job summary

The Office of the Small Business Commissioner (OSBC) is an independent Public Body that was set up by Government under the Enterprise Act 2016. The purpose of the office is to tackle late payment and poor payment practices in the private sector. We deal with complaints and provide general information and support to small businesses, as well as signposting them to other appropriate services. We aim to encourage a culture change in payment practices and in how businesses deal with each other, and we are looking for talented people to help us achieve this. 

We are a diverse team drawing expertise from across the country. We offer great training and development opportunities and support from the team. You will find flexible working, an inclusive culture, and a place where your opinion is valued. 

As Business Support & Finance Officer, you will have responsibility for supporting the Business Manager, G7 Head of Operations and the wider OSBC team. 

You will be responsible for supporting the OSBC Business Manager with the day-to-day running of the OSBC including delivering ongoing service improvements and projecting financial budgets forecast and spend. 

You may be responsible for providing administrative support to the OSBC Business Manager with financial audits and receipting, recording and tracking supplier invoices over the course of the financial year. 

Occasional UK travel and overnight stays may be required in order to attend essential training, meetings and business events. Flexible hybrid working is available, however regular travel to the Birmingham office will be required each month for training, development, and collaborative working. 

Job description

To provide administrative support to the OSBC Business Manager and G7 Head of Operations and to the wider management team through the supply of relevant briefing materials and organisational backup to ensure that they are fully prepared to carry out their allocated duties. Duties required of this role can be seen below:

• Well organised and flexible with experience of handling business information, particularly numerical data, with an ability of focus on service delivery.
• Good written and verbal communication skills.
• Able to work under pressure across functional teams and understand the importance of timescales/deadlines and prioritising workload to meet business requirements.
• A problem solver who takes setbacks in their stride and manages change positively and effectively.
• Competent IT user with experience using MS Office and SharePoint.

Person specification

Skills and Experience

Essential Criteria: 

• Good interpersonal skills, both written and verbal, with an ability to interact well with people across the organisation, including those more senior to you.
• Ability to work under pressure and deliver to tight timescales, with a good attention to detail, responding effectively to changing priorities in a business support and finance related environment.
• Ability to proactively work well as part of a team, taking responsibility for delivering agreed business objectives.
• Ability to work independently with minimal supervision, across a range of tasks, seeking advice and guidance from managers as appropriate.

Desirable Criteria: 

• Experience of budgeting, forecasting and tracking spend.
• Experience of Microsoft applications, including MS Teams and SharePoint.

Business Support Role: 

• Build and maintain excellent working relationships across the OSBC, its Sponsorship team and wider directorate, working collaboratively and flexibly to achieve organisational priorities.
• Undertake a broad range of business support activities under the guidance of a Business Support Manager, ensuring these are delivered within defined timescales and to agreed quality standards, including but not limited to: diary management, travel management, corporate planning, MI data evidence gathering.
• Assist with the organisation of key directorate, and governance meetings, which add value, including preparing and circulating agendas, undertaking a secretariat or other facilitator role where necessary, writing minutes and records of actions from the meeting / workshop, obtaining updates on previous action points and chasing outstanding papers.
• Manage the team inbox(es) effectively, ensuring that emails are dealt with appropriately in a timely manner, drafting responses to queries as required, seeking advice and guidance from the Business Support Manager as necessary.
• Where appropriate, carry out delivery tasks and/or support the delivery of small projects under the direction of the Business Support Manager, or other senior managers.
• Other ad-hoc administrative tasks as required, which may include covering for Business Manager absence.
• To act as the main liaison on behalf of OSBC (and the team as the occasion demands), with other teams, government departments, agencies, external organisations, and stakeholders and the wider public.
• To collate monthly, quarterly and annual performance monitoring information and ensure that officers provide updates in a timely manner.
• To support the OSBC Business Manager with Knowledge and Information (KIM) tasks related to the business.
• Demonstrate an understanding of the external context within which OSBC operates including, where appropriate, building relationships with external organisations to improve outcomes for service users.

Finance Role: 

• Confident working with financial management software, tools and stakeholders (such as Oracle / UKSBS).
• Familiar with key budgeting, forecasting and spend monitoring principles.
• Able to analyse, interpret and summarise data for performance reporting.
• Act, when required, to raise irregularities, highlight errors and ensure the integrity of data input to the finance system.
• Support the Business Manager with audit and General Ledger / Bank reconciliation when required.
• Support the Business Manager to develop and maintain finance procedures, systems and guidance to ensure they remain accurate, effective, support successful delivery of all financial activities and are understood, e.g. payment and desktop guides and the Finance Manual.
• Support the Business Manager (where applicable) to respond to audit and financial commissions; raising requisitions and receipting purchase orders as necessary; review financial transaction issues (e.g. gaps between values receipted and invoices), liaising with senior managers as required to resolve.

Behaviours

We’ll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:

• Working Together
• Managing a Quality Service
• Communicating and Influencing
• Delivering at Pace

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £28,695, Department for Business and Trade contributes £8,312 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides.

• Learning and development tailored to your role
• An environment with flexible working options
• A culture encouraging inclusion and diversity
• A Civil Service pension with an employer contribution of 28.97%

We recognise the challenges that people with (multiple) protected characteristics may experience on the job market and in their career progression. We are fully committed to being an inclusive employer and ensuring equal opportunities. We are keen to make our workforce as diverse as possible, and we hope to attract applications from underrepresented groups, including ethnic minorities, people with a disability, and people with gender diverse identities.

Please refer to the attached candidate pack for further information on our benefits.

The Civil Service welcomes applications from people who have recently left prison or have an unspent conviction. Read more about prison leaver recruitment (opens in new window).

Once this job has closed, the job advert will no longer be available. You may want to save a copy for your records.

Contact point for applicants

Job contact :

• Name : OSBC Business Support Team
• Email : business_support@smallbusinesscommissioner.gov.uk

Recruitment team

• Email : dbtrecruitment.grs@cabinetoffice.gov.uk

Further information

Our recruitment process is underpinned by the principle of appointment on the basis of fair and open competition and appointment on merit, as outlined in the Civil Service Commissioners’ Recruitment Principles.

If you feel your application has not been treated in accordance with these principles and you wish to make a complaint, you should in the first instance contact DBT by email: Resourcing@businessandtrade.gov.uk.

If you are not satisfied with the response you receive, you can contact the Civil Service Commission, which regulates all Civil Service recruitment.

For further information on bringing a complaint to the Civil Service Commission please visit their web pages: Click here to visit Civil Service Commission/Complaints

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