Research Projects Portfolio Administrator

The post is situated in the Intellectual Disabilities Research Institute (IDRIS) in the School of Social Policy and Society. IDRIS is an applied cross-University research institute established in October 2024 with the appointment of Professor Richard Hastings as 125th Anniversary Chair and Professor of Psychology Health and Social Care. IDRIS also includes, in Social Policy and Society, three other professorial staff, an associate professor, two senior research fellows, an institute manager, a full-time administrator, and a number of research fellows, research associates, and PhD students. Most staff are employed on/funded through external research grants, including those funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR). IDRIS works in close co-productive relationships with people with intellectual disabilities, family carers, social care organisations and the NHS, and with disability advocacy and professional organisations.

The role holder will work across IDRIS's portfolio of projects, providing dedicated administrative support on larger projects with the day-to-day duties and responsibilities varying from project to project. They will also be responsible for Centre administration, for example making bookings for Centre events and arranging and minuting Centre meetings. Co-production and external collaboration is vital to IDRIS's research, and so the role holder will often be responsible for liaising with external individuals and organisations, particularly other higher education institutions, groups that represent people with intellectual disabilities and their families including charities, and healthcare organisations. The role holder will be line managed by the Institute Manager.

The role holder will initially be supporting two projects: the BEAMS-ID Trial (A Multicentre Two-arm Single-blind Parallel Superiority Randomised Controlled Trial Comparing A Behavioural Intervention For Anxiety Disorders And Treatment-as-usual To Treatment-as-usual With Adults With Moderate To Severe Intellectual Disabilities) and The SiblingGame project. The BEAMS-ID project will be assessing whether new anxiety therapy for adults with moderate to severe learning disabilities is effective. SiblingGame is researching the effectiveness of an online serious game called Broodles, in which siblings of people with learning disabilities will play the game to help them work through their needs and experiences.

Main Duties:

- Deal with complex systems and procedures and offer advice on these, including deciding on the response to more complex queries.
- Exercise judgment on the answer to queries or on the direction of work within parameters set by a manager; resolve more complex queries without necessarily referring to a manager.
- Act as a role model and coach other members of the team.
- Maintain high profile working relationships with key stakeholders on own initiative, fielding enquiries and ensuring that appropriate information is disseminated to stakeholders.
- Organise events including booking a venue, sending invitations, arranging refreshments, liaising with speakers and attendees, managing bookings, co-ordination of colleagues, advertising, collating feedback and reporting back.
- Manage some smaller projects on own initiative; carry out desk research and source data from internal and external sources to contribute to wider projects.
- Process project expenditure and monitor expenditure against agreed budgets, liaising with central finance teams.
- Use a variety of complex University systems and processes to research, analyse and interpret complex data, producing bespoke reports as required, including identifying and resolving issues with data.
- Support the management, development and implementation of operational processes and systems.
- Process more complex data (which may be financial, HR, student-related or other), monitoring accuracy, chasing up missing information, and resolving any issues.
- Provide specialist advice and training to colleagues on area of activity.
- Provide a professional secretarial service to relevant committees and meetings.
- Be responsible for one or more of the following: monitoring budgets including processing payments, authorising expenditure, raising concerns where finances are not in line with the budget; procuring goods and services through the University system; updating and writing content for the Institute's communications e.g. intranet pages and social media; dealing with health and safety and facilities issues; HR-related tasks such as managing staff absence, induction, or dealing with leavers; dealing with arrangements for international visitors; monitoring internal procedures/compliance and ensuring these are followed and disseminated.
- Support equality and value diversity, moderating own behaviour to avoid unfair discriminatory impact or bias on others.

Required Knowledge, Skills, Qualifications and Experience:

- Educated to A Level standard, or equivalent level 3 qualification such as a Level 3 NVQ, or level 3 national diploma, or relevant work experience evidencing the skills and ability to undertake the role.
- Minimum of grade C/4 in Mathematics and English at GCSE or equivalent.
- Experience of administration in a research project environment that requires liaising with external stakeholders, including members of the public.
- Highly proficient IT skills, in particular the ability to handle complex electronic diaries and emails, the wider MS Office suite including Excel and PowerPoint, and some experience of using an enterprise resource planning package. Must be confident and able to quickly learn new IT skills and software packages.
- Proven ability to plan ahead and anticipate requirements, proactively planning own (and sometimes others') workloads to manage time effectively, progress tasks concurrently and work to deadlines.
- Excellent verbal and written communication skills, including the ability to write for different audiences and to required deadlines.
- Excellent interpersonal skills; must inspire confidence and command authority with a range of colleagues and provide excellent customer service at all times.
- A high degree of professionalism, tact, and diplomacy, and the ability to exercise discretion regarding the handling and management of sensitive information/issues.
- A high degree of initiative, personal judgement, resourcefulness, flexibility, and a self-motivating approach.
- Ability to work effectively in a large, complex organisation and to develop a good understanding of how the University and higher education institutions work.
- Ability to understand policy and procedures and how to apply these.
- Understanding of the importance of equality and diversity in the workplace and ability to identify and respond to equality and diversity issues in line with relevant policies and procedures.

Benefits:

- 40 days paid holiday a year.
- One paid day a year for volunteering.
- Occupational sick pay.
- Pension scheme.
- Three high quality subsidised day nurseries.
- Access to the Birmingham Professional development programme.
- State-of-the-art sports centre with pool, shops, places to eat and drink, art gallery, museum and botanical gardens on campus.
- Excellent transport links including main bus routes and a train station on site.

There is a possibility of extension of the end date and increase of the FTE during the post's duration, depending on additional funding becoming available through new research project grants. Any extension and FTE increases would be agreed between the role-holder and their line manager.