Senior Administrator (Research) - School of Education - 102427S26 - Grade 5

The School of Education's Operations Team provides the administrative infrastructure that supports the School's teaching, research and wider strategic priorities. The team works collaboratively with academic and professional services colleagues across the School, College and University to deliver effective, compliant and high-quality services.

The Senior Administrator, Research is part of this team and contributes to the effective delivery and continuous improvement of research administration. The role involves working with colleagues across three academic departments, the School, College and central University teams, as well as supporting a collaborative and collegiate working environment.

As Senior Administrator, you will coordinate a range of research-related activities across the School of Education, including internal output review cycles, Research Excellence Framework submissions, research projects, and support for research centres and groups. You will organise meetings and events, collate and analyse information, monitor progress, follow up actions and ensure that requirements are delivered accurately and on time.

You will build effective relationships with academic, professional services and external colleagues, providing a responsive and reliable service while supporting compliance with relevant policies and regulations.

Working with the Executive Officer and Deputy Head of Operations, you will contribute to continuous improvement and the optimisation of the portfolio. This position also provides line-management for a part-time Research Administrator.

Main Duties:

- Deal with complex systems and procedures and offer advice on these, including deciding on the response to more complex queries.
- Exercise judgement on the answer to queries or on the direction of work within parameters set by your manager, resolving more complex queries without necessarily referring to your manager.
- Line manage staff, taking responsibility for co-ordinating and prioritising the work of others, acting as a role model and coach.
- Maintain high profile working relationships with key stakeholders on own initiative, fielding enquiries and ensuring that appropriate information is disseminated.
- Organise events and academic conferences including booking venues, sending invitations, arranging refreshments, liaising with speakers, managing bookings, co-ordinating colleagues, advertising, collating feedback and reporting back.
- Manage smaller projects on own initiative and carry out desk research and source data from internal and external sources.
- 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 data issues.
- Support the management, development and implementation of operational processes and systems.
- Support the breadth of the Operations Team's role, being flexible to respond to other portfolio needs in times of high workload or leave.
- Process more complex data (financial, HR, student-related or other), monitoring accuracy, chasing missing information, and resolving issues.
- Provide specialist advice and training to colleagues on area of activity.
- Provide a professional secretarial service to relevant committees and meetings as required.
- As required, be responsible for one or more of: monitoring budgets including processing payments and authorising expenditure; procuring goods and services; updating and writing content for departmental communications; dealing with health and safety and facilities issues; HR-related tasks such as managing staff absence, induction, or dealing with leavers; arrangements for international visitors; monitoring internal procedures/compliance.
- Treat everyone with dignity and respect in line with current equality legislation.

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.
- Highly proficient IT skills, including handling complex electronic diaries and emails, the wider MS Office suite including Excel and PowerPoint, and experience of using an enterprise resource planning package. Confidence and ability to quickly learn new IT skills and software packages.
- Proven ability to plan ahead and anticipate requirements, proactively managing own (and sometimes others') workloads to manage time effectively, progress tasks concurrently and work to deadlines.
- Excellent communication skills, including the ability to write for different audiences and to required deadlines.
- Excellent interpersonal skills, inspiring confidence and commanding authority with a range of colleagues while providing excellent customer service.
- A high degree of professionalism, tact, and diplomacy, with the ability to exercise discretion regarding sensitive information.
- 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.

Benefits:

The University of Birmingham offers 40 days paid holiday a year, one paid day a year for volunteering, occupational sick pay, a pension scheme, three high quality subsidised day nurseries, access to a state-of-the-art sports centre with pool, shops, places to eat and drink, an art gallery, museum and botanical gardens on campus. The University also offers the Birmingham Professional development programme for professional services staff.