Senior School Administrator

Birmingham Law School (BLS) is one of five Schools in the College of Arts and Law with almost 2,000 students and around 100 staff.

As a senior administrator within a team/department you will provide support for a broad range of administrative duties, some of which may be complex. You may also be responsible for managing other staff or for supporting colleagues and sharing knowledge. You will be able to use your wide range of skills, both technical and administrative, and have the opportunity to lead on specific tasks within a team. In order to flexibly use resource you may be given the opportunity to work in different areas of the department or wider University.

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 your manager. On a day to day basis, resolve more complex queries without necessarily referring to your manager.
- Undertake complex diary management and meeting planning, usually 6-12 months ahead, making decisions on the best use of time. This requires understanding the priorities and deadlines you and your manager(s) are working to and involves developing relationships across the University and beyond.
- Proactive inbox management, with confidence to make decisions on behalf of others where appropriate.
- If in a supervisory role, line manage staff taking responsibility for co-ordinating and prioritising the work of others. If not in a supervisory role, act as a role model and coach 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 as appropriate.
- Organise events including booking a venue, sending invitations, arranging refreshments, liaising with speakers, managing bookings, co-ordination of colleagues, advertising, collating feedback and reporting back.
- Manage some smaller projects on own initiative, and carry out desk research and source data from internal and external sources in order to contribute to wider projects.
- 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 as appropriate.
- Provide specialist advice and training to colleagues on area of activity.
- Provide a professional secretarial service to relevant committees and meetings as required.
- Responsibilities may include: monitoring budgets including processing payments and authorising expenditure; procuring goods and services; updating and writing content for the department's communications; 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.
- Treat everyone with dignity and respect in line with current equality legislation.

Person Specification:

- 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, 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. Confident and able to quickly learn new IT skills and software packages as required.
- 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. The postholder 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.
- Understands the importance of equality and diversity in the workplace.

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 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