About the job

Job summary

You’ll be joining a friendly senior leadership team in the People and Workplace Directorate. Together we are responsible for the HR, security and property functions for DCMS, often working with our family of 42 public bodies too. We also house the people-centred change management team. Our mission is creating an inspiring, productive and safe workplace where everybody belongs and thrives. 

Our team is regionally dispersed with around 40% of members located out of London and we are growing in Manchester. We are also proud of our high people engagement score - 79%. We run a lot of activities during the year to build our team culture.

The HR function follows the typical operating model of strategy, expert services, people development, business partnering, recruitment and operations. We collaborate closely with teams across the department to deliver our work.

Job description

If successful, in this new role you will co-lead the HR function and profession with the Director, Sarah. You will be responsible for an important change: merging two HR teams into one, bringing them together and empowering people to find the synergies and productivity that will result from closer collaboration and prioritisation.

You will lead projects and services to achieve the goals in our People Plan. Priorities this year include: building on our strong staff engagement, investing in line manager capability; being the most diverse and inclusive department, with a strategy to support those from underrepresented groups and backgrounds; relocating more roles to our Manchester hub, via outreach and recruitment; developing our strategic workforce planning 2030 to build departmental capability and productivity; and enabling work towards a shared HR system with other government departments.

This new role is based in Manchester and you will want to travel from time to time to develop relationships with team members, but much of our work can be done via hybrid working, once relationships are established.

Person specification

• Leadership A track record of motivating and engaging a diverse team based in different locations, empowering talented people in a productive and inclusive culture, so that they perform at their best.
  
• Delivering at Pace Experience of translating strategy into objectives and plans, and supporting your team to deliver productively. You will enjoy variety, be able to respond positively to the unexpected and foster resilience in others and support their wellbeing by managing workloads well.
• Changing and Improving Eager to use technology and data to to change and improve processes, systems and ways of working. You will have experience of sponsoring projects and understand risk management.
• Managing a quality service You will be familiar with customer-centric design and delivery, enjoy using quantitative and qualitative insight to ensure the HR service you are delivering is relevant and is of the agreed quality standard.  
• Working together A networker, able to collaborate and communicate with peers, stakeholders, professions and customers across the directorates of the department, in our family of public bodies and with other departments to influence thinking, understand others and achieve shared goals.

Desirable skills: 

• This role requires a HR professional qualification: FCIPD. Ideally, the successful candidate will already have this or be willing to gain it through a CIPD assessment of their work experience to date. You will be supported to achieve this.
• In this role you will be able to round out your professional knowledge, whichever sector or background you come from. A commitment to learning is desirable.
• We take a people-centred approach to change, following the PROSCI methodology. Full training will be provided.

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £75,000, Department for Culture, Media and Sport contributes £20,250 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides.

Things you need to know

Selection process details

This vacancy is using Success Profiles (opens in a new window), and will assess your Behaviours and Experience.

We are running a virtual information session to allow prospective applicants to find out more about the role advertised and the recruitment process. This will be hosted by both the vacancy holder and a representative from the DCMS recruitment team, it will take place on:

• Tuesday 11th June 12:00 - 13:00

The session will be an opportunity to hear more about the role, the team and wider directorate and the department. 

It will also be an opportunity for you to ask any questions you may have about the application, and the interview and assessment process. 

Please register your interest by filling out this form and you will be sent a Google Meets invitation. 

Applying for the role

To apply for this post, please send us the following documents no later than 23:55 on Sunday 23rd June via the CS Jobs portal:
A CV setting out your career history, with key responsibilities and achievements. Please ensure you provide employment history that relates to the essential and desirable criteria, and that any gaps in employment history within the last 2 years are explained. The CV should not exceed more than 3 x A4 pages and you should insert your CV into the "Job History" section on Civil Service Jobs on the Civil Service Jobs application form.

 A Statement of Suitability (max 1000 words) explaining how you consider your personal skills, qualities and experience provide evidence of your suitability for the role in reference to the essential requirements highlighted. You may also choose to reference the desirable skills listed.

For the shortlist, we will assess your experience and select applicants demonstrating the best fit for the role by considering the evidence provided in your application.

In the event of a large number of applicants, an initial sift will be conducted on the statement of suitability. Those who are successful in the initial sift will then be scored on all elements of the application. 

Shortlist

The panel will assess your application to select those demonstrating the best fit with the role by considering the evidence you have provided against the criteria set out in the ‘essential requirements and desirable skills’ section of this pack. Failure to address any or all of these may affect your application.

Feedback

Please note you will only receive feedback if you reach the interview stage. Following interview, all candidates will receive a score along with some short written feedback on your performance at interview. 

Assessment

If shortlisted, you will be invited to undertake an assessment as part of this recruitment prior to a final interview panel:

• A staff engagement exercise: a structured exercise which involves shortlisted candidates facilitating a discussion with a selection of staff from the Department on a given topic. The assessment will be conducted virtually.  

Interview

The interview process will assess behaviours, experience and will include a presentation.

The behaviours to be tested at interview are: 

• Changing and improving 
• Delivering at pace 
• Leadership
• Managing a Quality Service 
• Working Together

As part of your interview, you will be asked to deliver a short oral presentation. Full details of this, including the topic, and whether or not you will need to use visual aids, will be sent to you prior to your interview.

Your interview will take place, in person, at our Manchester office. 

Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.

Security

Successful candidates must undergo a criminal record check. Successful candidates must meet the security requirements before they can be appointed. The level of security needed is security check (opens in a new window).

See our vetting charter (opens in a new window). People working with government assets must complete baseline personnel security standard (opens in new window) checks.

Nationality requirements

This job is broadly open to the following groups:

• UK nationals
• nationals of the Republic of Ireland
• nationals of Commonwealth countries who have the right to work in the UK
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities with settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS) (opens in a new window)
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities who have made a valid application for settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS)
• individuals with limited leave to remain or indefinite leave to remain who were eligible to apply for EUSS on or before 31 December 2020
• Turkish nationals, and certain family members of Turkish nationals, who have accrued the right to work in the Civil Service

Further information on nationality requirements (opens in a new window)

Working for the Civil Service

The Civil Service Code (opens in a new window) sets out the standards of behaviour expected of civil servants.

We recruit by merit on the basis of fair and open competition, as outlined in the Civil Service Commission's recruitment principles (opens in a new window). The Civil Service embraces diversity and promotes equal opportunities. As such, we run a Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) for candidates with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria. The Civil Service also offers a Redeployment Interview Scheme to civil servants who are at risk of redundancy, and who meet the minimum requirements for the advertised vacancy.