About the job

Job summary

Are you a health and safety professional with experience of working within a large complex corporate environment?

Do you enjoy developing and implementing policies to promote safety?

Are you confident in leading and managing others to achieve business objectives?

If so, we would love to hear from you! 

This is a fantastic opportunity to deliver and maintain a strong health and safety culture whilst maintaining compliance. You will also have exposure to a wide range of stakeholders both external and internal, enabling you to build relationships across the organisation.

This position is advertised at 37 hours per week.

Job description

We are looking for a pragmatic and confident individual to lead our small and dynamic health and safety team, where you will work in a fast paced and varied environment where no two days are the same. You will need to have the capability to work under your own initiative, ensuring that you provide a high-quality service which is delivered on time and taking ownership of key decisions that need to be made.  This role is pivotal to ensuring compliance with health and safety legislation across the RAF Air Cadet estate.

The Safety and Assurance Department is responsible for ensuring safety support and advice to all elements of the RAFAC organisation, across all functional safety domains. The successful applicant must be able to challenge risk mindset to improve the safety culture, making RAFAC a safer organisation. The post holder is required to maintain a safety assurance function that provides assurance to the Comdt that RAFAC is compliant with all legislation, MOD policy and Command directives.

• Direct and supervise 3 x D Grade Ministry of Defence Civil Service Safety Assurance Advisors in the provision of statutory HS&EP advice and guidance to all RAFAC formations and in the delivery of a tri-ennial regional assurance programme.
• Direct and supervise SO2 Training Assurance Advisor. in the delivery of advice and assurance to training activities, including Cadet Residential Training Centres and delivery.
• Direct and supervise HEO OME Assurance in the delivery of OME assurance activity.
• Direct and supervise WO(MT) in the delivery of advice, support and assurance of MT and Road Safety Matters.
• Represent Comdt RAFAC to external military and civilian organisations, in relation to Functional Safety matters.
• Enable RAFAC management of Functional Safety risk through PARMIS. Ensure training and guidance to key staff and ongoing support. Maintain an accurate risk picture across the Functional Safety domains.
• Deliver bi-annual Functional Safety Steering Groups (FSSG). Supervise and collate content, delivery and promulgation of RODs. Prepare and deliver HS&EP content. Present accurate and comprehensive Functional Safety picture to Comdt and RAFAC SLT. Lead on Functional Safety tasks arising from the meeting. Track progress of decisions.
• Manage Comdt RAFAC’s engagement with AOC 22 Group on Functional Safety matters. Compile submissions for 22 Group FSSG and Functional Safety Alignment Meeting (FSAM), based on evidence from RAFAC FSSG.
• Coordinate with 2FTS safety representatives to create Total Safety picture for RAFAC.
• Advise Comdt and SLT on the management of Functional Safety risks and issues, enabling and supporting collaborative solutions, as they arise.
• Contribute to the enablement of national events by ensuring provision of SME advice to event organisers. Provide SME support to COS in decision briefs. Provide 2nd Party Assurance of national events.
• Represent Safety and Assurance pillar to RAFAC SLT as required.

Person specification

You are a proactive and flexible individual with excellent experience of health and safety within a complex corporate environment.

You are an effective communicator who can tailor your communication to suit different audiences, influencing and explaining complex information in easy-to-understand ways. You will have strong leadership skills, the ability to lead teams and projects, ensuring colleagues and stakeholders have a clear understanding of objectives.

You understand your own level of responsibility and empower others to make decisions where appropriate, presenting recommendations in a timely manner outlining the consideration of other options, costs, benefits, and risks.

It is important that you are organised, have great attention to detail and are experienced at working to tight deadlines, with the skills to efficiently balance multiple priorities. You’re resilient, with the ability to challenge and influence at all levels, confidently pushing back when required. You can work calmly under pressure and thrive within a diverse and varied workload.

Essential Criteria:

Candidate must have excellent IT skills and a working knowledge of Health & Safety, with the ability to apply sound rational judgement and advice to staff.

You should possess the ability to reference Health & Safety publications to achieve a suitable outcome.

You must hold the following qualification:

• NEBOSH General Certificate (or equivalent)

You must hold the following qualifications (or equivalent), be currently working towards, or willing to undertake within the first 6 months of taking up post.

• STS Introduction to Environmental Protection
• Occurrence Investigator Training
• Lead Auditor (Safety) Qualification

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £43,080, Ministry of Defence contributes £11,631 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.

Candidates will be required to provide CV details to include job history; qualification details and previous skills and experience and complete a Statement of Suitability of no more than 500 words.

 At sift and interview you will be assessed against the following Success Profiles Behaviours:

• Leadership
• Communicating and Influencing
• Delivering at Pace
• Making Effective Decisions
• Seeing the Bigger Picture

The Civil Service embraces diversity and promotes equality of opportunity. There is a Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) for candidates with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria. If you need to advise us that you need additional help or reasonable adjustments for the recruitment process, please contact: DBSCivPers-Resourcingteam3@mod.gov.uk .

As a result of the changes to the UK immigration rules which came into effect on 1 January 2021, the Ministry of Defence will only offer sponsorship for a skilled worker visa under the points based system, where a role has been deemed to be business critical. 

The role currently being advertised has not been assessed as business critical and is therefore NOT open to applications from those who will require sponsorship under the points based system. Should you apply for this role and be found to require sponsorship, your application will be rejected and any provisional offer of employment withdrawn.

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.