Specialist Services Lead

The Department of State (DOS) runs the strategic headquarters of the Ministry of Defence and has annual expenditure of over £2.0bn, and effective management of this expenditure is essential to ensure the rest of the Defence operates optimally. The DOS Finance Directorate provides an enabling finance service in the business (Finance Business Partnering, Finance Operations and Specialist Services) to PUS and DG-led business areas. We are a friendly, collaborative, inclusive and diverse team of Finance professionals. This is an exciting time to join DOS Finance as we look to deliver strategically important change activity and refine the business-as-usual service offer across DOS.

The Specialist Services lead will be a member of the Finance Leadership Team (FLT), supporting the Finance Director (FD) and Deputy Directors (DD) in shaping and delivering the finance strategy and objectives and delivering responsibilities for the overall management of Finance workforce, performance, risk, compliance and assurance that their teams are following the standardised processes and ways of working, and embedding a culture based on desired behaviours. They have responsibility for leadership and management of Specialist Services. Alongside managing their direct reports, they will ensure that capacity and capability is in place within their team to deliver outputs, including continuous improvement and change activity. They will build and manage relationships across finance and the wider business and will actively role model the critical behaviours. They will act as a point of escalation within their area, being responsible and accountable for setting reflective and challenging KPIs and team targets aligned to the wider finance strategy.

This position is advertised at 37 hours per week.

Specialist Services undertake activities requiring specific business knowledge and judgement. Managing their team in the provision of advice and guidance in their area of specialism, working closely with key stakeholder, resolving complex or difficult issues using adaptive and creative approaches whilst ensuring adherence with MOD standards. Providing secretariat support to internal committees (including, but not limited to, investment /audit and risk committees), ensuring the required documentation is provided in a timely manner and providing a balanced, impartial view, drawing upon other functions, to enable informed decision making.

Managing the production of their financial reporting, ensuring required processes are in place to give assurance on the quality of the numbers. Providing a suitably robust input to be incorporated into the MOD financial accounts, whilst highlighting key issues, risks, and opportunities.

Providing services as the Subject Matter Expert

• Ensuring all business areas have adequate support, monitoring against the agreed service provision and checking that the boundaries of responsibilities are clear and being maintained.
• Understanding future requirements, anticipating, and planning for peaks in activity or changes in requirements, considering and adopting the appropriate mitigation, as required.
• Clearly explaining the rationale for processes, ensuring that complex aspects are understood by all stakeholders and that benefits are highlighted to support compliance and meet the required standards.
• Undertaking approvals within your delegated financial authority.
• Managing the adherence to standards as outlined within internal MOD guidance. Enabling Senior Leadership both within the organisation and wider MOD to make informed investment decisions.
• Managing the audit programme, undertaking engagement with Strategic Head Office and/or auditors providing updates on material or complex issues, monitoring progress of audits, outstanding audit issues and implementation of recommendations.
• Reviewing, analysing, and interpreting financial data, providing insight for senior managers and decision makers. Managing the production, including appropriate review and escalation where necessary of the organisation’s financial accounts, highlighting key issues through analysis.
• Managing a team of SMEs in the effective provision of services to the Finance workforce and the Business to support, advise and build capability:

o Advising Business areas on the approvals process and undertaking review of all cases where the value meets the definition of Category D (£10M) – Category A (£600M+) in support of the Finance Leadership Team. Particularly focussing on the Financial and Economic cases and undertaking approvals within their delegated authority.

o Management and provision of guidance for financial governance and controls activity including Grants and Grants in Aid, financial delegations, fraud and ePC. Monitoring compliance with Internal Controls and Assurance Framework and the use of other Non-Contract Procurement (NCP) methods ensuring that these are utilised appropriately.

o Ensuring the integrity of financial data collected through engaging with the Business to provide and validate and undertaking monthly reconciliations, providing analysis and challenging transactions, including review of control accounts.

Stakeholder engagement and collaboration

• Engaging with Strategic Head Office, providing input and implementing policy/accounting standard updates, understanding the impact that this has on both your team and reporting requirements and ensuring coherence with their expectations.
• Engaging with key stakeholders to ensure the effective communication and management of information required e.g. Investment Approvals Committee (IAC) and where further approval is required outside of MOD.
• Providing support to other Finance Leadership Team members, highlighting key discussion points, outlining your view on significant risks, recommending options to mitigate or resolve and providing progress updates.
• Providing secretariat support to the internal committees, ensuring the required information is available in a timely manner and disseminating the outcome from the committee.
• Engaging and collaboratively working with Finance Business Partners, communicating on key aspects of financial scrutiny and approvals, governance and controls and financial reporting activity in support of their area(s) of responsibility.
• Building and maintaining effective working relationships with the specialists within other MOD organisations to problem solve common issues and seeking definitive advice from Strategic Head Office where required for complex issues.
• Recognising the need for further expertise and consulting other Specialist Services and Centres of Excellence.
• Building and maintaining working relationships with key Business areas to enable a good understanding of how the Business operates and enabling their needs to be addressed.
• Managing the reviewing and update of working practices and processes. Considering views from other functions both within their organisation and outside. Ensuring timely and complete submissions to approvals committees whilst remaining aligned on specified content, formatting, and guidance.

Continuous improvement

• Dedicating time to sharing best practice and lessons learnt, collaborating across MOD to solve common issues. Encouraging your team to generate ideas for refining standardised processes and procedures, feeding back key proposed changes to process owners, enabling consistency across the MOD finance function.
• Seeking feedback on the services provided, testing, and evaluating their effectiveness, whilst assessing the level of effort to deliver against the benefit received.
• Continuously strive to improve the service provision, promptly addressing issues and ensuring that processes or ways of working are adapted, and customers are informed where there is an impact.
• Ensure misinterpretation of guidance is shared in a timely manner with team members to promote embedding any lesson(s) learnt.
• Managing issues highlighted during internal or external audit, engaging relevant stakeholders to enable corrective action.
• Managing the input and support to change programmes, where there is an impact to how your team will provide their services.

Managing your team within Specialist Services

• Management of team members, empowering, motivating and coaching to enable effective delivery.
• Supporting individual’s personal development, careers and developing leadership skills within their team. Ensuring you and the team make time to develop themselves and their peers.
• Being open to challenge and new ideas, sharing of knowledge and experience, encouraging others through building a supportive team environment.
• Providing stretching targets ensuring the team are getting the basics right at the first attempt.
• Developing and embedding the use of standardised processes to deliver a consistent output to customers.
• Making all major decisions affecting direction and execution of work within the area of responsibility, referring upwards where decisions relate to significant issues of policy, resource allocation or management of work area

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)

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

Candidates will be required to provide CV details to include job history; qualification details and previous skills and experience.

Candidates will be required to provide a Personal Statement. (500 words)

At sift, Candidates will be assessed against their CV , Personal Statement and the following:

Behaviours:

• Making Effective Decisions

At interview, Candidates will be assessed against the following:

Behaviours:

• Making Effective Decisions
• Communicating and Influencing
• Seeing the Big Picture

Technical Skills:

• Knowledge of Managing Public Money and best practice in preparation and scrutiny of Business Cases. (Finance Competence Framework - 2.1, 2.2 , 6.2)

Presentation:

• Candidates who are invited to interview may be asked to prepare a short presentation on a topic that will be advised when invited to interview.

Further Information:

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.

There may be occasions where it is not practicable or appropriate to interview all DCS candidates that meet the minimum criteria for the job. For example, in certain recruitment situations such as a high volume of applications, seasonal demand, or peak periods, the employer may wish to limit the overall number of interviews offered to both DCS and non-DCS applicants.

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. This role does not meet that category, and we will not sponsor a visa. It 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.

The Ministry of Defence requires all candidates who are successful at interview to declare any outside interests. These declarations will be discussed with successful candidates following the interview process and before a formal offer of employment is made, as some outside interests may not be compatible with MOD civilian roles. This will not, in the majority of cases, prevent employment in MOD, but it is a measure that must be taken to ensure that appropriate mitigations can be put in place to manage any potential, perceived or actual conflicts of interest from the first day of employment.

The Ministry of Defence adopts a zero-tolerance approach to unacceptable behaviours, which includes bullying, harassment, sexual harassment, discrimination, and victimisation. You will not be eligible and will not be considered for this post if you have been dismissed from a role for such unacceptable behaviours within the last five years. This will also apply if you resign or otherwise leave a role but, because of an adverse decision, would have been dismissed for gross misconduct had you continued in that employment. Pre-employment checks will be carried out.

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