United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland: PA to Managing Director

Job title:

PA to Managing Director

Department/group:

Humanitarian and Resilience Programmes

Purpose of job

• To provide professional support to the Managing Director and thereby facilitate her ability to perform her role effectively.
• To manage external relationships on behalf of the Managing Director, working with the offices of very senior contacts and co-ordinating the Managing Director’s public affairs and policy engagement with bilateral donors, international humanitarian and development organisations, NGOs and other relevant external stakeholders.
• Project managing the Managing Director’s research work, ensuring timely delivery, working closely with Research Fellows and Research Officers.
• To manage the internal workload of the Managing Director, ensuring that she has the capacity to effectively discharge her management duties, that she is well informed of processes and events.
• Working in collaboration with the ODI Executive Director’s Assistant to coordinate the Director’s duties as SMT member, meeting preparation and planning.

Main duties and responsibilities

Supporting the Managing Director - external

· Represent the Managing Director to external contacts and visitors

· Support the Managing Director in managing ongoing relationships with senior external contacts, ensuring that communication is timely, effective and appropriate and that the tone of correspondence is appropriate.

· Act as the first point of contact for the Managing Director, screening initial contacts and responding to enquiries in her absence. Use initiative in deciding whether information is relevant to her, acting on information where appropriate or forwarding on to the relevant person as necessary.

· Prepare correspondence on behalf of the Managing Director, develop an understanding of her working styles and her styles of written communication, and the line that the Managing Director takes on specific issues to inform the content of the correspondence.

· Develop a knowledge and understanding of the key issues facing the Humanitarian and Resilience programmes in ODI in collaboration with the line manager, to enable the post holder to act on behalf of and support the Managing Director as appropriate.

· Responsible for the project management of all funded and research projects undertaken by the Managing Director, managing deadlines, contracts and financial reporting etc.

Supporting the Managing Director

• Supporting the Managing Director and facilitating her role by managing her diary, ensuring long term strategic items are well planned as well as managing the ongoing reactive workload in line with her expectations and needs;

• Ensuring that the Managing Director is well prepared for all meetings, briefing her in advance, preparing presentations and providing any necessary information or papers

• Planning and coordinating the Managing Director’s travel, ensuring compliance with ODI’s travel security policy

• Assisting the Managing Director in fulfilling her internal management role by proactively managing needs and expectations across the programmes, overseeing the timely completion of her HR responsibilities and preparing her for management meetings

• Ensuring that the Managing Director fulfils her commitments to internal communications, drafting text where appropriate

• Prioritising emails and correspondence for the Managing Director, dealing with them directly where possible and taking responsibility for preparing and following up items that need to be handled by the Managing Director

• Maintain and further develop an effective filing system for the Managing Director

• Co-ordinate the processing of travel invoices and expenses and monitor expenditure against budget for the Managing Director.

• Co-ordinate the planning, running and follow up of key events and meetings and working with communications staff to coordinate the Managing Director, media activities

• Overseeing the use of the dedicated public e-mail account (Managing Director), working closely with the Communications and programme teams;

Senior Management Support

· Managing the administration of the management activities of the Managing Director, including the Senior Management Team and the Management Group;

· Manage the Managing Director’s diary to include meetings with institute staff over the SMT areas of responsibility allocated to the Managing Director, such as Travel and Security, Communications and Finance

Person specification

Essential

Knowledge and qualifications

· Education to at least degree level

· Excellent command of written and spoken English

Experience:

· Significant experience of working as a personal assistant

· Experience of working under pressure in order to meet tight deadlines

· Experience of providing administrative support at a senior level

· Experience of dealing with colleagues at a senior level

· Experience of committee management (desirable)

· Experience in international development (desirable)

Skills/Abilities:

· Excellent organisational skills with the ability to manage a complex work programme independently

· Excellent communication skills, both written and verbal

· IT skills to a high standard (Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook)

· Experience of/willingness to learn intranet (SharePoint)

· Discretion in dealing with confidential information

· Self-motivated, and able to overcome barriers

· Able to produce high quality output with excellent attention to detail

· Completer/finisher, able to see a task through to completion, thinking laterally where required

· The ability to respond effectively to quickly changing circumstances and prioritising work loads

· Excellent interpersonal skills and cultural sensitivity; the ability to deal effectively with people from a variety of backgrounds

· Logical, methodical

· Professional with a good level of presence

All staff are expected to:

• Positively support equality of opportunity both within ODI and externally

• Help maintain a safe working environment and take responsibility for own and colleagues’ Health and Safety

• Undertake such other duties within the scope of their post as may be requested by their Manager

http://jobs.odi.org.uk/VacancyInformation.aspx?VId=25908