The Opportunity
Salary: £38,686 - £41,511 per annum, inclusive of 2024/2025 pay award
Working Pattern: Full-time, 37 hours per week
Location: Your office base will be County Hall, Chichester and a typical week will combine homeworking with attendance at the office. This is led by the needs of the service.
Interviews: w/c 09 and 16 December 2024
We’re looking for a finance professional who is part professionally qualified, with experience to deliver a full range of high quality financial management and accountancy services to clients. As Senior Finance Officer, you will support the team with your strong technical and analytical skills, to provide financial insight and advice on large complex budgets. You will support the team to advise and influence the service to make informed financial decisions, which will have a direct impact on service delivery.
The role will involve working with Adult Social Care budgets. The service is experiencing a period of unprecedented change, where people are living longer resulting in significant growth in demand for social care services. Since we want to make sure West Sussex is a great place to live, the County Council recognises this challenge and has an ambitious improvement programme. At the heart of this is an aim to promote independence by enabling people to stay healthier and live in their homes and communities for longer. Linking financial data with performance information, and with a naturally enquiring mind, you will play an essential role in supporting the service to build a sustainable model for delivering adult social care services.
If you are looking for a diverse and exciting role which offers you the opportunity to utilise your technical skills, build collaborative relationships with the service and support the team more widely to add value, then we would like to hear from you.
What experience and skills are we looking for?
You will be able to demonstrate the following skills and experience (this criteria will be used in shortlisting candidates):
Key Skills:
1. Good analytical skills in order to interpret complex financial information and develop practical financial, operational, and budgetary advice for
2. Strong problem-solving skills with the ability to anticipate problems and resolve issues independently, planning solutions and making sound pragmatic decisions which will have a direct impact on the business/ service.
3. Strong customer focus with the ability to work as a key client contact and provide a professional service to meet their
4. Developed communication and interpersonal skills in order to interact effectively with a range of clients and create and maintain effective working relationships. Including the ability to challenge, advise and guide clients to understand technical information and influence them to make sound financial, budgetary or performance
5. Strong attention to detail, with the ability to produce highly accurate work independently which stands up to public and audit scrutiny.
Qualifications and/or experience:
6. Part CCAB (Consultative Committee of Accountancy Bodies) or CIMA qualified, or equivalent qualification or experience which demonstrates that level of applied and theoretical knowledge in accounting plus knowledge of the related systems, procedures
7. Advanced knowledge of MS Excel and comprehensive knowledge of SAP Finance or equivalent IT finance package. Sound and accurate overall IT knowledge including Microsoft
8. Relevant advanced theoretical or organisational knowledge of systems, procedures and policies associated with operating a demanding accountancy or other financial
9. Experience of working in a customer orientated
10. Relevant experience working in an accounting environment (preferably in a local government setting) demonstrating a good understanding and working knowledge of systems and practices relating to finance and accounting.
11. Experience providing specialist advice to managers or customer, including explaining complex financial information or other similar technical information.
12. Some experience supervising and supporting other or providing mentoring/coaching/on-the-job training to colleagues to maximise their specific capabilities.
Applicants who are keen to take the next step in their career are strongly encouraged to apply.
As well as adding real value to our service users and our communities, as an employer we recognise our employees are central in being able to achieve this. To recognise this we want to help support your development and provide an great place to work ensuring you can fulfil your full potential, have access to a range of benefits including:
13. an excellent, employers pension contribution at 19.70%
14. generous holiday entitlement of 27 days plus bank holidays and opportunity to buy additional leave
15. a range of flexible working options, depending on your job role
16. maternity, paternity, dependency and adoption leave
17. volunteering opportunities
18. training and development opportunities, including coaching and mentoring
19. a range of discounts giving our staff access to hundreds of offers; groceries, travel, cinema tickets, days out, leisure activities, high street retailers and the opportunity to save over £1,000 a year through our West Sussex Choices benefits platform (see our Staff discounts page i f you are a business looking to offer a discount)
20. health and wellbeing benefits including access to our Employee Assistance Programme, Mental Health First Aiders and Voluntary Health Cash Plans