Army HQ, Andover: We are passionate about Smarter Working and believe that a combination of flexible working practices, digital technology and modern workspaces will give you the opportunity to enjoy a healthy work-life balance, while ensuring you deliver your outcomes effectively and efficiently – we expect you to know where to be to have the most impact, balancing your individual needs with that of your team and the organisation. However, recognising the benefits of face-to-face working, especially for new joiners, there is an expectation that you would be in the office at least 60% of the time (3 days a week).
About the job
Job summaryThe Ministry of Defence employs over 50,000 Civil Servants. Within that, the Army Top Level Budget (TLB) employs around 7,000 MOD Civil Servants located at over 300 locations. Ours is a diverse workforce, with roles ranging from trainers, human resources, teachers, and psychologists to storekeepers, financiers, project and programme managers, and policy secretariat staff. There are many different functions and professions delivering key outputs for the Army. As such, using data to aid understanding of our workforce is vital.
The Army’s Director Resources is responsible for planning and leading the Army Top Level Budget TLB and ensuring that decisions at the highest level of the Army are taken with full understanding of their financial implications.
This is an exciting opportunity to lead the Army Scrutiny and Approvals Team (ASAT) based at HQ Army Andover. ASAT supports the Director Resources in the scrutiny and approval of Army-funded investment decisions, both equipment and non-equipment, from project inception to final approval. ASAT is responsible for improving the quality of Investment Appraisals and Business Cases across the Army TLB as well as providing an independent non-advocate scrutiny function within the TLB. The team is also responsible for the underpinning process and policy guidance and aims to provide advice, assistance, and share best practices to projects of any value.
The post will lead a high-performing, diverse team of five, reporting to the Army Strategic Finance Manager. We will provide you with an exciting and worthwhile career supporting the Armed Services and will actively encourage and support further training and development.
This position is advertised at 37 hours per week. You will be required to work at Army HQ, Andover office a minimum of 3 days per week, being flexible to support the business needs.
Job description
This is a challenging leadership position that will play a key role in the Army’s ambitious modernisation programme. The main responsibilities will include:
* Providing services as a Scrutiny and Approvals Subject Matter Expert:
o Provide advice and guidance to business areas across the Army on the construction of Business Cases and Investment Appraisals.
o Undertaking the financial scrutiny of complex or high-value Business Cases and Investment Appraisals, in support of the Finance Leadership Team and investment approvals committees.
o Understanding future requirements, anticipating, and planning for peaks in activity or changes in requirements, considering and adopting the appropriate mitigations.
o 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.
* Stakeholder engagement and collaboration:
o Providing support to the Army Director Resources, as chair of the Army Investment Committee, ensuring key financial aspects are highlighted where required in advance of committees being held.
o Providing secretariat support to the Army Investment Committee, ensuring the required information is available in a timely manner and disseminating the outcome from the committee.
o Engaging and collaboratively working with Army Finance Business Partners, communicating on key aspects of financial scrutiny and approval activity in support of their area(s) of responsibility.
o Building and maintaining effective working relationships with the specialists within other MOD organisations and Strategic Finance Investment Appraisals (SFIA) in MOD Head Office.
o Ensuring timely and complete submissions to approvals committees whilst remaining aligned on specified content, formatting, and guidance.
* Continuous improvement:
o Dedicating time to sharing best practice and lessons learnt, encouraging your team to collaborate across MOD to solve common issues, ensuring adherence to MOD standards.
o Seeking feedback on the services provided, testing, and evaluating their effectiveness, whilst assessing the level of effort to deliver against the benefit received.
o Continuously striving 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.
o Managing the input and support to wider Army and MOD change programmes.
* Leading the ASAT team:
o Management of team members, empowering, motivating, and coaching to enable effective delivery.
o Supporting individuals’ personal development, careers and developing leadership skills within their team.
o Being open to challenge and new ideas, sharing of knowledge and experience, encouraging others through building a supportive team environment.
o Developing and embedding the use of standardised processes to deliver a consistent output to customers.
o Provide direction on contentious issues within ASAT’s area of responsibility, referring upwards where decisions relate to significant issues of policy, resource allocation or management of work area.
Person specification
Essential Criteria:
* Strong leadership skills with the ability to motivate and develop a high-performing team. Promoting consistent excellence in the team's output whilst balancing working at pace to manage a full workload with conflicting short and long-term priorities.
* Experience of building and maintaining effective relationships with a wide range of stakeholders, including senior staff, both within the organisation and across boundaries.
* Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to simplify and articulate complex information to a broad base of recipients.
* Ability to analyse and accurately interpret data from various sources to support decisions. Present reasonable conclusions from a wide range of complex and sometimes incomplete evidence.
Desirable Criteria
* Given the high profile and challenging nature of this post it is desirable that the applicant has previous relevant experience of scrutiny and approvals.
* Qualified with CCAB, CIMA or equivalent or working towards qualification and experience in relevant finance roles.
Behaviours
We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:
* Making Effective Decisions
* Leadership
* Communicating and Influencing
* Working Together
* Managing a Quality Service
We only ask for evidence of these behaviours on your application form:
* Leadership
* Managing a Quality Service
Benefits
Alongside your salary of £59,690, Ministry of Defence contributes £17,292 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides.
* Learning and development tailored to your role
* An environment with flexible working options
* A culture encouraging inclusion and diversity
* A Civil Service pension with an employer contribution of 28.97%
Apply before 11:55 pm on Friday 7th February 2025. For further information, and to apply, please visit our website via the “Apply” button below. #J-18808-Ljbffr