Strategy Lead
Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government
Apply before 11:55 pm on Wednesday 2nd October 2024
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About the job
Job summary
We are looking for a dynamic strategy Lead to help grow and shape the new Strategy Unit within the Safer Greener Buildings group. The Group was established following the tragedy of the Grenfell Tower fire to make sure that buildings are safe, and that residents feel safe in them, now and in the future. The £10bn remediation programme is one of the largest programmes in government with significant political and stakeholder interest. We are making a tangible real-word impact by fixing the errors of the past and shaping the future of the built environment.
The Strategy Unit is a welcoming and collaborative place to work, leading on innovative strategic thinking, and dealing with urgent, complex, and challenging policy considerations and political demands. The Strategy Unit plays an important role in setting strategic direction, ensuring ministerial priorities are delivered, anticipating threats to the portfolio and delivering proactive strategy development. It has a critical role in long-term strategic planning and horizon scanning, as well as building and promoting a positive culture and ways of working across the remediation portfolio.
As a strategy lead, you will lead teams to provide direction to the programme’s strategy and help solve the most challenging and impactful problems that it faces. You will also work with the Head of the Strategy Unit to build strategic capacity across teams and engage with the Group’s senior leadership to understand and tackle challenges to making buildings and residents safe as quickly as possible. You will be responsible for developing and maintaining the portfolio strategy, undertaking strategic analysis, strategic coordination and leading critical projects. You will normally lead two projects: a reactive project, responding at pace to urgent departmental priorities, and a proactive project, undertaking original research to shape the Group’s strategic direction and to ensure it meets its strategic objectives. You will regularly collaborate with senior civil servants across the different teams throughout the group, whilst managing your own project teams.
The role is a great opportunity to gain experience working across a broad range of policy areas with significant exposure to senior decision making. We work across programmes, with policy and strategy teams across the department and across Whitehall. We are a small and friendly team and are looking for an enthusiastic team player who will work collaboratively and confidently lead teams.
Job description
- Direction setting for the remediation portfolio, working regularly and closely with senior civil servants to achieve this by developing and maintaining the remediation strategy which underpins the remediation portfolio, theory of change and delivery plans. Using strategy tools, methodologies and strategic analysis to proactively adapt it. This includes ongoing development of strategic objectives and collaborating on departmental objectives.
- Working collaboratively with teams across the department at pace to spot opportunities, risks and interdependencies. Keep abreast of and react to developments across government by developing and maintaining tools such as horizon scanning to generate a strong understanding of developments coming down the track to support decision-making. Grip emerging issues and identify solutions.
- Incubate and test new ideas. Lead priority strategy projects to solve strategic problems across the portfolio.
- Leadership and line management of multidisciplinary teams to deliver objectives, ensuring they feel supported to deliver under pressure whilst maintaining an inclusive environment. Seek continuous improvement.
- Establish and maintain good working relationships with Private Offices, programme teams, policy teams, central strategy teams and others.
We will run an information session on Wednesday 25th September for applicants 9-9.45am. ( Please use the link below.)
Information session link: Microsoft Teams Join the meeting now Meeting ID: 337 687 878 700 Passcode: EpCALw
Person specification
- Critical and creative thinking. You will possess the ability to creatively source evidence and form reflective, well informed judgements on this basis. You are confident at getting into the nitty gritty detail as well as standing back and seeing the big picture. You are adept at developing strategic solutions to complex situations where there could be competing interests or incomplete information.
- Strong organisational skills. You have the ability to effectively manage multiple, sometimes conflicting priorities and workstreams whilst delivering high-quality results. You are experienced at delivering outputs at pace, reprioritising less urgent work when necessary. You will sometimes coordinate work delivered by others outside of your line management chain so will need to set out clear processes and workplans, communicating these to ensure delivery.
- Excellent interpersonal skills. You are skilled at developing positive, trusting relationships with a range of stakeholders at all levels and across organisational boundaries. You collaborate effectively with others to build consensus, influence outcomes and challenge consensus when necessary. As strategy lead you are expected to fulfil a critical friend function for other teams and business areas.
- Leadership experience, covering two elements. First, you should be able to provide cross-cutting leadership across teams and feel confident providing challenge to seniors when appropriate. Second, you should be able to provide leadership to your project team maintaining a strong focus on team wellbeing and morale. As a strategy lead you will deliver on complex issues calmly, professionally and at pace; and be committed to developing and empowering your colleagues.
Desirable criteria
- Experience in implementing strategy methodologies and tools such as theory of change, systems thinking, futures thinking, scenario modelling etc.
- Experience leading projects across multiple teams, a department or organisation.
- Experience working with qualitative and quantitative research methodologies to surface and interrogate evidence to achieve outcomes.
Benefits
- 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%
Things you need to know
Selection process details
As part of our pre-employment checking process we will be using your CV to confirm your job history. Please note that by providing us with your CV you are consenting to us using the information enclosed as part of the checking process.
CV and Cover Letter Declaration
We recruit based on your knowledge and skills, and not background, gender or ethnicity - this is called name blind recruitment.
Please remove references to your:
- name/title
- educational institutions
- age
- gender
- email address
- postal address
- phone number
- nationality/immigration status
You will need to merge your CV and covering letter into one document. When submitting your application Applied will ask you to upload a CV, when doing this you should upload your merged document of your CV and covering letter.
Most of our campaigns utilise multiple assessors and so it is possible that your application would be viewed by different assessors.
At sift, through your CV and covering letter we will be assessing:
In your CV and covering letter, please include:
a. why you are interested in the role, you will be assessed on this alongside the essential criteria
b. how you meet the essential skills and experience required.
Your cover letter should address the essential criteria as set out in the full person specification. These being: Critical and creative thinking; Strong organisational skills; Excellent interpersonal skills; Leadership experience. Each essential criteria should be evidenced with one developed example from your previous experience.
At interview stage we will be assessing:
Experience - Experience questions will be based around the essential skills and criteria as listed in the job description
Candidates invited to interview will be expected to prepare a presentation. They will also be invited to complete a written exercise. Details of both of these tasks will be sent on invitation to interview.
In full the campaign will test the below Success Profile Elements:
Experience: Yes - Experience questions will be based around the essential skills and criteria as listed in the job description
Please contact the vacancy manager if you have any questions about the role.
We do not consider direct CV applications – you must apply for this role via the application link on Civil Service Jobs.
Please note that near miss offers may be made at the lower grade to candidates who do not meet the grade criteria for this campaign.
Grade 7 salary
- The salary for this role is £57,091 (London) or £51,934 (National).
- For existing civil servants, the usual policy on level transfer and promotion will apply and is non-negotiable. If you apply for a role that requires a transfer of location, for example if you are transferring from London to a National location, your salary will be adjusted in accordance with our policy on transfer between HQ pay ranges.
Please note that the average employer pension contribution is based upon the National minimum salary for this role. Should your agreed starting salary for this role be different, the average employer pension contribution will be calculated accordingly. If you are a Secondee, this will not apply as you will remain on your home organisation’s terms and conditions.
Benefits
Transfers across the Civil Service on or after 4 October 2018:
Any move to MHCLG from another employer will mean you can no longer access childcare vouchers. This includes moves between government departments. You may however be eligible for other government schemes, including Tax-Free Childcare. Determine your eligibility at https://www.childcarechoices.gov.uk.
For further information about the benefits available to MHCLG employees, please see the attached Candidate Pack.
Location
- London
- Wolverhampton
- Birmingham
- Bristol
- Leeds
- Darlington*
There may be opportunities for candidates to work flexibly depending on the business needs. This will be discussed with the vacancy manager on a case-by-case basis if you are successful for the role.
*Please note: The Darlington Economic Campus is a pioneering new cross-government hub which will bring together people across departments and public organisations to play an active role in the most important economic issues of the day. The work of the Campus will make a real difference to people both across the UK and internationally. There will be substantial career opportunities and exciting prospects - a career at the Campus means you will be working at the heart of Government, with access to the benefits and fantastic opportunities offered by the civil service.
For further information on the DEC, please take a look at the attached DEC candidate pack.
Sift and Interview dates
Applications will be sifted on a rolling basis with interview dates to be confirmed. All interviews are currently being held remotely via videocall.
Reserve List
In the event that we identify more appointable candidates than we currently have posts available, we will hold applicant details on a reserve list for a period of 6 months from which further appointments can be made. This may include roles at a lower grade. Candidates placed on a reserve list will be informed of this. Those candidates who do not wish to remain on the reserve list should contact recruitment@communities.gov.uk to be removed from the reserve list.
CTC (Counter-terrorism Clearance):
Important note
Successful candidates for roles based in our 2 Marsham Street building must meet the security requirements before they can be appointed. The level of security needed is counter-terrorist check and the process can take up to 8 weeks to complete.
Please note that successful candidates will need to pass the CTC security checks – this requires you to have been resident in the UK for the past 3 years. Please refer to the MHCLG Notes on Security Clearance section of our Candidate Pack for further information on Counter Terrorism Clearance (CTC).
Candidates should also note that with effect from 1st August 2018 the department will also check all applicants who are successful at interview, against the Internal Fraud Database (IFD) held by the Cabinet Office. In accordance with the Civil Service Internal Fraud Policy, any applicant who is included on the IFD will be refused employment by MHCLG. Please see the Candidate Pack for further information on the Internal Fraud Database.
Before starting your application it’s very important to make sure that you are eligible to apply and meet the Civil Service nationality requirements. All candidates are expected to read the information provided in the MHCLG candidate pack regarding nationality requirements and rules
Candidate Pack Information
Please see attached Candidate pack for further information.
Internal Fraud Database
The Internal Fraud function of the Fraud, Error, Debt and Grants Function at the Cabinet Office processes details of civil servants who have been dismissed for committing internal fraud, or who would have been dismissed had they not resigned. The Cabinet Office receives the details from participating government organisations of civil servants who have been dismissed, or who would have been dismissed had they not resigned, for internal fraud. In instances such as this, civil servants are then banned for 5 years from further employment in the civil service. The Cabinet Office then processes this data and discloses a limited dataset back to MHCLG as a participating government organisations. MHCLG then carry out the pre employment checks so as to detect instances where known fraudsters are attempting to reapply for roles in the civil service. In this way, the policy is ensured and the repetition of internal fraud is prevented.
For more information please see- Internal Fraud Register
Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.
Security
Nationality requirements
Working for the Civil Service
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).
Diversity and Inclusion
Apply and further information
Contact point for applicants
Job contact :
- Name : Jack Hampton
- Email : jack.hampton@communities.gov.uk
Recruitment team
- Email : recruitment@communities.gov.uk