HR and Estates Director
Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency
Apply before 5:00 pm on Friday 27th September 2024
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About the job
Job summary
HR and Estates Director
Salary: c£85,000
Swansea (with travel to Birmingham)
We are a multi-award winning executive agency of the Department for Transport (DfT). With over 6,000 staff our organisation touches almost all households across the UK. We are responsible for maintaining over 52 million driver records and over 46 million vehicle records. Last year we handled more than 4 billion interactions, and dealt with 95.5 million individual customer transactions, of which around 84% were processed through our digital channels. Our aim is to provide the most efficient and effective services to meet the needs of a diverse but ever-growing digitally aware customer base, while recognising the needs of the important minority through assisted digital services or other channels.
As our new HR and Estates Director and a key member of both our Executive Team and Board, you will play a pivotal role in the realisation of our continued ambition to be a data driven, customer-centric, dynamic, digital organisation which provides high quality, innovative and secure by design services. Through the development and execution of a new People and Estates strategy you will ensure that we continue to modernise our working practices, invest in our people and drive a high-performing and inclusive culture that sees the DVLA as a great place to work.
We are looking for highly experienced HR or Estates professionals, who have significant experience of strategic leadership at scale, in unionised environments. As an expert in your field, you will be able to demonstrate an ability to be a credible voice across the whole portfolio (HR, Estates, Health & Safety). As a senior leader of our organisation, you will be tenacious, collegiate and resilient – able to transcend your direct role, to provide a valuable and significant contribution to the transformation and leadership of our entire organisation.
Job description
The HR and Estates Director has overall responsibility for the provision of HR and Estates Management services to DVLA.
They are a key member of both DVLA’s Executive Team and Agency Board, having a strong understanding of the Agency’s strategic objectives and their people and estate implications, providing professional advice on HR and estates matters to inform decisions. The role holder provides leadership to the organisation to ensure operational delivery and DVLA’s transformation agenda are supported by a high performing workforce and an enabling estate.
Key responsibilities
The HR and Estates Director will be responsible for:
- acting as a corporate leader to the whole organisation. As a key member of the Executive Team and Agency Board, the HR and Estates Director will be fully involved in the decision making and directional activities of Boards
- developing and implementing the DVLA people strategy for its 6,000 people to drive the people and cultural change required to adapt to the transformation of DVLA’s services, wider government strategy and the wider changing world of work
- driving a high performing culture and continuing DVLA’s journey to create an inclusive culture that is congruent with a modern digital organisation and the high standards and values expected of the Civil Service.
- building a strong talent pipeline, proactively managing our internal talent and recruiting and retaining great people with the skills and capability we need for the future.
- developing DVLA’s workforce strategy, producing strategic workforce plans and overseeing the implementation of the people change required to meet those plans.
- being a member of the DfT group HR model, supporting the strategy to work closely together on cross departmental people matters and sharing best practice.
- developing the DVLA Estates strategy to align with strategic workforce plans and government’s property strategy.
- developing and implementing modern policies and procedures across the HR, estates and health and safety functions which comply with the law, assuring that they are followed correctly and rigorously managing risk.
- providing strategic advice to business areas on all people and estates matters.
- monitoring and reporting on a range of people and estates performance indicators.
- leading on the delivery of estates services via third party providers and delivering our sustainability objectives including the achievement of the Greening Government Commitments.
- delivering the physical security service to DVLA sites.
- overseeing the business continuity management framework.
The role holder has 3 direct reports with overall responsibility for 220 people.
Person specification
This role requires a highly experienced HR or Estates Management professional who can demonstrate experience of leading a HR or Estates function in an organisation with similar people and estates challenges in size and complexity.
Essential criteria:
- A strategic and inspirational future thinking leader – background and knowledge in strategic leadership and senior decision making in an organisation of similar size and complexity, with a strong customer focus. A dedicated, motivational, and collaborative leader who builds strong, inclusive, high performing teams and cross-team working relationships.
- An expert in leading either a people or estates function – with extensive knowledge and experience that evidences the ability to be a credible voice across the portfolio to enable the development of the area, and to drive continuous improvements to ensure the delivery of a quality service. Experience of leading the driving, implementing and embedding of organisation wide change in a transforming organisation, enabling a creative, innovative environment.
- A senior advisor – experience of working with Boards, Committees, and senior stakeholders. Can influence and make a positive impact with a range of senior stakeholders both internally and externally, adopting an open can do approach and unafraid to make decisions when necessary, with a strong focus on data driven, evidence based decisions.
- A strong communicator – highly credible communication and influencing skills, both in writing and in person, with experience of building strong stakeholder relationships, high emotional intelligence and engendering trusted relationships that achieve buy-in and commitment. This will include working effectively with suppliers to drive service excellence and experience of working with trade unions.
Benefits
Benefits
Whatever your role, we take your career and development seriously, and want to enable you to build a really successful career with DVLA and wider Civil Service. It is crucial that our employees have the right skills to develop their careers and meet the challenges ahead, and you’ll benefit from regular
performance and development reviews to ensure this development is ongoing. As a Civil Service employee, you’ll be entitled to a large range of benefits.
These include:
- 25 days annual leave on entry, increasing on a sliding scale to 30 days after 5 years’ service. This is in addition to 8 public holidays.
- a competitive contributory pension scheme that you can enter as soon as you join where we will make a significant contribution to the cost of your pension; where your contributions come out of your salary before any tax is taken; and where your pension will continue to provide valuable benefits for you and your family if you are too ill to continue to work or die before you retire.
- generous paid maternity and paternity leave which is notably more than the statutory minimum offered by many other employers.
- Childcare Working parents can open an online childcare account and for every £8 they pay in, the government adds £2, up to a maximum of £2000 a year for each child or £4000 for a disabled child. Parents then use the funds to pay for registered childcare. Existing employees may be able to continue to claim childcare vouchers.
- interest-free loans allowing you to spread the cost of an annual travel season ticket or a new bicycle as well as access to the government’s Cycle to Work scheme.
- occupational sick pay, employee assistance services and health and wellbeing initiatives such as flu vaccines and health screening.
Things you need to know
Selection process details
Application For an initial discussion about the roles, please get in touch with our recruitment advisers at Miles Advisory via andrea.trainer@miles-advisory.com or june.wang@miles-advisory.com To apply for this post, you will need to complete the online application process by no later than 17:00pm on 27 September 2024. All applications must be submitted using the link https://ma-appointments.co.uk/dvlahrestates/how-to-apply/ Your application should include: 1. a CV setting out your career history, with key responsibilities and achievements. Please ensure you have provided reasons for any gaps within the last two years 2. a Statement of Suitability (no longer than two pages) explaining how you consider your personal skills, qualities and experience provide evidence of your suitability for the role, with particular reference to the criteria in the person specification Failure to submit both documents (CV and Statement of Suitability) will mean the panel only have limited information on which to assess your application against the criteria in the person specification. Please ensure that both documents contain your full name. As part of the online application process, you will be asked a number of diversity- related questions. If you do not wish to provide a declaration on any of the particular characteristics, you will have the option to select ‘prefer not to say’. All monitoring data will be treated in the strictest confidence and will not be provided to the selection panel. If you do not receive acknowledgement of your application within 48 hours, please contact emma.roxby@miles-advisory.com Longlist The panel will then assess your application to select those demonstrating the best fit with the role by considering the evidence you have provided against the essential criteria set out in the Person Specification section. Failure to address any or all of these may affect your application. The timeline later in this pack indicates the date by which decisions are expected to be made and all candidates will be advised of the outcome as soon as possible thereafter. Candidates selected for longlisting will be invited for a preliminary discussion with Miles Advisory to further explore their skills and experience. Candidates applying under the Disability Confident, Redeployment or Veterans Scheme who meet the minimum selection criteria in the job specification are guaranteed an interview. Please complete the relevant parts in the application system if applying under these schemes. Shortlist The panel will review reports on those longlisted and will select a shortlist of candidates whose applications best demonstrate suitability for the role, by considering the evidence provided against the essential criteria set out in the Person Specification. Assessment If you are shortlisted, you will be asked to take part in a series of psychometric tests and a staff engagement exercise. These assessments will not result in a pass or fail decision. Rather, they are designed to support the panel’s decision making and highlight areas for the panel to explore further at interview. You will then be asked to attend an interview in order to have a more in-depth discussion of your previous experience and professional competence. You will be asked to do a presentation on a topic given to you in advance. Full details of the assessment process will be made available to shortlisted candidates. Offer Regardless of the outcome, we will notify all candidates as soon as possible. We will send you a copy of any report for any assessment that you may have undergone as part of the recruitment process and undertake a staff engagement exercise. Indicative timelinePlease note that these dates are only indicative at this stage and could be subject to change. If you are unable to meet these timeframes, please let us know in your application letter. The anticipated timetable is as follows: Advert closing date: 27 September 2024 Expected longlist announcement: w/c 14 October 2024 Expected shortlist announcement: w/c 28 October 2024 Final interviews: 6 December 2024 The interviews will be conducted face to face in Swansea. Candidates are asked to note the above timetable, exercising flexibility through the recruitment and selection process. |
Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.
As part of accepting this role you will be agreeing to the expected assignment duration set out above. This will not result in a contractual change to your terms and conditions. Please note this is an expectation only, it is not something which is written into your terms and conditions or indeed which the employing organisation or you are bound by. It will depend on your personal circumstances at a particular time and business needs, for example, would not preclude any absence like family friendly leave. It is nonetheless an important expectation, which is why we ask you to confirm you agree to the assignment duration set out above.
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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
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Contact point for applicants
Job contact :
- Name : Miles Advisory
- Email : andrea.trainer@miles-advisory.com
Recruitment team
- Email : dftscsresourcing@dft.gov.uk
Further information
If you are not satisfied with the response you receive from the Department, you can contact the Civil Service Commission: Visit the Civil Service Commission website Here
