Business Operations Administrator

Job summary

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) is the UK’s largest producer of official statistics, covering a range of key economic, social and demographic topics. These include measuring changes in the value of the UK economy, estimating the size, geographic distribution, and characteristics of the population, and providing indicators of price inflation, employment, earnings, crime, and migration.

Business Data Operations Division (BDOD) is a large and diverse area of 400 staff collecting economic statistics survey data from over a million businesses a year. It is the foundation for most of the ONS core economic outputs, such as Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and Balance of Payments (BOP) and as such is a great place to build your career at ONS.

As a Business Operations Administrator, you will be a member of the Operational Delivery Profession (ODP).

ODP is the largest profession in the Civil Service. ODP’s 200,000+ members work in a wide range of operational delivery roles across government, providing essential services that support and protect UK citizens at home and overseas. They help to make ONS a great place to work.

As a member, ODP supports you by providing learning and development opportunities, career pathways, tools and resources to help develop your skills and progress your career. This is an exciting opportunity to join a modern, innovative and inclusive Civil Service profession that sits at the heart of public service delivery.

Job description

As a Business Operations Administrator, your primary role will be to collect and validate a range of monthly, quarterly and annual business survey data. Obtaining timely and quality data and recording follow-up information to support any changes in that data will be key. Customer/stakeholder engagement is also very important in this role.

A typical day will involve working autonomously to prioritise your work, making informed decisions relating to changes in data through interpreting that data and investigating anomalies. You will be expected to document all information gathered via our internal IT systems and databases and escalate any issues that you are unable to resolve.

The focus of the work may differ between posts. For example, there may be a focus on analysis, building relationship management with respondents, enforcement activities as well as supporting activities such as occasional post opening on site. You will also be expected to take part in a 5pm cover rota.

Responsibilities:

• Provide a professional and helpful interface with respondents using a variety of communication channels (i.e. telephone and written correspondence).
• Obtain and query data and deal with customer queries by telephone and in writing.
• Record all actions taken on our internal databases, maintaining accuracy and writing clearly in plain simple language.
• Make informed decisions based on the analysis of data and knowledge obtained from the Respondent as opposed to opinions or assumptions.
• Working flexibly as part of a team, maintaining a professional relationship and engagement with colleagues and customers alike.
• Making decisions relating to data changes, interpreting data and investigating anomalies.
• Ensure work is accurate and completed in a timely manner by planning and prioritising your own workload to avoid unnecessary delays or impact.
• Contribute to process reviews and continuously look for ways to improve working practices and systems and escalate issues when required.
• Be a positive role model, responding positively to challenge and change.
• Actively take responsibility for building and maintaining own training and development, reviewing progress regularly with line manager.

Person specification

Please note as part of this role, there is a requirement that you provide cover until 5pm on a rota basis

Essential criteria:

• Confident use of the telephone and the ability to communicate effectively in writing via messaging platforms.
• Good IT skills with the ability to learn new systems and ways of working.
• Ability to work independently and as part of a wider team to enable strong working relationships.
• Strong organisational skills with the ability to prioritise, be flexible and adaptable to change to deliver within tight deadlines.

Behaviours

We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:

• Changing and Improving
• Communicating and Influencing
• Working Together

Location

ONS operates a flexible hybrid working model across the UK, with colleagues linked to one of our contractual locations in Newport or Titchfield (Fareham)

All colleagues are required to work from their contractually allocated site for at least 40% of their working time

Induction will take place over 2 weeks and some of this time will take place on-site.