70180 - Corporate Assurance Officer

We encourage applications from people from all backgrounds and aim to have a workforce that represents the wider society that we serve. We pride ourselves on being an employer of choice. We champion diversity, inclusion and wellbeing and aim to create a workplace where everyone feels valued and a sense of belonging. To find out more about how we do this visit: https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/ministry-of-justice/about/equality-and-diversity.

The Legal Aid Agency

We are an executive agency of the Ministry of Justice (MoJ). We provide civil and criminal legal aid and advice in England and Wales to help people deal with their legal problems.  

Our people are at the heart of achieving excellence. Employing around 1,200 colleagues across England and Wales, we feel proud to have some of the best People Survey results in the Civil Service. 

Our LAA commitment to Diversity and Inclusion

The LAA is committed to diversity and inclusion and we positively promote flexible working, including job shares. 

We will consider all applications on merit regardless of age, disability, gender identity, sexual orientation, socio-economic background, religion, ethnicity, preferred working pattern and except for exceptional circumstances your working location. 

As a Disability Confident organisation, we will offer a guaranteed interview to candidates with a disability who meet the essential criteria for this role. Under the Equality Act 2010 a disability is defined as a physical or mental impairment which has a substantial and long-term adverse effect on your ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities which has lasted, or is expected to last, at least 12 months. 

If you are responding to a role within the Legal Aid Agency and would like to be considered under the guaranteed interview, please indicate this in your application and let us know of any reasonable adjustments you may require during the sift or later selection processes. 

Corporate Services

The Corporate Services directorate works across the LAA to help shape and enable the priorities of the Chief Executive and Executive Leadership Team, providing support on areas such as strategy, data analysis, risk, assurance, communications, people and capability to all other parts of the LAA. 

Corporate Assurance, Risk and Secretariat Team (CARS)

Business continuity ensures the LAA has the resilience to continue delivering our services while experiencing or recovering from an event impacting on people, places or systems.

The CARS team combines the 5 functions of Health & Safety, Information & Data Security, Business Continuity, Risk and Secretariat to collectively strengthen and support the LAA’s governance, our assurance strategies, risk management processes and provide support to the LAA’s senior governance forums including the Board and Executive Leadership Team.

Job Summary

The Corporate Assurance Officer is a key member of the LAA’s business continuity function, supporting other members of the team in ensuring the LAA has robust business continuity processes that are regularly reviewed, updated and tested. The role will also work across the CARS team providing support to other functions including Health and Safety, Information Assurance and Risk, with particular emphasis on support for incident management, meetings and response processes.

Key Responsibilities:

•    Working with other business continuity colleagues to arrange, facilitate and review business continuity exercises, ensuring plans are reviewed and tested on an annual basis. 
•    Working with plan owners to support their use of the Business Continuity Message System (BCMS) system, providing training and support as needed. 
•    Supporting site leads with the BCMS, ensuring records remain up to date and regularly tested. 
•    Providing business continuity advice and support with low impact and near-miss incidents, escalating high impact incidents in line with incident response processes
•    Monitoring, managing and responding to Corporate Assurance inboxes, acting as a point of contact and escalating queries where necessary
•    Support CARS team with LAA wide project work to improve LAA assurance and governance arrangements or implement MoJ policy across LAA.  
•    Provide support to National Health & Safety Committee, Information, Risk and Security Working Group, Risk Working Group, National Crisis Management Team and LAA’s various incident response units when needed. Support will include taking minutes, coordinating meetings, maintaining action logs and facilitating the work of these committees and teams. 
•    Other work as required to support the overall objectives of CARS. 

Essential Knowledge, Experience and skills

1.    Excellent organisational and planning skills;
2.    The ability to prioritise effectively to deliver at pace to tight deadlines and competing priorities;
3.    Effective interpersonal and influencing skills to engage and build relationships with key stakeholders;
4.    A good team player with a drive for continuous improvement
5.    Attention to detail with a commitment to delivering excellence in all work
6.    Experience of effectively using Microsoft O365 (Teams, SharePoint, Outlook, Excel and Word)

Desirable Knowledge, Experience and skills

•    Knowledge of LAA business processes
•    Knowledge of LAA stakeholders
•    Experience of Business Continuity or Incident Response

Assessment approach 

Application Process

To apply please provide a statement of suitability showing how you meet the essential criteria, numbers 1 - 5 in no more than 750 words.

Interview / assessment Process

If you are successful through the application stage, you will be invited to an interview via Microsoft Teams where you will be assessed against the following: 

•    Strengths relevant to the role
•    The following Behaviours: 
•    Delivering at Pace

Regularly review the success of activities in the team to identify barriers to progress or challenging objectives. Identify who and what is required to ensure success, set clear goals and areas of responsibility and continually assess workloads considering individual needs. Follow relevant policies, procedures and legislation to complete your work. Ensure colleagues have the correct tools and resources available to them to do their jobs. Have a positive and focused attitude to achieving outcomes, despite any setbacks. Regularly check performance against objectives, making suggestions for improvement or taking corrective action where necessary. Ensure that colleagues are supported where tasks are challenging.

•    Working Together

Develop a range of contacts outside own team and identify opportunities to share knowledge, information and learning. Show genuine interest when listening to others. Contribute to an inclusive working environment where all opinions and challenges are listened to and all individual needs are taken into account. Ensure it is clear that bullying, harassment and discrimination are unacceptable. Offer support and help to colleagues when in need, including consideration of your own and their wellbeing. Change ways of working to aid cooperation within and between teams in order to achieve results.

•    Managing a Quality Service

Work with customers to understand their needs and expectations. Create clear plans and set priorities which meet the needs of both the customer and the business. Clearly explain to customers what can be done. Keep colleagues and stakeholders fully informed of plans, possibilities and progress. Identify common problems that affect service, report them and find possible solutions. Deliver good customer service which balances quality and cost effectiveness.

•    Your experience of using Microsoft O365 applications

Shortlisting is planned for week commencing 13th February 2023

Interviews are planned for weeks commencing 27th February and 6th March 2023. 

If you would like more information on this opportunity, please contact – adrian.mcarthur-johnston@justice.gov.uk

Complaints procedure

If you have any complaints about this recruitment activity, please share your concerns by emailing LAACentralRecruitmentFunction@justice.gov.uk initially. We aim to respond to any complaint within 10 working days.