Senior Personal Assistant in Preston

The role of an Executive Director Senior Personal Assistant is to work within the Senior Leadership Team to provide a confidential, effective, and efficient service to the Executive Directors, ensuring that procedures and services are completed to an agreed quality standard. An Executive Director Senior Personal Assistant may deal with complex issues, such as sensitive and confidential matters that might arise through the service. A high level of initiative is needed to pre-plan work, schedule appropriate diary appointments, and recommend the best course of action when prioritising mailboxes.

Excellent communication skills are essential as there is an expectation to interact regularly with internal and external 'customers' as well as high importance stakeholders. There may be an expectation for the Executive Director Senior Personal Assistant to provide day-to-day leadership and direction to the Director Personal Assistants and/or the Business Support Team within the Senior Leadership function, ensuring the objectives of the team are met and maintained daily.

Accountabilities/Responsibilities:

• Act as a first point of contact dealing with correspondence and phone calls.
• Proactively manage and coordinate the diary of the Executive Directors, prioritising and arranging internal and external meetings, ensuring appropriate briefing papers are prepared and provided.
• Manage the diary to ensure adequate opportunity for comfort breaks, responding to e-mails, staff, emergencies, relay messages, and commission work.
• Plan and organise travel and accommodation when required.
• Maintain effective filing and data storage including emails and retrieval systems ensuring the needs of the Executive Directors are met.
• Provide full personal assistant support by dealing with all correspondence and calls, drafting routine letters to a high standard, minute meetings, taking messages, and other administrative tasks as required to support the Executive Directors.
• Manage the administration and coordinate SLT meetings and other key meetings/projects including agenda planning, ensuring accurate minutes are taken, and maintaining action logs and follow-up.
• Responsible for all arrangements in relation to meetings required by the Executive Directors, including joint meetings with partner agencies, invitations, agendas, external speakers, liaison with facilities management/venues, taking and circulating minutes as necessary.
• Know the Executive Director's business to understand the hierarchy of contacts, local protocols, and issues of relative priority.
• Keep up to date with changes in policy and legislation within the Executive Director's service.
• Regularly communicate with other agencies and service providers to share information, build working relationships, and ensure joined-up service provision.
• Support and supervise the Director Personal Assistants and/or Business Support Officers on a day-to-day basis.
• Performance-manage the Director Personal Assistants and/or Business Support Officers, set targets, and manage performance issues through regular one-to-one and performance reviews.
• Delegate tasks where appropriate and ensure workload is shared amongst the team.
• Oversee the systems and processes.
• Provide guidance on handling difficult situations and responses to complex issues.
• Understand when to elevate problems when necessary.
• Ensure the VIP Function runs effectively and follows procedures, elevating to management when appropriate.

In addition to the skills, knowledge, and experience described above, you may be required to undertake a lower graded role as appropriate. Due to the changing nature of the business, this job description serves as a framework to outline the main areas of responsibility. It is not intended to be either prescriptive or exhaustive and will inevitably change. You may be required to undertake other activities of a similar nature that fall within the remit of your area of work, as directed by service management, which may entail working from other locations.

Other:

• We are committed to achieving equal opportunities in the way we deliver services to the community and in our employment arrangements. We expect all employees to understand and promote this policy in their work.
• All employees have a responsibility for their own health and safety and that of others when carrying out their duties and must help us to apply our general statement of health and safety policy.
• We put our customers' needs and expectations at the heart of all that we do. We expect our employees to have a full understanding of those needs and expectations so that we can provide high-quality, appropriate services at all times.

Person Specification:

• Qualifications: 4 GCSEs at Grade A*-C or 9-4, including English and Maths. Recognised qualification or broad practical experience in area of expertise or may be working towards a professional qualification or be of graduate entry level with sound practical experience.
• Experience: Experience of performance managing a small team of people. Excellent working knowledge of Microsoft programmes especially Outlook, PowerPoint, Word, and Excel. Experience of working alongside senior leadership in a supporting role. Experience of supporting a director as a PA and the functions that come with that, such as minute taking and diary management.
• Knowledge and skills: Strong organisational skills that reflect the ability to perform and prioritise multiple tasks seamlessly with excellent attention to detail. Detailed knowledge of own service area and relevant working systems, equipment, and/or IT software, plus an awareness of council policies and services related to the role. Very strong interpersonal skills and the ability to build relationships with stakeholders, including staff, directors, and external partners. Ability to anticipate problems, have foresight to prevent issues arising. Ability to use own initiative when acting on behalf of the Chief Executive/Directors. Problem-solving capability. Ability to influence others based on technical or professional expertise. Ability to build and maintain effective networks and relationships. Good written and verbal communication skills.
• Other: Commitment to equality and diversity. Commitment to health and safety. Display the LCC values and behaviours at all times and actively promote them in others.