Executive Assistant

We are the public body that looks after England’s historic environment. We champion historic places, helping people understand, value and care for them. Historic England has a fantastic opportunity for you to join us as an Executive Assistant to our IMT Director. The preferred location for this role is Swindon but we are open to candidates working in one of our National offices - Newcastle, York, Manchester, Birmingham, Swindon, Bristol, Portsmouth and Cambridge. This is a Full Time, fixed term contract until the 31st March 2026. We offer a wide benefits package including a competitive pension scheme starting at 28.97% employer contributions, a generous 28 days holiday, corporate discounts, free entry into English Heritage sites across the country and development opportunities to ensure you achieve your goals.

What you will be doing:

• You will play a key role in ensuring the IMT Director is fully organised and you will be the initial point of contact for all queries.
• You will work closely with other administrative colleagues to provide meeting support, along with developing agendas, circulating notes and reports.
• You need to provide support to the IMT department and programme planning, ensuring the department has excellent administration.
• As an active member of the department, you will provide project coordination and support on a range of priority projects.
• You will be responsible for managing schedules and organising meetings and appointments.
• Ensuring effective use is made of their time by planning, scheduling and organising available time for meetings.
• The role will involve Inbox management and management of all correspondence, including tracking actions arising from all correspondence and prioritising accordingly.
• You will liaise with staff, suppliers and clients on behalf of the IMT Director.
• You will be required to draft, compile, prepare and proof-read reports, presentations and correspondence, conducting research and providing briefings where necessary to the IMT Director and IMT management team.
• You will be responsible for organising Leadership Team, Digital Strategy and Foundation Board, and O365 Governance meetings, including drafting agendas, circulating papers, minuting, action logging and tracking through to completion.
• It is very likely that you will receive a significant number of calls from people within the organisation asking for advice about who they should speak to about specific matters, how do they escalate an issue, questions about processes, etc.
• You should also be able to redirect, where appropriate, members of staff trying to contact the IMT Director.
• This will require demonstrating empathy with the customer, identifying who is the best person to deal with the issue; determining, where possible, whether the issue does need to be escalated and follow up to make sure it is being dealt with.

Who we are looking for:

• Extensive secretarial, administrative and office organisation experience in a busy office and at a senior level.
• A high standard of accuracy and attention to detail.
• Able to build and maintain effective working relationships with a wide range of people at all levels.
• Proven ability to work effectively under pressure, juggle conflicting demands and manage multiple tasks.
• Excellent organisation and planning skills.

Please note your application will be scored and assessed against the above criteria. We are an equal opportunity employer which values diversity and inclusion. If you have a disability or neurodiversity, we would be happy to discuss reasonable adjustments to the job with you. Having just won the Gold Award from MIND, we also recognise the importance of a healthy work-life balance. We are an inclusive employer and believe that flexible working options are for everyone. We want to make sure our working arrangements don’t prevent anyone from joining us because of their personal circumstances. We also want to provide you with the best balance in your home and work life that we can. We are open to considering options including job sharing, part-time working, compressed hours working and different working locations, including hybrid working.

Why work for Historic England:

We are committed to promoting equality of opportunity for everyone. Diversity helps us to perform better and attract more people to support our work. We welcome and encourage job applications from people of all backgrounds. We particularly encourage applications from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic candidates and candidates with disabilities as they are underrepresented within Historic England at this level. Historic England want all of our candidates to shine in the recruitment process. Please tell us what we can do to make sure you can show us your very best self. You can contact us by email at recruitmentTeam@Historicengland.org.uk if you have any recruitment queries.

At Historic England we use a hiring system called Applied. Applied is a behavioural science-backed recruitment platform that reduces bias, improves quality of hire and increases diversity. We do not use CV application for the majority of our hiring processes. You will answer a selection of questions that allow our hiring teams to test your skills and suitability for the role. To ensure a fair and inclusive recruitment process for everyone the use of AI or automated tools is not permitted.

Provisional interview date: 08th May 2025