Business Services Assistant (Milton Keynes, ENG, GB, MK7 6AA)

About the Role

This role will sit in the School of Psychology and Counselling in FASS (the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences). As an Assistant within the Faculty’s professional services team, you will support the day-to-day delivery of Business Services by providing proactive, flexible, and professional operational, administrative, and secretarial support that allows colleagues to do their jobs effectively.

Although you will predominantly support Business Services, you will be expected to work flexibly and collaboratively with colleagues across the Faculty. Typically, you will work within one of the following four areas:

• School Operations (SO) – supporting day-to-day school operations and providing secretarial and administrative support to members of the School leadership team and wider academic community.
• Nations Support (NS) – supporting day-to-day operations and administrative support for the academic communities based in Ireland, Scotland, and Wales.
• Leadership Support (LS) – supporting the PAs in the provision of secretarial and administrative support to members of the School and Faculty leadership team.
• Facilities and Health and Safety Operations (FHSO) – supporting the Operations & Compliance Managers in all aspects of facilities and H&S management.

You will also support the identification, dissemination, and implementation of good practice as part of a commitment to continuous improvement and the development of operational capabilities.

Key Responsibilities

Operations and Finance

Providing operational, administrative and secretarial support, working in conjunction with other members of the team and colleagues across the Faculty. Activities could include, but are not limited to:

• Acting as a first point of contact and handling general enquiries from academics, colleagues (within the Faculty and across Central Professional Services Departments), external organisations and partners using initiative to respond or refer on accordingly.
• Supporting day-to-day School and Faculty operations linked to Health and Safety, HR, Finance, IT and facilities, and information compliance, research and teaching.
• Assisting with the maintenance of systems and processes.
• Supporting the organisation and delivery of meetings, events, and conferences.
• Updating website, SharePoint, Teams sites content and email distribution lists.
• Raising purchase requisitions, booking travel, maintaining records of expenditure, logging future commitments, and contributing to quarterly forecasts.

Specialist responsibilities

• Providing secretarial and administrative support to members of the School and Faculty Leadership Teams including diary management, dealing with general correspondence, responding to telephone and e‑mail enquiries, and maintaining and updating electronic filing systems. (SO, LS)
• Providing core administrative support (including travel bookings) for the academic community (including PhD students). (SO)
• Supporting Health and Safety, operations and compliance activity across the faculty including completing Level 1 DSE assessments and acting as a local Fire Warden; equipment procurement; management of new starter administration, including the online H&S induction. (FHSO)
• Day‑to‑day administration that supports the allocation and reallocation of Associate Lecturer FTE in the Nations, including supporting the allocation of academic tutors to students and arrangements for local cover when required. (NS)
• Acting as a first point of contact and handling general enquiries from students, including VOICE queries. (NS)
• Supporting specific compliance related to the devolved nations. (NS)

Strategy, Planning, Policy and Governance

Servicing committees/meetings, including arranging rooms (bookings and AV equipment, catering, drafting agendas, circulating papers and taking notes etc.).

About You

Essential Criteria:

• The ability to communicate professionally both verbally and in writing which enable the successful candidate to build trust and positive working relationships, enabling effective collaboration with colleagues.
• Effective organisational skills with the ability to remain flexible, adaptable, and responsive and to use initiative, work independently, and solve problems in a pro‑active manner.
• The ability to deal with sensitive and confidential information, work accurately, and to manage and manipulate data appropriately.
• Proficient in the use of IT and willing to develop existing skills and learning about relevant IT systems.
• The ability to prioritise own work, having an awareness of the workload of the team, and support colleagues when necessary.
• An understanding of, and the ability to work in a manner, which aligns with the University’s mission and Values in Action.

Benefits

At The Open University, we offer a range of benefits to recognise and reward great work, alongside policies and flexible working that contribute towards a great work life balance.

Flexible working

We are open to discussions about flexible working. Whether it’s a job share, part time, compressed hours or another working arrangement. Please reach out to us to discuss what works best for you.

Working Location:

It is anticipated that a hybrid working pattern can be adopted for this role, where the successful candidate can work from home and the office. However, as this role is contractually aligned to our Milton Keynes office, some attendance in the office will be required. We’d expect this to be at least once per week, and this is currently every Thursday, but this could be more often as business needs dictate. Full‑time working based from our Milton Keynes site is also supported if this is preferred by the candidate. Expenses associated with travel to our Milton Keynes site are not reimbursable.