Business Support Officer

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.

The purpose of the business support function is to facilitate the smooth, efficient running of the directorate, dealing with operational matters (organisational, administrative), working collaboratively with other enabling functions (Finance, HR, Communications, Programme Management, and Risk & Assurance), and providing effective, efficient business support to the director, senior leadership team (SLT) and colleagues across the directorate.

Job description

The role will work collaboratively with colleagues across the organisation to support the Business Manager in delivering highly effective business support activities to the director, senior leadership team and wider directorate. How your work is spread across the directorate will depend on its size and structure, and the complexity of some of the key tasks.

There will be an opportunity to join business support communities of practice, working collaboratively with business support colleague across ONS to develop and share best practice, solve operational issues, and improve processes.

Responsibilities:

• Building and maintaining excellent working relationships, working collaboratively and flexibly to achieve organisational priorities.
• Assisting with the organisation of key divisional and directorate meetings, which add value, including preparing and circulating the agenda, undertaking a secretariat or other facilitator role where necessary, writing minutes and records of actions from the meeting / workshop, obtaining updates on previous action points and chasing outstanding papers.
• Managing the team inbox(es) effectively, ensuring that emails are dealt with appropriately in a timely manner, drafting responses to queries as required,and seeking advice and guidance from the Business Support Manager as necessary.
• Where appropriate, carrying out delivery tasks and/or supporting the delivery of small projects under the direction of the Business Support Manager, or other senior managers.
• Supporting recruitment activity logistics by providing secretariat function for setting up interviews, liaising with recruitment managers and spoke teams to ensure panel members’ availability; maintaining divisional/directorate workforce plan entries accurately.
• Supporting capability teams with the logistics for learning events, that are focused on professional and technical skills development.
• Coordinating divisional responses to central and (where applicable) programme financial commissions; raising requisitions and receipting purchase orders as necessary; reviewing financial transaction issues (for example gaps between values receipted and invoices), liaising with senior managers as required to resolve.
• Operating in a matrix management environment, undertaking a broad range of business support activities under the guidance of a Business Support Manager, ensuring these are delivered within defined timescales and to agreed quality standards, including but not limited to:
  • Corporate planning activities.
  • Collating Management Information (MI)
  • Cascading key corporate and directorate information using appropriate media.
  • Cross-divisional functional support of key business activities as required.

Person specification

Essential Criteria:

• Good interpersonal skills, both written and verbal, with an ability to interact well with people including those more senior to you.
• Ability to build strong working relationships across a range of stakeholders.
• Well-honed organisational skills, with ability to effectively organise your workload, and where appropriate, that of direct reports, effectively managing changing demands on your time.
• Ability to work under pressure and deliver to tight timescales, with a good attention to detail, responding effectively to changing priorities.
• Ability to proactively work well as part of a team, taking responsibility for delivering agreed business objectives.

Behaviours

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

• Delivering at Pace
• Communicating and Influencing
• Working Together
• Managing a Quality Service

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £28,138, Office for National Statistics contributes £8,151 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides.

The Office for National Statistics is part of the Civil Service, and as such we share a number of key benefits with other departments, whilst also having our own unique offerings to support our valued colleagues across the organisation.

Whether you are hearing about us for the first time or already know a bit about our organisation, we hope that our careers site will give you a great insight into the benefits and facilities available to our colleagues, and our fantastic working culture.

Inclusion & Accessibility

At ONS we are always looking to attract the very best people from the widest possible talent pool, and we are proud to be an inclusive, equal opportunities employer. As a Disability Confident Leader we’re committed to ensuring that all candidates are treated fairly throughout the recruitment process.

As part of our application process, you will be prompted to provide details of any reasonable adjustments to our recruitment process that you need. If you would like to discuss any reasonable adjustments before applying, please contact the recruitment team in the first instance.

If you would like an accessible version of any of the attachments or recruitment documents below or linked to in this advert, please contact the recruitment team who will be happy to assist.

Things you need to know

Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence can be a useful tool to support your application, however, all examples and statements provided must be truthful, factually accurate and taken directly from your own experience. Where plagiarism has been identified (presenting the ideas and experiences of others, or generated by artificial intelligence, as your own) applications may be withdrawn and internal candidates may be subject to disciplinary action. Please see our candidate guidance (opens in a new window) for more information on appropriate and inappropriate use.

Selection process details

This vacancy is using Success Profiles (opens in a new window), and will assess your Behaviours and Experience.

Security Clearance

For ONS the requirement for SC clearance is to have been present in the UK for 3 consecutive years immediately prior to applying and the department will consider eligibility by exception on a case-by-case basis. You will be asked to provide information regarding your UK residency during your application, and failure to provide this will result in your application being rejected.

If you are unsure that you meet the eligibility above, please read the information available on Gov.uk on this link, or contact the recruitment email on the advert before applying to discuss, as failure to meet the residency requirements will result in your security clearance application being rejected and any offer of employment being withdrawn.

At the point of SC application, you will need to provide or give access to the following evidence:

• Departmental or company records (personnel files, staff reports, sick leave reports and security records)
• UK criminal records covering both spent and unspent criminal records
• Your credit and financial history with a credit reference agency
• Security Services records

Application Process

Number of Stages: 2 stage process

Stage 1: Application

Stage 2: Interview

Stage 1 – Application

The assessment process at the application stage will be based on your work history, CV, skills, experience, and personal statement. It is important that your application is tailored to highlight the skills, knowledge, and experience relevant to the role.

A personal statement is required at application stage, the maximum wordcount allowed is 1250 words, which should not be exceeded. You should provide evidence for each essential skill criterion listed in the person specification. As these criteria are scored, it is advisable to give clear examples for each one, including the impact of your actions, ideally utilising the STAR technique (Situation, Task, Action, Result).

Please note that Success Profiles Behaviour examples are not required at this stage of the application process.

In instances where a high number of applications are received, the sift pass mark may be adjusted, and candidates will be invited to interview based on merit order, i.e., those with the highest scores.

Stage 2 – Interview

If invited to interview, you will be assessed using techniques aligned with the Civil Service Success Profiles framework, covering all behaviours listed in the job advert and any required technical skills.

Interviews will take place via Microsoft Teams.

Our main locations are Newport (South Wales), Titchfield and Darlington.

A reserve list may be held for a period up to 12 months from which further appointments may be made.

Important Dates:

The Sift will be conducted from Tuesday 14th April 2026

Interviews will be conducted from Monday 27th April 2026

Dates are subject to change.

For the full terms and conditions of the post, please see attachment.

Please note that all campaigns may be subject to withdrawal at any stage if the internal resource position changes.

Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.

Security

Successful candidates must undergo a criminal record check.Successful candidates must meet the security requirements before they can be appointed. The level of security needed is security check (opens in a new window).

See our vetting charter (opens in a new window).People working with government assets must complete baseline personnel security standard (opens in new window) checks.

Nationality requirements

This job is broadly open to the following groups:

• UK nationals
• nationals of the Republic of Ireland
• nationals of Commonwealth countries who have the right to work in the UK
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities with settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS) (opens in a new window)
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities who have made a valid application for settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS)
• individuals with limited leave to remain or indefinite leave to remain who were eligible to apply for EUSS on or before 31 December 2020
• Turkish nationals, and certain family members of Turkish nationals, who have accrued the right to work in the Civil Service

Further information on nationality requirements (opens in a new window)

Working for the Civil Service

The Civil Service Code (opens in a new window) sets out the standards of behaviour expected of civil servants.

We recruit by merit on the basis of fair and open competition, as outlined in the Civil Service Commission's recruitment principles (opens in a new window).The Civil Service embraces diversity and promotes equal opportunities. As such, we run a Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) for candidates with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria.The Civil Service also offers a Redeployment Interview Scheme to civil servants who are at risk of redundancy, and who meet the minimum requirements for the advertised vacancy.

Diversity and Inclusion

The Civil Service is committed to attract, retain and invest in talent wherever it is found. To learn more please see theCivil Service People Plan (opens in a new window) and the Civil Service Diversity and Inclusion Strategy (opens in a new window).

Apply and further information

This vacancy is part of the Great Place to Work for Veterans (opens in a new window) initiative.Once this job has closed, the job advert will no longer be available. You may want to save a copy for your records.

Contact point for applicants

Job contact :

• Name : Recruitment Operations
• Email : Recruitmentoperations@ons.gov.uk

Recruitment team

• Email : Recruitmentoperations@ons.gov.uk

Further information

If you feel your application has not been treated in accordance with the Recruitment Principles and you wish to make a complaint, in the first instance, you should contact recruitment.complaints@ons.gov.uk. If you are not satisfied with the response you receive from the Department, you can contact the Civil Service Commission

Attachments

ONS_Vacancy_Terms(Permanent) Opens in new window (pdf, 83kB)