Chief of Staff to the Permanent Secretary

Job summary

As a Deputy Director Chief of Staff, you will be managing a 20-30 person, multi-office network supporting a number of senior officials.

The team is one of the most dynamic teams in DCMS involved in all aspects of departmental business, supporting the Department’s senior leadership team with a high quality service.

Working as part of the wider PO team, Officials Private Office is a close-knit, friendly team working across the whole breadth of the department’s work. Working closely with DCMS senior leaders, ministerial private offices and policy officials, you will be part of a fast paced team, where you will need to engage regularly with the most senior parts of the department and have a good strategic eye.

This is a unique opportunity to influence decisions at the highest levels of government while helping ensuring DCMS is operating at its best.

Job description

The Chief of Staff provides strategic leadership and oversight of the Permanent Secretary's Office and the network of Director General (DG) Private Offices (PO) across the newly expanded department.

The Chief of Staff acts as the Permanent Secretary's principal adviser on corporate and cross-cutting issues, ensuring that strategic priorities are translated into effective action across the organisation. They provide leadership to the collective officials' PO function, strengthen alignment between senior offices, and ensure effective coordination with Ministerial POs.

The role is accountable for:

• Supporting the Permanent Secretary in the effective running of the department.
• Acting as a senior troubleshooter on complex, sensitive and cross-cutting issues.
• Leading and managing the Permanent Secretary's PO and DG PO network.
• Building coherence across senior leadership structures and ways of working.
• Leading a review of support arrangements for the Permanent Secretary and DGs to ensure they remain fit for purpose within an expanded department.
• Strengthening links between officials' POs, Ministerial POs and central corporate functions.
• Supporting crisis management and major incident responses affecting departmental leadership.

The post-holder contributes directly to the effectiveness of departmental leadership, governance, organisational performance and delivery.

Person specification

The ideal candidate would have the following key skills and experience, please note that desirable skills will only be used in the event of tied candidates:

• Seeing the Big Picture: outstanding strategic judgment; anticipating emerging risks and opportunities across the wider operating environment, and translating overarching priorities into coherent action across complex governance structures.
• Making Effective Decisions: leading on complex, cross-cutting issues; synthesising ambiguous evidence, balancing competing priorities, and driving sound, timely decisions in a high-tempo environment.
• Leadership: visible, inclusive leadership through periods of change and ambiguity; empowering teams to deliver at pace while sustaining high standards, resilience, and wellbeing.
• Working Together: building influential relationships across executive offices and governance boards; resolving competing agendas and fostering collaboration to secure collective ownership of corporate priorities.
• Changing and Improving: championing continuous improvement and innovation; using operational and corporate insight to shape sustainable solutions that improve outcomes across the department.

Desirable Skills

• Familiarity with some of DCMS’s policies and delivery agenda.
• Experience of working with, and delivering on behalf of, senior stakeholders, such as ministers or senior executives.

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £86,000, Department for Culture, Media and Sport contributes £24,914 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides (opens in a new window).

DCMS values its staff and offers a wide range of benefits to everyone who works here. We’re committed to developing talent, and supporting colleagues to have great careers in our department. To support with that, some of the benefits we offer include:

• Flexible working arrangements and hybrid working - DCMS staff work on a flexible basis with time spent in offices, and time spent working from home

• 25 days annual leave on entry, increasing to 30 days after 5 years’ service

• A Civil Service pension with an employer contribution of 28.97%

• Access to the Edenred employee benefits system which offers discounts to popular retailers and access to various useful resources such as financial and savings advice

• 3 days of paid volunteering leave

• Up to 9 months maternity leave on full pay + generous paternity and adoption leave

• Staff reward and recognition bonuses that operate throughout the year

• Occupational sick pay

• Access to the Employee Assistance Programme which offers staff 24/7 confidential support and resources such as counselling, debt guidance and management advice

• Active and engaged staff networks to join including the LGBT+, Ethnic Diversity, Mental Health and Wellbeing and Gender Equality Networks

• Exceptional learning and development opportunities that you can explore alongside your day to day work

• Season ticket loan, cycle to work scheme and much more!

Terms and conditions at SCS grades will vary. Those applying for SCS roles should refer to the candidate information pack for more information on terms and conditions.

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

To apply for this vacancy, you will need to submit the following, via the Civil Service Jobs portal, which will assessed against the essential criteria for the role:

A CV setting out your career history, with key responsibilities and achievements.

• Please ensure you provide employment history that relates to the essential criteria, and that any gaps in employment history within the last 2 years are explained.
• The CV should not exceed more than 2 sides of A4 and you should copy and paste your CV into the "Job History" section on Civil Service Jobs on the Civil Service Jobs application form.

A Statement of Suitability explaining how you consider your personal skills, qualities and experience provide evidence of your suitability for the role.

• You must make direct reference to the essential criteria and back-up your statement with evidence rather than relying on assertions.
• This should be no more than a maximum of 1000 words.

For the shortlist, we will select applicants who demonstrate the best fit for the role by considering the evidence provided in your application and how this meets the essential requirements. Following the shortlist there are no further pass/fail assessment stages and all candidates shortlisted will be invited to the final interview stage.

Should you encounter any issues with your online application please get in touch with: scscandidate.grs@cabinetoffice.gov.uk

If you are shortlisted, you may also be offered a short, informal conversation with the Permanent Secretary ahead of the final panel interview.

Shortlist

The panel will assess your application to select those demonstrating the best fit with the role by considering the evidence you have provided against the criteria set out in the ‘essential requirements’ section of this pack. Failure to address any or all of these may affect your application.

Feedback

Following interview, all shortlisted candidates will receive their outcome along with some short written feedback on performance at interview.

Please note you will only receive feedback if you complete the interview stage.

Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.This role has a minimum assignment duration of 3 years. An assignment duration is the period of time a Senior Civil Servant is expected to remain in the same post to enable them to deliver on the agreed key business outcomes. The assignment duration also supports your career through building your depth of expertise.

As part of accepting this role you will be agreeing to the expected assignment duration set out above. This will not result in a contractual change to your terms and conditions. Please note this is an expectation only, it is not something which is written into your terms and conditions or indeed which the employing organisation or you are bound by. It will depend on your personal circumstances at a particular time and business needs, for example, would not preclude any absence like family friendly leave. It is nonetheless an important expectation, which is why we ask you to confirm you agree to the assignment duration set out above.

Security

Successful candidates must undergo a basic (or equivalent) criminal record check.Successful candidates must meet the security requirements before they can be appointed. The level of security needed is developed vetting (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 : SCS Recruitment
• Email : scscandidate.grs@cabinetoffice.gov.uk

Recruitment team

• Email : scscandidate.grs@cabinetoffice.gov.uk

Further information

If you feel your application has not been treated in accordance with the Civil Service Commission’s Recruitment Principles and you wish to make a complaint, you should contact the Head of Resourcing at recruitment.team@dcms.gov.uk, in the first instance.

Attachments

Chief of Staff Candidate Information Pack Opens in new window (pdf, 3782kB)