People Analyst

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 People Analytics team seeks to use workforce data to understand how effective our people processes are. The more we understand this, the more we can make ONS a great place to work. We support the organisation to make evidence-based decisions to improve our people processes. This commonly includes working with senior colleagues and specialist HR Teams such as Pay and Reward, Skills Development, Workforce Design, Employee Experience, and HR Business Partners.

The team includes specialists in HR, analysis, and data science. Within the role you will be involved in and learn data visualisation, qualitative analysis, and quantitative analysis. There is also the opportunity to research new techniques to maximise the value of insight to our customers. We are looking for someone with a passion for analysis, innovation, and creativity to join our team.

Job description

Are you passionate about investigating people data to help our organisation improve? Do you have good analytical skills, and are you curious to learn and apply new analytical techniques? Do you want to develop your skills in PowerBI, and Python? Are you keen to collaborate with customers across our business to influence and ensure we make best data-driven decisions we can? Are you keen to develop accessible data visualisation, and tell a story through insights and commentary? If so, then this could be the role for you.

Our team is excited by investigation and the ability to identify and convey meaningful relationships in people data. We have good analytical skills, and a good attention to detail, with the ability to use a variety of data tools, programmes, and sources to process, and blend datasets. Key to our work is our ability to take complex data and insight, and capture the data or a supporting commentary, to communicate it to a variety of customers, such as from top-level committees, individual business areas, or our Diversity Networks. To deliver our insights we use a range of methods, including Excel, Python and PowerBI, and are in the process of migrating our Alteryx workflows into Python.

Key Responsibilities

• Engage with customers to understand their current and future priorities and business needs.

• Collaborate with customers to shape the best data products to meet these priorities and business needs.

• Explore how we can use or improve existing data products to meet customer needs.

• Consider how we can innovate as a team, such as through new analytical methods or automation, to provide greater insight to our customers.

• Process and manipulate people data to provide the basis for accurate and robust data products.

• Use data visualisation techniques, and develop supporting commentary, to present insights and ensure it can be understood by a diverse range of customers.

• Evaluate the impact of our data products, and continuously develop them to improve our impact on the organisation.

• Coach and support colleagues, and lead on specific projects.

• Use opportunities to innovate and develop the analytical capability of yourself, your colleagues, and the products we deliver.

• Take responsibility for ensuring pre-existing committed projects and processes are delivered on-time and accurately

Person specification

Data analysis: A passion for understanding how people data can be used to support business outcomes and experience in analysing and translating complex data into actionable insights using relevant software (for example Excel, PowerBI, R and Python).

Data processing and visualisation: Experience of designing and developing engaging business intelligence reports and dashboards that effectively communicate data insights and a sound understanding of data processing to ensure data accuracy and integrity in data outputs.

Quality assurance: Experience of adopting a detail-oriented approach to ensure accuracy and consistency in reporting and collaborating across the team and with wider stakeholders and customers to identify and improve data integrity.

Problem solving and innovation: Ability to detect opportunities, implement ideas for improvement and think creatively to solve a problem.

Documentation: Creation of comprehensive documentation, for example report specifications, data mapping, desk instructions, access controls and user guides, to facilitate knowledge sharing and support ongoing maintenance.

Behaviours

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

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

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £34,587, Office for National Statistics contributes £10,019 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.

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

ONS are unable to offer visa sponsorship for this role. Applicants are expected to hold a valid right to work in the UK when employment commences. If you are applying on a time-limited visa, this will need to be valid for at least 18 months.

Number of Stages: 2 stage process

Stage 1: Application

Stage 2: Interview

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

Answers to the following questions should be no more than 250 words per answer:​

1. Data Analysis and Presentation
   Provide an example of when you have analysed and visualised data to present insights to a customer. What visualisations did you choose to use, and how did your presentation ensure your customers understood your findings?
   
   
2. Quality Assurance
   Give an example of how you’ve ensured a product, dataset, or analysis is accurate and consistent. How did you approach your quality assurance, and how did you consider consistency with similar work?
   
   
3. Problem Solving
   How have you addressed problems in either processes or products in the past. How did you identify and address the problem, and once resolved, how did you prevent it from occurring again?
   
   
4. Documentation
   Tell us about a time where you have created or improved existing documentation that supports a regular technical process (such as workflow running, completing some analysis, or refreshing a data product). What steps did you take and how did it benefit colleagues reliably running this process?

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

When a high volume of applications are received, the sift pass mark may be adjusted. Candidates will be invited to interview based on their merit order, with those achieving the highest scores being prioritised. Applicants who score below the adjusted pass mark but still pass will be placed on hold and may be invited to interview at a later date.

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.

Interviews will be conducted online via Microsoft teams.

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

The Sift will be conducted from 2nd June.

Interviews will be conducted w/c 15th June.

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 : David Irish
• 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

2721 Advert 1B Permanent - ONS National v1-00 Opens in new window (pdf, 83kB)