Main purpose of job:

This role offers a unique level of challenge, breadth and reward that is rarely seen in Corporate Services and Senior Executive Officer roles.  It offers the opportunity to develop leadership, communication, and project management skills.  It would suit an experienced Senior Executive Officer but would also be an ideal promotion from Higher Executive Officer for those who are ready to step up to the next level.  The Corporate Services Manager is critical to providing and enabling successful delivery of the Country Business Plan and supporting all teams in the Embassy to be the best they can be.  The Corporate Services Manager will do this by driving efficient, consistent and fair delivery of the platform in line with the DRC Corporate Services Charter and oversight of the admin and capital budgets, ensuring best value for money.  The Corporate Services Manager will support, and lead on, a range of business-critical programmes and issues including best practice compliance and oversight of systems and functions, liaison with the various platform committees, Business Continuity and crisis response leads.  

In this role you will also be responsible for:

• Supporting the Head of Corporate Services to provide considered advice to the Ambassador, Deputy Head of Mission, Country Board and Senior Leadership Team on policy and best practice, winning their support for difficult Platform-related decisions.  This is a key role leading corporate delivery in a medium sized Post (about 120 staff in total) in a complex environment.
• Be the operational lead on delivering platform objectives, using a significant amount of existing Management Information data to create dashboards to monitor performance against objectives and a set of agreed objectives.
• To help the Head of Corporate Services unpick with colleagues in London the work needed to rejuvenate the work on the Residence and estate which will require excellent project management and communication skills.
• To lead, support and develop a large Corporate Services team that enjoy delivering for the Embassy, providing coaching, leadership by example, advice on complex issues and spotting areas for personal and team development to make platform delivery even better;
• Take an active role on crisis preparedness and business continuity working closely with relevant leads, encouraging the Corporate Services team to think about their response to any major incident and put in place key plans and actions.
• You will be expected to create a positive network of external contacts including at other Embassies to work collaboratively and share information.  You will need strong communication both verbal and written in both French and English. You will be expected to communicate regularly with policy holders across a range of issues.
• You will need proven problem solving skills and work within the FCDO’s policies to deliver first class work to a high standard.  When problem solving you will be expected to present solutions to the Head of Corporate Services in an effective and timely manner.
• You will need to quickly become familiar with the processes of the FCDO and the workings of the Embassy to enable quick, measured and well thought decision making
• You will be required to cover for the Head of Corporate Services during her absence from the office.  You will need to lead the team with impact and represent the views of the team at high level meetings both internally and externally
• You will work on the full spectrum of Corporate Service functions – HR, IT, Estates, Protocol and Transport and will work closely with all teams, including the security team. As well as change management and leadership – including culture and process change.
• To drive improvements in the working culture across your teams, motivating and upskilling your teams and managers, improving morale and delivery.
• Management of a diverse team and tacking challenging issues.  Including having difficult conversations. To ensure that the Corporate Services teams deliver a high quality service, enabling British Embassy Kinshasa to successfully deliver its ambitious country business plan.
• Working closely with your customers, ensuring that the whole Embassy feels supported by your teams and knows what they should expect.
• You deliver through your teams to improve compliance, ensuring significant health and safety risks are recorded, mitigated and escalated appropriately. You also lead action on other compliance risks including; fraud, corruption, safeguarding, and BHD.
• You celebrate success with your teams, highlighting best practice and work to instill; good systems and processes.

Resources managed (staff and expenditure): Direct reports 3, team of over 30 
Interview 

• Confidence, creativity and vision to lead a Corporate Services operation alongside the Head of Corporate Services that is rapidly evolving and very complex, with many moving parts.
• Potential to build leadership and strategic thinking along with experience in change management, backed up with confident communication and negotiation skills;
• Willingness to work with and listen to a wide range of sometimes demanding people, , across a number of stakeholder groups to handle complaints, sometimes deliver difficult messages and win over sceptics;
• Understanding and patience to deal with a number of Corporate Service checks, policies and oversight mechanisms, difficult Human Resource cases and legal requirements.
• Strong leadership, staff management and service delivery experience, ideally including experience of corporate services delivery elsewhere.
• The ability to lead, motivate and consistently drive performance improvement through a proactive approach and an appetite to work with others to simplify processes and improve efficiency.
• A proven track record of problem solving, resource management and operational delivery.
• The ability to learn, understand and champion the FCDO’s rules, regulations and policies, including relating to finance and human resources, in a fast-paced and complex environment.
• Exceptional interpersonal and communication skills, with a strong ability to engage stakeholders across all levels with confidence, authority and good humour.
• The ability to prioritise and deliver high-quality results on multiple areas of competing work to tight deadlines.
• Make innovative suggestions regarding continuous improvement
• Improve the effectiveness of operations, increase output and improve compliance.
• Manage employees who are themselves managers
• Monitor their own and their team’s performance against agreed targets and act to keep work on track.
• Responsible for allocating, monitoring and controlling resources within the budge
• Identify potential issues for the future and propose solutions ahead of issues becoming problems