Team Manager (Scotland)

We are looking for a Team Manager for this exciting and fast-paced role. You will be a motivated, adaptable team player who is keen to help people join and progress through the University. Working within the Student Recruitment and Support Team, you will be involved in managing a team who delivers a range of student-facing services. Our objectives are focused on excellent student experience and success, supporting them to achieve their goals, with outcomes that are equitable and open new opportunities in life and work.  

To actively contribute and engage in the wider business unit goals within SRSS  

• Working with other Team Managers to ensure resource allocation and workload management for the department is monitored. 
• Working with line manager to understand personal performance and areas for development.  
• Providing feedback to contribute to colleagues’ performance development.  
• Accepting feedback from colleagues to improve personal skills and knowledge. 

Key Responsibilities

Leadership and performance management of a team of Advisers  

• Fair recruitment and selection of Advisers and Assistant Team Leaders in line with OU policies and guidelines.  
• Ensure individuals are supported and developed; undertaking one to one session’s, setting SMART objectives, and provide coaching and mentoring to deliver high performance.  
• Communicate with individuals, as well as the team, to share information and direction to maximise productivity levels and quality standards.   
• Actively monitor performance and quality to ensure agreed service standards, performance targets and operating procedures are met or exceeded.   
• Identify underperformance, behavioural challenges and absence levels and utilise guidance, process and policies available through our People Services team.  
• Manage absence of staff by following University and unit policy, from the initial monitoring stages through to capability and disciplinary reviews.  
• Approve, record, and monitor requests for leave from staff within the team, ensuring resources available meet the planned demand. 
• Recognise staff who exceed performance standards and provide them with relevant development opportunities. 
• Responsible for leading specialist areas as appropriate. This will involve supporting advisers with queries and escalations, developing procedures and training materials related to your allocated specialist area(s), planning resource requirements for the specialist area(s) and acting as a point of contact with related stakeholders both internally and externally, for example: 
  • Discretionary Funding scheme
  • Delivering MI about students’ ineligible for Part Time Fee Grant (PTFG) 
  • Delivering Postgraduate Tuition Fee Loan 
  • Delivering non-standard registration schemes e.g., Young Applicants School Scheme (YASS) 
  • PTFG reconciliation tasks 
  • Disabled Students’ Allowance Admin 
  • Specific Learning Difficulties Admin 

 To act as a point of contact to support Advisers  

• Support staff to deal with complex issues; interpreting and applying procedures and guidelines to ensure the best outcome for the student within policy and service constraints.  
• Support staff to understand changes in policy & procedure.  
• Coach staff dealing with difficult situations.  
• Close monitoring of MS Teams space and email to ensure staff are supported promptly.  
• Take initial responsibility for investigation and response to complaints and escalations.  
• Act as the first point of referral for students, and enquirers, who may present with challenging issues and/or behaviour  
• Suggest, create and provide training, as agreed with Operations Manager, providing follow up support for attendees. 
• Work with Operations Manager to identify development needs and training opportunities for sub teams.  
• Training other teams and providing them with feedback as required. 
• Contribute to the development of procedures and reference sheets for consistency across the team. 
• Engage actively in the support and development of new team, and existing, members. 

The role holder may be required to undertake any other duties reasonably required within the nature of the duties and responsibilities of the role, subject to the proviso that normally any changes of a permanent nature shall be incorporated into the Job Description in specific terms.   

Skills and Experience

• Experience of leading and managing a team within a service delivery environment.  
• Ability to manage and implement changes to ways of working - procedural/cultural and behavioural. Have a customer-focused approach, meeting targets, service quality and continuous improvement.  
• Good interpersonal skills with the ability to influence, establish credibility and assert authority.  
• Highly developed communication skills with the ability to understand and process information quickly and accurately under time pressure.  
• Experience of working co-operatively with others to achieve organisational goals and service level target 

How to Apply

To apply for this role please submit the following  document/s; 
(please edit according to the requirements for the role) 

•  CV  
•  Supporting statement, up to 1,000 words, you should set out in your statement why you’re interested in this role and provide examples of where your skills and experience meet the required competencies for this role as detailed in the job and person specification. 

You will need to have your documents ready ahead of submitting your job application. Please click on the apply now button below to be redirected to our job application page.