Office Manager

Hours: 22.5 hours per week - Tuesday, Wednesday & Friday
Contract: Permanent
Salary: £35,692 per annum (pro-rata £21,415 per annum)
Location: 242 Kingsland Road, London, E8 4DG

Our client Peter Bedford Housing Association is a housing association with charitable aims that create positive change in people’s lives. As well as homes and support, PBHA empowers people to learn, access work and discover their creative talents. Based in Hackney, Islington and Newham, we work with people who are homeless, have mental ill health, learning difficulties and multiple needs. PBHA’s work enables people to move on and lead independent lives.

This part time (0.6FTE) post is located within the core services Team, and reports to the CEO. The postholder works closely across the organisation to deliver an efficient Office management, Reception and basic HR service to all managers and staff.

Aims of the post

• To manage the office, coordinating volunteers to provide reception and administrative services.
• To coordinate and procure office and IT equipment.
• To carry out HR administration tasks acting as a first point of contact for managers and staff.

Specific responsibilities
Office Management

• Dealing with customer & external queries and disputes dealing with in bound and out bound communication, such as hybrid mail, post, phone calls and customer satisfaction surveys.
• Organise Reception rota and cover, enabling opening hours to be fully resourced.
• Dealing with petty cash.
• Managing phone and IT systems, contributing to new projects and upgrades.
• Ordering and facilitating meeting refreshments.
• Promote and manage booking of rooms.
• Manage all hardware e.g. laptops, phones etc and ordering office consumables.
• Managing small budgets and checking expenditure.
• Ensuring all new staff are set up with correct equipment and IT access e.g. laptops, phones, keys etc with good records kept

Volounteer and Placement Development

• Day to day supervision of customer services volunteers and placements.
• Recruit and plan for volunteers and placements, including contributing to individual learning plans and reviewing progress.

HR administration

• Investment in staff -To be an impartial point of contact for employees and volunteers seeking HR advice if their line manager is not able to assist, signposting them as appropriate to other sources of advice and assistance.
• Employment contracts and Consulting employees -To provide administrative support when consulting on Terms and Conditions, investigating Disciplinary and Grievances and any other related matters. To support the CEO to coordinate working groups across employees and volunteers. To administer staff surveys.
• DBS checks -To undertake renewal DBS checks for all employees and volunteers and make recommendations as necessary to managers.
• Managing information -To ensure good quality and accurate HR information management for all employees and volunteers with due regard to confidentiality and document control. To maintain electronic files and enable colleagues to make the best use of the HR database, Breathe HR. To facilitate references for former employees in partnership with managers and the CEO.
• Payroll -To collate information, draft and seek authorisation of payroll changes in partnership with the CEO and Director of Finance. To support the annual pay review.
• Recruitment -To coordinate recruitment processes in partnership with the recruiting manager. This includes liaising with the recruitment agency.
• Learning and Development -To coordinate training suppliers and place bookings for courses in consultation with the CEO. To contribute to coordinating the annual Staff and Volunteer conference.

Customer focused services

• Promote and support tenants/participants to access PBHA’s participation and co-production opportunities.
• Be supportive of PBHA’s ethos of maximising tenant/participant influence over the development of the organisation.
• To positively promote and signpost tenants and participants to report complaints in line with PBHA’s practice. To have a collaborative and co-operative approach towards resolving complaints, working with colleagues across teams and departments. To take collective responsibility for any shortfalls identified through complaints.

General Responsibilities

• Participate in key meetings.
• Contribute to policy development, income generation, strategic and annual planning, corporate and cross-team activities, external partnerships and promotional activities as required.
• Promote, develop and support PBHA’s ethos, values and impact.
• Provide cover for other managers and workers.

The minimum experience required for the post is:

• Experience of developing and maintaining efficient business administration processes.
• Experience of administering and maintaining records with regard to confidentiality
• Experience of using Microsoft Office packages and computerised HR databases to manipulate the data to generate for reports

The competencies required for the post are the ability to:

• Able to multitask and prioritise
• Able to take and model taking responsibility
• Able to take decisions
• Excellent people management skills
• Able to work closely and effectively across departments
• Able to promote Equality and Diversity, and PBHA’s values
• Able to liaise with a range of people across cross cutting areas such as Health and Safety
• Able to lead on document control

It is desirable that the candidate will have:

• Experience of recruiting volunteers
• Experience of coaching and developing volunteers or people returning to the workforce
• Experience of undertaking safeguarding DBS checks for employees and volunteers
• Experience of an HR system would be an advantage
• Experience of maintaining confidential employee records
• Experience of tendering for office equipment and supplies