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SalaryDo you care about the safety of products and want to protect people and places? Can we use your skills, knowledge and experience to enable UK business to thrive? If the answer is yes, then we would like to hear from you!
We are the Office for Product Safety and Standards (OPSS), part of the Department for Business & Trade (Previously the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy). We are here for the purpose of making regulation work to deliver real world impact. Regulation is a powerful Government tool to address market failures, influence behaviour and promote positive action. Crafted and delivered well, regulation can be an enabler of growth, innovation and efficiency.
Since early 2018 we have been building a positive and creative team that enjoys a position of influence and respect within an organisation that continues to grow, most recently with the addition of construction products regulation planned.
Our primary purpose is to protect people and places from product-related harm, ensuring consumers and businesses can buy and sell products with confidence.
Further information can be found on our website here
We recruit by merit on the basis of fair and open competition, as outlined in the Civil Service Commission's recruitment principles. We embrace diversity and promote equality of opportunity. We are committed to building a team that represents a variety of backgrounds, perspectives, and skills. There is a guaranteed interview scheme (DCS) for people with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria.
We are Inclusive
We are fully committed to being an inclusive employer and ensuring equal opportunities. We are keen to make our workforce as diverse as possible and recognise how important inclusivity is to achieve the best outcomes. We hope to attract applications from all underrepresented groups.
We will ensure that individuals with disabilities are provided reasonable accommodation if required to participate in the job application or interview process, to perform crucial job functions, and to receive other benefits and privileges of employment. Please contact us to request accommodation.
The Incident Management Team (IMT) is a busy, friendly and highly supportive team, comprised of two closely related functions.
A readiness and resilience arm prepares OPSS to respond to national-scale incidents, emergencies and disruptive events. We develop and exercise a range of incident response plans and related procedures and ensure processes are continuously improved considering lessons arising from exercises or incidents.
An operational arm carries out initial assessments of product safety and noncompliance notifications, publishing product safety alerts, reports and recalls on publicly available websites and working internationally to report product safety issues and to monitor for product safety issues that might impact the UK.
IMT also lead on the coordination of incident activity, liaising with a range of OPSS and wider functions to ensure an effective incident response is delivered.
This vacancy is within the readiness and resilience arm of the team, focusing on plans and procedures.
Key Responsibilities:
You will join at a key point in the initial development of an OPSS Operations Manual, leading work with a current focus on incident related procedures by:
- Using effective leadership to translate OPSS strategy into clear and meaningful objectives and building a team environment in which everyone can and does contribute effectively.
- Providing advice and leadership to aid development of appropriate national and local level plans and procedures.
- Supporting OPSS teams with development of readiness, resilience and capability plans and procedures.
- Developing and continuously improving a SharePoint based OPSS Operations Manual.
As a member of the IMT you will also:
- Support the assessment, exercising and testing of plans and processes.
- Assist with post-exercise / post-incident evaluations and take ownership of relevant lessons identified to embed improvements into business practice.
- Act as a role model, providing visible and strong leadership to the IMT.
- Act as an IMT Knowledge and Information Manager, championing, supporting and enhancing IMTs use of digital tools to support and enhance ways of working.
- Support and deputise for the G7 and other IMT SEOs as needed.
- Participate in the IMT on-call rota, triaging and responding to enquiries as required.
In the event of an incident, you may be required to provide flexible leadership and support to the response and/or help maintain normal team readiness, resilience and operational activities. This may involve working additional hours.
The role will require some travel throughout the UK for which Travel and Subsistence allowances will be available.
