Senior Administrator – College of Medicine and Health – 104087 – Grade 5

Position Details

College of Medicine and Health

Location: University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham UK

Full time starting salary is normally in the range £29,647 to £31,460, with potential progression once in post to £35,388

Grade: 5

Full Time, Fixed Term contract up to June 2027

Closing date: 16th June 2025

‘Open House’ Drop In Session: We will be holding an ‘open house’ drop in session at the University’s Exchange building, in Centenary Square, Birmingham, between 10am and 5pm on Friday 6th June 2025. If you’re interested in working at the University of Birmingham and perhaps have a few questions, this is an opportunity to meet colleagues in the Recruitment team. It will be a relaxed and informal event – you can drop in at any time.

Our offer to you

People are at the heart of what we are and do.

The University of Birmingham is proud to have been a part of the City of Birmingham and the wider region for over 100 years, and we are equally proud to be recognised as a leading global university. We want to attract talented people from across the city and beyond, support them to succeed, and celebrate their success.

We are committed to helping the people who work here to develop through our sector-leading Birmingham Professional programme which provides all professional services staff with development opportunities and the encouragement to reach their full potential. With almost 5,000 professional services jobs in a wide-range of functions in Edgbaston and in our campus in Dubai, there are plenty of opportunities for you to be able to develop your career at the University.

We believe there is no such thing as a typical member of staff and that diversity is a source of strength that underpins the exchange of ideas, innovation, and debate. We warmly welcome people from all backgrounds and are committed to fostering an inclusive environment where diversity is at the heart of who and what we are, and how we work.

Supporting our people to achieve a healthy work/life balance is important both to our employees and to the success of the University and, depending on the role, we offer a variety of flexible working arrangements. We therefore welcome discussions on all forms of flexible working. In addition, you will receive a generous package of benefits including 40 days paid holiday a year, one paid day a year for volunteering, occupational sick pay, and a pension scheme. We also have three high quality subsidised day nurseries.

The University is situated in leafy Edgbaston and there are excellent transport links to our beautiful campus, including main bus routes and a train station on site. On campus we have a state-of-the-art sports centre with pool, shops, places to eat and drink, our own art gallery, museum and botanical gardens.

Find out more about the benefits of working for the University of Birmingham

Background

This is an exciting and varied post for a strong, dynamic and enthusiastic administrator. You will be working as part of the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Birmingham Biomedical Research Centre (BRC) and based at the University of Birmingham. You will be an active member of the Core BRC team, and more specifically supporting the Patient and Public Involvement and Engagement (PPIE) activities, as well as offering some support to the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) lead.

The Birmingham Biomedical Research Centre does research into the causes, effects, and treatment of inflammation.

Research is better when it is carried out with the people it benefits – patients and the public. Research is more relevant to the people who take part in it when people with similar lived experience shape the design of new studies and have a say in how and the way that a study is conducted.

Public members are involved in many ways in the Birmingham BRC. They contribute to individual studies and activities in our research themes as part of Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) groups we run. Public members support the governance and central operations of the BRC organisation. They can be involved in working with researchers to plan and do research, co-develop research ideas, share their ideas about how a study is designed so participants have a good experience, review public-facing information and materials given to study participants, advise and contribute to how research findings are shared with the public and much more.

Your role will be to effectively deliver a range of administrative and support tasks to ensure the smooth running of the PPIE activities across the BRC. Working with the PPIE Manager, you will be involved in the planning and preparation of events to showcase our research to a range of communities, you will support with the recruitment of new volunteers, you will support with communications both internally and externally and you will liaise with our PPI members to understand and accommodate their needs to maximise their ability to be involved in research. In addition, you will undertake a wide range of other administrative tasks such as meeting planning and minute taking, co-ordinating and delivering finance tasks, maintaining accurate PPI records and organising a range of documentation and toolkits to be shared across our PPIE Community.

You will be a highly organised and proactive individual who enjoys a fast-paced environment and has very strong attention to detail. You will thrive on multi-tasking, have excellent communication skills, and be skilled in a range of administrative IT packages such as Outlook, Word, Excel and MS Teams. You will enjoy working with a range of people and have skills in relationship building with both staff and diverse members of the local community. You will be patient, kind and compassionate and have a strong awareness of equality and diversity issues.

Role Summary

As a Senior Administrator within a team/department you will provide support for a broad range of administrative duties, some of which may be complex. You may also be responsible for managing other staff or for supporting colleagues and sharing knowledge. You will be able to use your wide range of skills, both technical and administrative, and have the opportunity to lead on specific tasks within a team. In order to flexibly use resource you may be given the opportunity to work in different areas of the department or wider University.

Senior Administrators may work in any area of the University; with large groupings in HR, Finance, and School/College Hubs.

Main Duties

• You will be able to deal with complex systems and procedures and will be expected to offer advice on these, including deciding on the response to more complex queries.
• You will be expected to exercise your judgment on the answer to queries or on the direction of work within parameters set by your manager. On a day to day basis you will be expected to resolve more complex queries without necessarily referring to your manager.
• If you have a supervisory role, you will line manage your staff taking responsibility for co-ordinating and prioritising the work of others. If not in a supervisory role you will still be expected to act as a role model and coach members of the team.
• Maintain high profile working relationships with key stakeholders on your own initiative, fielding enquiries and ensuring that appropriate information is disseminated to stakeholders as appropriate.
• You may be involved in organising events including booking a venue, sending invitations, arranging refreshments, liaising with speakers, managing room (and hotel room) bookings, co-ordination of colleagues, advertising, collating feedback and reporting back.
• Will manage some smaller projects on own initiative, but will also carry out desk research and source data from internal and external sources in order to contribute to wider projects.
• You will be expected to use a variety of complex University systems and processes to research, analyst and interpret complex data, producing bespoke reports as required. This may include identifying and resolving issues with the data.
• Support the management, development and implementation of operational processes and systems.
• Process more complex data (which may be financial, HR, student-related or other), monitoring accuracy, chasing up missing information, and resolving any issues as appropriate.
• Provide specialist advice and training to colleagues on area of activity.
• As required, provide a professional secretarial service to relevant committees and meetings.
• You may be required to be responsible for one or more of the following:
  • monitoring budgets including processing payments, authorising expenditure, raising concerns where finances are not in line with the budget,
  • procuring goods and services through the University system,
  • updating and writing contents for the department’s communications such as intranet pages,
  • dealing with health and safety and facilities issues,
  • HR-related tasks such as managing staff absence, induction, or dealing with leavers,
  • dealing with arrangements for international visitors,
  • monitoring internal procedures/compliance and ensuring these are followed and disseminated as appropriate.
• Supports equality and values diversity, moderating own behaviour to avoid unfair discriminatory impact or bias on others.

Required Knowledge, Skills, Qualifications, Experience

• Educated to A Level standard, or equivalent level 3 qualification such as a Level 3 NVQ, or level 3 national diploma or relevant work experience evidencing the skills and ability to undertake the role.
• Minimum of grade C/4 in Mathematics and English at GCSE or equivalent.
• Highly proficient IT skills, in particular the ability to handle complex electronic diaries and emails, the wider MS Office suite of programmes including Excel and PowerPoint, and some experience of using an enterprise resource planning package. The post holder should also be confident and able to quickly learn new IT skills and software packages as required.
• Proven ability to plan ahead and anticipate requirements, proactively planning own (and sometimes others’ workloads) to manage time effectively, progress tasks concurrently and work to deadlines.
• Excellent communication skills, including the ability to write for different audiences, and to required deadlines.
• Excellent interpersonal skills. The post holder must inspire confidence and command authority with a range of colleagues and provide excellent customer service at all times.
• A high degree of professionalism, tact, and diplomacy, and the ability to exercise discretion regarding the handling and management of sensitive information/issues.
• A high degree of initiative, personal judgement, resourcefulness, flexibility, and a self-motivating approach.
• Ability to work effectively in a large, complex organisation, and to develop a good understanding of how the University and higher education institutions work.
• Ability to understand policy and procedures and how to apply these.
• Understands the importance of equality and diversity in the workplace.
• Ability to identify and respond to equality and diversity issues in line with relevant policies and procedures.

Dimensions

This role will require the exercise of personal initiative within and beyond the department. May manage a team or budgets.

Planning and Organising

The role is required to work independently on daily, weekly and monthly tasks but also on projects with medium-longer-term horizons without daily supervision. May manage others staffs’ workloads.

Problem Solving and decision making

They will work with direction from management but with a significant degree of autonomy. They will deal with more complex queries and be expected to resolve any problems in their area of responsibility. They may also manage the workload of others or coach others to achieve results.

Internal and External relationships

This role will be liaising with internal colleagues and stakeholders, likely to be University-wide and with external stakeholders.

Further particulars can be found here

Informal enquiries to Laura Chapman, email: l.chapman.1@bham.ac.uk

View our staff values and behaviours here

We believe there is no such thing as a ‘typical’ member of University of Birmingham staff and that diversity in its many forms is a strength that underpins the exchange of ideas, innovation and debate at the heart of University life. We are committed to proactively addressing the barriers experienced by some groups in our community and are proud to hold Athena SWAN, Race Equality Charter and Disability Confident accreditations. We have an Equality Diversity and Inclusion Centre that focuses on continuously improving the University as a fair and inclusive place to work where everyone has the opportunity to succeed. We are also committed to sustainability, which is a key part of our strategy. You can find out more about our work to create a fairer university for everyone on our website.