Performance & Assurance Team Manager

Substantive Vacancy – Performance & Assurance Team Manager
Performance & Assurance Team, Strategy & Intelligence Department

An opportunity has arisen to join the Performance & Assurance Team within Staffordshire Fire & Rescue’s Strategy & Intelligence Department.

You will lead and develop the P&A Team, to ensure that the Service’s use of data provides the required business intelligence to drive strategic decision-making.

Salary:  Grade 9 (£35,745 to £38,890)

Hours:  37 hours per week (flexible working scheme in operation)

About the role:
You will lead the team in ensuring that the Service’s use of data is fully embedded and governed appropriately by the necessary Data and Information Management strategies and policies.  You will ensure that the Service operates within an effective performance management framework, taking responsibility for analysis and interpretation of data, and correlating it to ensure the effectiveness of Service activities and initiatives.  You will strive to put data at the heart of all we do, ensuring that it is securely stored, quality assured and able to be used for a range of reports that drive efficient and effective use of our people and resources.  There will also be responsibilities for mandatory reporting through in-house governance structures, and to various government departments as required. 
 

Main Tasks:
The successful candidate will be responsible for:-

• Acting as an inspirational leader, to manage and provide direction to the Performance and Assurance team to ensure it offers a proactive service to the organisation in line with its objectives, and striving for continuous improvement.  You will be responsible for coaching and mentoring team members, using own knowledge to broaden in-house technical skills of others and improve team resilience.
• Taking a proactive approach to understanding business requirements and providing the required data, in the required formats, to support data needs across the Service, and to improve understanding of performance data enabling managers from across the Service to be more efficient and effective
• Leading on the provision and analysis of the data/reports produced by the Performance and Assurance team, to include in-depth and appropriate narrative to interpret the data including provision of data to both internal and external stakeholders
• Leading on the design and compilation of complex reports from multiple data sources, utilising SQL (T-SQL, PostgreSQL) to deal with large relational databases including creating views and stored procedures
• Oversee the set-up, implementation and maintenance of automated data processes utilising SSIS (SQL Server Integration Services) and SQL Job Agent
• Implementing and leading a strategic approach to the use of data/data management within the Service and enshrining this in the associated policies and procedures to ensure  ongoing compliance
• Leading on the provision of appropriate guidance notes, templates and relevant processes to make certain that the Service’s data is valid, accurate and consistent and clearly understood by internal and external stakeholders
• Ensuring all required data is collected and housed appropriately from multiple locations/sources in suitable systems to enable future reporting, including pre-planning of future data needs
• Building relationships with partner organisations and key stakeholders and identifying opportunities and ways to share data and information which will mutually benefit all parties and contribute to making the Service’s activities more efficient and effective
• Driving improvement by forward thinking and embracing opportunities to utilise new and improved reporting tools and systems to demonstrate continuous improvement 
• Developing and guiding the Service’s planning processes to meet strategic objectives, followed by the required evaluation of the resultant data to confirm successful achievement against those objectives 
• Supporting the Service’s Community Risk Management planning processes in the evaluation of activities and consultation with our people, partners, key stakeholders and our communities
• Manage and monitor the Performance and Assurance team budgets, taking a commercial approach to ensure value for money
• Any other duties commensurate with the role

Person Specification:

Essential 
Education and Training
• Educated to degree level (or equivalent) in business, statistics, data management, information systems or other relevant subject, or with significant previous demonstrable experience in a similar role

Knowledge and experience
• Experience of leading, motivating and managing a high performing team
• A proven ability to  create complex reports from multiple data sources, analysis of the data, and provision of narrative to support organisational objectives and making recommendations to inform strategic direction and decisions
• Experience of developing and implementing a range data management policies and governance procedures at an organisational level, developing understanding and influencing senior stakeholders getting buy-in to ensure ongoing compliance 
• Experience of influencing at a senior level, developing and guiding an organisation’s planning processes to meet strategic objectives, and evaluating resultant data to confirm successful achievement of those objectives 
• Knowledge and extensive use of data modelling and GIS mapping systems to visualise, manipulate, analyse and present information and provide evidence-based data to inform organisational planning
• Experience in management of data in relational databases, developing data warehousing and the querying and manipulation of multiple large data sets using standard programming language, e.g. SQL
• Experience of using T-SQL and PostgreSQL procedural programming, understanding stored procedures, server objects and manipulation and aggregation of data
• Experience of communicating and influencing at all levels of an organisation
• Experience of building effective working relationships with a range of stakeholders
• Experience in extracting and analysing data from third party providers
 

Skills abilities and personal qualities
• Proactive, and highly motivated leader
• Ability to challenge and drive high performance
• Excellent communication skills with the ability to communicate technical detail to a non-technical audience both verbally and in writing, to a range of stakeholder across the service, including senior leaders
• Excellent numerical, analytical and statistical skills
• Interacts  well  with  colleagues  to  achieve  workable solutions  
• Solid understanding of the interactive visualisation of information with ability to analyse  data,  spot  trends,  draw  conclusions  and make recommendations
• Strong conceptual and problem-solving skills 
• Strong organisational skills (demonstrated ability to manage multiple projects and priorities), capable of prioritising own workload and working on own initiative
• Advanced Excel skills, including writing formulae and transformation of data

Desirable
Knowledge and experience
• A recognised management qualification
• Knowledge of ISO8000
• Experience of implementing,  visualising and presenting data in BI tools, particularly PowerBI
• Relevant experience and understanding of working within the fire sector
• Experience of contract negotiation and procurement processes
• Project management experience/qualification

  
Additional Information:
This vacancy is open to internal and external applicants.

Closing date for receipt of applications is 13th June 2021, 12 Midday.

All communication regarding this vacancy will be issued via email, so please check your email account on a regular basis.

** Please note that any SFRS On-call personnel wishing to apply must ensure a revised declaration is approved by their SDG, prior to submitting their application **

If you have any enquiries please contact: 
Mandy Eeles – Corporate Safety Planning Manager on 01785 898801
Steph Cooper – HR Officer on 07528 083155