Opportunity
Employer description:
Business Administrator Apprentice
Job title: 2 x Business Administrator Apprentices
Level: Apprentices
Starting salary: £20,111
Directorate: Various
Section: Various
Location: Manchester
Reporting to: Line Manager
Hours: You will work a total of 35 hours a week. This includes your 6 hours of study time with the training provider. You will work Monday – Friday between the hours of 08:30 – 17:30 in most of our apprenticeships, but hours may vary depending on the role.
Contract: Fixed term
We are looking for people to join our Level 3 Business Administration apprenticeship positions. In these roles, you will have the opportunity to work with important teams at the GMC. Working with our apprenticeship provider to complete your apprenticeship in a 15-month period.
Located in one of our three central Manchester offices, you will gain valuable experience in an office environment. This will include working with different areas such as our Investigations Team and Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS), allowing you to develop skills in customer service, computer proficiency, the ability to perform under pressure, teamwork, and many more skills. – is there enough space to put this in?
Administrative Assistant Apprentice
The Administrative Assistant Apprentice provides administrative and hearing support to the Operations and Development Section at the MPTS. The MPTS run hearings for when there are serious concerns about doctors. Hearing and office based support is arranged on a rota basis but primarily the role will be hearing based with occasional time spent supporting the wider office administration. We hold hearing virtually and in person at our Manchester hearing centre.
Time supporting hearings will involve many parts, including setting up hearing links or hearing rooms in advance. Welcoming parties to the hearing environment and making sure they have the equipment and access to systems and documents that they need.
Office based administrative support will involve preparing of documents from templates and guidance, updating systems when information is received and responding to telephone and email queries.
Main responsibilities
- To assist with duties in connection with the running of hearings, including:
- Assisting with setting up and clearing hearing rooms.
- Sending out hearing links and other key prehearing documentation.
- Providing support to all parties attending hearings including practitioners and their representatives, GMC representatives, witnesses and the tribunal themselves.
- Assisting the tribunal clerk as required, including administrative tasks to ensure legal compliance and mantaining a log of the progress of the hearing (hearing commentary).
- Updating documents on IT equipment relating to the tribunal (hand held tablets) and operating other IT systems to allow the hearing to be recorded and accessed.
- To support the administration of the Interim Orders Tribunals, including;
- The preparing of admin documentation
- The uploading of documentation to systems
- Dealing with internal and external queries
- To ensure hearing rooms are regularly checked, maintained in an orderly state with stationery replenished.
- To be responsible for dealing with enquires in writing and by telephone.
- To undertake the general administration of the Section, which will include filing, ordering stationery, checking and maintaining hearing rooms and other general administrative duties.
- Introducing better business methods to the teams values and helping with changes when they come up.
- In exceptional circumstances, work from locations other than our Manchester hearing centre and during weekends (this is very rare and on agreement).
- To support the organisation’s sustainability aims and net zero plan where appropriate.
- Any other reasonable duties as may be assigned from time to time.
Investigations Administrative Assistant Apprentice
Job purpose
The Investigations Team manage concerns raised about a medical professional and will investigate a wide variety of cases mainly involving clinical performance, and misconduct incidents raised by patients, members of the public, employers and colleagues.
When a concern is raised to us about a medical professional, we must assess whether that medical professional poses any current or ongoing risk to one or more of the three parts of public protection:
- Protecting, promoting and maintain the health, safety and wellbeing of the public.
- Promoting and maintaining public confidence in the medical profession.
- Promoting and maintaining proper professional standards and conduct for members of those professions.
The apprentice investigations assistant will provide efficient and timely administrative support to the investigations team carrying out casework.
Main responsibilities
- Liaising with internal and external contacts.
- Requesting and redacting medical records and other documents from external parties.
- Preparing and Bundling of documents.
- Allocating electronic and physical items of post on a rota system.
- Managing the activity work queue.
- Prioritising tasks and completing them in a timely manner.
- Providing updates to the Investigations Officer on the progress of tasks.
- Answering telephone enquiries from GMC members, the public, and profession, referring more complex matters to senior colleagues as appropriate.
- Using the telephone to establish a contact and to follow up email requests.
- Answering general correspondence and preparing standard letters.
- Maintaining electronic filing systems.
- Routine scanning of documents and photocopying.
- Covering for the work of colleagues in their absence as required.
- Any other reasonable duties as may be assigned from time to time.
Person specification
Essential criteria
- An understanding of the importance of confidentiality and data protection
- The ability to work within established guidelines and to meet deadlines
- To demonstrate excellent customer service ensuring the needs of internal and external customers are met and our services and contact with customers are delivered positively.
- The ability to work constructively and positively as a member of a team and on your own initiative
- An understanding of different people’s perspectives, and the ability to use this to help to provide good customer service.
- Demonstration of an organised approach to work, and ability to prioritise a busy and varied workload with a good level of accuracy and attention to detail
- Ability to follow work schedules and procedures
- Demonstration of good time keeping is essential with flexibility to work as demands change
- Good verbal and written communication skills and the ability to adapt your communication style to your audience
- To demonstrate a basic level of analytical skills when processing activities and determining the appropriate decision or action.
Benefits of working at the GMC
- We have a wide range of benefits to help us attract and retain talented individuals like you:
- Annual leave – 30 days a year. You can also buy and sell annual leave (max. 5 days or pro-rata if for part-time).
- Defined contribution pension scheme – our workplace pension operated by Aviva and members receive a 15% employer contribution. If you wish to contribute, deductions are made from your monthly salary.
- Wellbeing – flexible working opportunities, life assurance cover, income protection cover, private medical insurance with Vitality Health, employee assistance programme, cycle to work scheme, eyesight tests, hybrid working arrangements for most roles.
- Learning and development – we offer courses, workshops, and online learning on a variety of topics from management to wellbeing.
- Other benefits – discounts scheme, season ticket loans.
Our values
We have five organisational values which underpin everything we do.
- Excellence – we are committed to excellence in everything that we do.
- Fairness – we treat everyone fairly.
- Transparency – we are honest and strive to be open and transparent.
- Collaboration – we are a listening and learning organisation.
- Integrity – we're honest and share what we see.
We also have OneGMC Behaviours based around four themes, which set out the professional behaviours we all need to demonstrate in our work:
- Being inclusive
- Continuously learning
- Leading the way
- Thriving together.
We want every decision we make, every interaction we have, and every email we write, to embody our values. It's important that each of us acts in a way that is consistent with our values. We regularly evaluate how we are living up to these values and we seek the views of others too.
Working for us
We work with doctors, patients, and other stakeholders to support good, safe patient care across the UK. We set the standards doctors and those who train them need to meet, and help them achieve them. If there are concerns these standards may not be met or that public confidence in doctors may be at risk, we can investigate, and take action if needed. When you join us, you’ll be helping to protect patients and improve medical practice across the UK. You can also find out more about the GMC and our work by watching this video.
We run an annual survey of our employees and the overall staff engagement score for 2022 is 74%. In particular:
- 89% recommend working for the GMC
- 87% speak positively about the services we provide
- 85% are proud to say they work here.
Our inclusion score for 2022 is 76% – this is drawn from the way we are all treated at work and how inclusive we are as an organisation. We’ve gained many insights around inclusion from our survey. For example, 95% of us say our managers treat us with fairness and respect.
Our environment impact
As part of our work to be a more responsible regulator, we commit to monitoring and minimising our environmental impact. We have a corporate social responsibility (CSR) programme to explore opportunities to collaborate, such as working with Greener NHS, an in-house compliance team and staff network called the Green Group.
We have developed a plan to meet the UK’s 2050 net zero target and are looking at ways to reduce our emissions further in the coming years. You can read more about our CSR commitments on our webpage.
Why diversity is important to us
Diversity makes us a more effective regulator, so we welcome great people from all backgrounds.
We believe that working in a diverse team helps broaden everyone’s views, drives innovation, and stimulates the work environment.
A diverse workforce brings fresh ideas and broader views that helps us understand the needs of those who access our services. For example, people from different backgrounds and with different experiences provide us with insight into the needs and challenges of medical professionals, patients, and the public. They bring skills, not necessarily from similar roles, but from life experiences that can help to shape and inform our work.
The more diverse we are and the greater the talent that we have, the better we can be as an organisation. We’re committed to creating an inclusive culture for everyone to reach their full potential. In our most recent staff survey, 80% of staff feel the GMC is an inclusive place for people of all backgrounds.
Support for you
We want everyone who works for us to feel respected, valued, and able to be themselves.
We know that people have to balance work with caring and other responsibilities that come with their own unique challenges and pressures. We can support your needs in different ways, for example we:
- Can make adjustments if you have a disability, a long-term health condition, or any short-term condition so you can thrive in your role.
- Offer flexible working options to help you structure your working day around your caring responsibilities outside of work or manage your health and wellbeing. These include being able to work from home on certain days and job share arrangements.
- Have employee networks to collaborate, share experiences, and support each other. These networks are really important to us. Find out more on our staff networks webpage.
Disability Confident
We are committed to inclusive employment and career development opportunities, and particularly welcome disabled people to apply for all roles with us. We are a Disability Confident employer so offer an interview to all applicants with a disability who provide evidence of meeting the agreed cut-off mark on the essential criteria set out in the person specification.
We make the recruitment process accessible and inclusive for all applicants. We can make adjustments to the recruitment process, such as altering interview arrangements, and send application forms and correspondence in a different format. Please email recruitment@gmc-uk.org or call 0161 923 6626 to discuss any requirements you have.
IT connectivity and setup
We provide staff with the latest laptop and headphones for office and homeworking, with the latest Microsoft 365 suite of tools, 24/7 technical support and full training on all software packages used for each role. If your application is successful, the following recommendations are given when working at home:
Fibre broadband (BT Infinity, Virgin Superfibre or equivalent). If fibre broadband is not available in your area we would suggest a connection providing a minimum of 8mb download and 2mb upload actual speed, not the ‘up to’ speed quoted by providers. These figures can be obtained from tools such as Speedtest.
For optimum performance we recommend your workspace is placed close to your broadband router and directly connected via a cable rather than wireless or powerline technology.