Senior Manager, Performance Audit - Edinburgh, United Kingdom - Audit Scotland

Description

Overall purpose of the role

Our Performance Audit and Best Value Group (PABV) delivers a range of audit products to assess how well public money is being used and provide valuable insights and learning. We look at a wide range of issues including climate change, inequalities, digital transformation and how public bodies are recovering from the pandemic and reforming public services. Our Best Value audits in councils look at important issues like how well they perform in delivering services to their communities. Our work programme is dynamic and refreshed on a regular basis to ensure it responds to changing circumstances.

Our work involves:

As a Senior Manager in PABV, you will lead high-quality audit work in particular areas of public policy. You will play a significant role in identifying audit priorities to ensure that our work programme is relevant and makes a difference. You will have a clear understanding of the important issues and risks facing Scotland's public sector, demonstrating strong credibility to

support excellent relationships with external leaders and senior staff in your policy portfolio.

An inspiring leader, you will lead teams to make complex audit judgements and harness the

power of the team to deliver a portfolio of audit work to a world-class standard. You will also contribute to our quality improvement agenda and wider corporate developments across Audit Scotland.

What you will be doing

As one of our senior members of staff, you'll be inspiring our people and help make Audit Scotland a world-class public-sector audit organisation with your ability to:

Knowledge & Experience

You are educated to degree level and/or have demonstrable relevant experience. You have a deep knowledge and understanding of the Scottish public sector, how it works and the issues it is facing. You are confident in engaging with senior colleagues in a range of organisations and in building and developing effective relationships. You are a strategic and creative thinker, solving demanding problems when the answers are not immediately clear. You can analyse complex issues, including financial information, and recommend practical solutions, based on clear rationales – drawing upon your sound judgement and range of experiences, intuition and professional scepticism to add value in our audit work.

You have strong verbal and written communication skills, combined with sound judgement and experience to present balanced findings and make focused, convincing and persuasive recommendations that have impact. You deal with difficult situations and challenge individuals in a calm, professional and effective manner. You work collaboratively with colleagues on crosscutting and strategic issues. You are self-aware in your own abilities and can plan and manage your own high-quality work as well as the work of your wider team. You ensure work is properly resourced in terms of people, abilities and knowledge and delivered to time, quality and cost criteria.

You have extensive experience in leading teams and in managing, coaching and developing people to bring out the best in your colleagues. You recognise the value of having a dynamic work programme and the need for flexibility where work commitments change, and encourage and support colleagues to be adaptable and resilient. You have the foresight to identify potential organisational challenges and intervene before they manifest.

You have a plan for the future that includes your own continuous development, inspiring others and helping Audit Scotland to be a world-class public-audit organisation. You will undertake professional and personal development to maintain technical expertise, meet Continuing Professional Development (CPD) requirements where appropriate and enhance your career prospects at Audit Scotland.

Person specification - specific knowledge and experience

Essential

Desirable

*S = Shortlisting criteria I = Interview criteria A = Assessment / Exercise

Interested? Next steps

Audit Scotland

Our vision is that public money is well spent to meet the needs of Scotland's people.

To achieve this, we support the Auditor General for Scotland and the Accounts Commission to provide clear, independent and objective assurance on how effectively public money is being managed and spent. Our work covers about £59bn of public spending, almost public sector accounts, and the services and projects that affect all people and communities in Scotland.

As well as what we do, how we do it is integral to delivering our vision and critical to our wellbeing and our organisational success. We put our organisational values of equality, independence, innovation, integrity and respect at the heart of everything we do.

We employ around staff in a wide variety of roles, working from our main offices in Edinburgh and Glasgow, and through a network of regional offices across Scotland.

There has never been a more interesting or important time to join us. We offer a rewarding place to work, a supportive and open culture and a wide range of professional development opportunities. Benefits include 42 days of annual leave including public holidays, an attractive local government pension scheme with 19.4% employer contributions, personal development allowances and flexible working hours. We've also been named one of the top 25 workplaces in Scotland and the UK's tenth best accountancy workplace in the Best Companies awards.

Diversity and Inclusion

We value the unique perspective a diverse workforce brings to what we do. Therefore, we're keen to increase representation in our workforce and support progression of minority ethnic groups. We are also a proud disability confident employer.

Reasonable Adjustments

Audit Scotland's recruitment process may include various stages and activities including application forms, online assessments, and interviews, to assess whether you meet the requirements of the role.

As a Disability Confident employer, we are committed to providing inclusive and accessible recruitment where everyone is supported to perform at their best.

When applying for a job with Audit Scotland, you will be asked in the application form if you need an adjustment at any stage of the recruitment process. Please include the reason you require an adjustment and details of what adjustment/s might help.

Some examples of adjustments that have been given to candidates include changing the time, location or format of interviews and providing additional time in any assessments and interviews. This is not an exhaustive list, and we will consider any adjustments that you might need.

As part of our commitment to equality and diversity, our equality network groups would be delighted to offer an insight into Audit Scotland's culture of inclusivity. If you consider yourself to have a visible or hidden disability and wish to hear more about life at Audit Scotland or wish to speak with someone about the possibility of any adjustments, please contact or call for further information and a member of the HR team will be in touch.

How we work

We employ around staff in a wide variety of roles. They work flexibly at home and in the office as well as from audit sites across Scotland. This isn't your typical work from home or work from office type job. We're flexible about working patterns and we've transformed how we deliver high-quality public audit. We support you to work in the ways that achieve the best results for you, your team and the business, including your physical location and how you manage your hours. Put simply, we trust you to do your job, and want you to have the ability to have a rewarding work-life balance and best support your individual circumstances, be that childcare, adult carer responsibilities or managing disabilities.

We welcome applications from across the UK. Some travel to our offices or client sites will be necessary at times, but you don't need to live in Scotland to work for us.

Other conditions

Audit Scotland is committed to ensuring that: