Executive Assistant - Stevenage, United Kingdom - East and North Hertfordshire NHS Trust

Description

Job overview

We are recruiting for an Executive Assistant who shares our vision to be trusted to provide consistently outstanding care and exemplary service to our patients.

This is a fixed-term contract for 12 months maternity cover. You will be expected to support the Chief Executive and Chief Nurse.

This will include secretarial, administrative, and clerical support such as diary management, preparing presentations, meeting management including agenda preparation, note/minute taking and production of action plans.

Our Values are Include, Respect and Improve. It is important that you understand and refer to our values during your recruitment process and beyond

Main duties of the job

Recognise the importance, confidential and sensitivity of issues and at all times act using the utmost discretion.

Communicate with tact, understanding and discretion with members of the public/patients/carers when dealing with enquiries/complaints.

Act as first point of contact for all communications and deal with all such communications appropriately, including exchange of sensitive information.

Respond to all queries, correspondence, and telephone calls in a timely and professional manner.

Initiate action where possible and report progress as appropriate.

Employ judgement to ensure that messages and actions are prioritised and brought to the attention of the senior management team with any relevant supporting information.

Working for our organisation

At East and North Hertfordshire NHS Trust, we are proud of the range of general and specialist services we provide and our 6,000 or so dedicated staff ensure our patients get the best care. Our ability to be flexible and innovative in the way in which we work and deliver our services to our catchment has never been more important than it is now.

We run the following hospitals:

• The Lister Hospital, Stevenage
• New Queen Elizabeth II (New QEII), Welwyn Garden City
• Hertford County, Hertford
• Mount Vernon Cancer Centre (MVCC), Northwood

We have ambitious plans to become an outstanding, patient-led Trust where dedicated staff provide high-quality, compassionate care to our patients. We continue to undergo significant transformation and our staff and patients are at the heart of delivering this ambitious agenda.

We are committed to a positive work life balance for our employees. This means that any employee is entitled to seek to work flexible working patterns and we are committed to listen and consider all requests. Such requests, of course, have to be made and considered formally, and will need to be balanced against service needs, but our starting point will always be to find ways to support making them happen.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

Please see the attached Job Description and Person Specification information pack for further detailed information regarding this role.

Person specification

Qualifications/Training

Essential criteria

• Able to demonstrate a good level of general education to Grade C and above GCSE level in Mathematics and English or equivalent
• RSA III or equivalent and/or Word Processing
• NVQ Level 3 Administration qualification or equivalent
• Advanced IT Skills in MS Office, including MS Outlook & MS Teams

Desirable criteria

• Audio Typing
• Secretarial qualifications
• Minute taking qualification

Previous Experience

Essential criteria

• Substantial experience in use of IT systems e.g. Word, internet, Excel, Y PowerPoint, MS Outlook & MS Teams
• Experience of working to tight deadlines and under pressure
• Experience of negotiating and obtaining information
• Experience of analysing and presenting data
• Previous experience of working as a Personal Assistant
• Experience of working in the NHS

Desirable criteria

• Experience of line management
• Previous experience of supporting at Director Level

Skills

Essential criteria

• Ability to work as part of a multidisciplinary team and establish good working relationships at all levels
• Ability to arrange and minute meetings, develop agendas and supporting documents, chase actions etc
• Ability to work and act on own initiative
• Ability to demonstrate excellent communication skills both verbal and written
• Ability to work to tight deadlines and under pressure
• Ability to complete tasks and projects on time and to a high standard, demonstrating a can-do attitude
• Excellent organisational skills
• Proactive – to anticipate difficulties and deal with them with minimal reference to the Directors
• Ability to work in a highly demanding and pressurised environment
• Ability to deal with challenging situations
• Ability to manage and organise own workload
• Regularly demonstrates a positive attitude and is patient focused ensuring that the needs of our patients are maintained and managed appropriately

Other Requirements

Essential criteria

• Willingness to work flexibly
• Ability to provide evidence of full COVID-19 vaccination status or evidence of formal medical exemption through the NHS Covid Pass process
• Understanding of, and commitment to, equality, diversity
• Role model our Trust values every day
• Resilience

Our values

We want our staff to believe in, demonstrate and live our values in everything we do.

Include
We value the diversity and experience of our community colleagues and partners, creating relationships and climates that provide an opportunity to share, collaborate and grow together.

Respect
We create a safe environment where we are curious of the lived experience of others, seek out best practice and are open to listening and hearing new ideas.

Improve
We are committed to consistently delivering excellent services and continuously looking to improve through a creative workforce that feels empowered to act in service of our shared purpose.

Committed to our Community

East and North Hertfordshire NHS Trust is committed to equality, diversity and inclusion for all job applicants, staff, patients and the wider community. We want to create a workforce which represents the communities we serve. We are on a journey to become a more inclusive organisation and we welcome applications from everyone regardless of their background. In particular we encourage applications from candidates with disabilities, and candidates from Black, Asian and Minority ethnic (BAME) backgrounds who are currently under-represented in various parts of our workforce .

We understand the importance of balancing work and home life. We are committed to support flexible working for our staff wherever possible and all our employees are given the opportunity to discuss potential for flexible working.

We are proud to be a Disability Confident employer and achieved our status in 2019.

We will remove barriers that prospective candidates might face at any stage of our recruitment process. If you have a disability and would like the advert in an alternative format, or would like to talk about how we can adjust the interview process to best support you, please contact us by emailing

We are also proud to support our UK armed forces by supporting Reservists, Cadet Instructors, Veterans and military spouses/partners into employment and offering supportive policies that value their contribution to the community and to our Trust.

We are committed to being a carer-friendly environment, addressing the complex needs of families with caring responsibilities. In partnership with Carers in Hertfordshire, all our working carers have access to support from recruitment. We are also a member of Carers UK, providing resources to make balancing work and caring easier. Our approach is inclusive, recognizing diverse challenges and creating a supportive environment where carers feel valued.