Evidence Islington Project Support Officer

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

Islington’s HDRC, known as Evidence Islington, is developing the research capability and readiness of the council and focuses on reducing health inequalities and improving the health and wellbeing of Islington residents.

The post holder will join Islington’s Public Health HDRC team (Evidence Islington). The post-holder will support the finance and administrative functions of the Evidence Islington programme. The post holder will provide a quality service to all external and internal stakeholders across Islington and its HDRC higher education institutions (HEI) and voluntary and community sector (VCS) partners. This role will require the post holder on occasion to deputise for the Research Manager. 

The post holder will work closely with the wider Public Health department and Evidence Islington partners: Healthwatch Islington, UCL and LSHTM education institutions as well as other HDRC partner organisations and networks. The post holder will also liaise with the Members, and other key stakeholders on behalf of the LBI HDRC team where necessary.

More generally, the post holder will be responsible for preparing/amending correspondence, reports and official documents, logistics and arrangement of meeting and appointments, updating logs and  processing supplier invoices and travel claims for Islington and its HDRC strategic partners, as appropriate. The post holder will work collaboratively with all HDRC colleagues to ensure smooth running of the collaborative management of the Public Health HDRC Evidence Islington email inbox.

Duties and responsibilities

• To be the first point of contact for any visitors or stakeholders, and demonstrate consistently high standards of tact, professionalism, discretion and diplomacy. Communicating with Evidence Islington personnel and external stakeholders at all levels of seniority, including partners, funders, staff and students by telephone, email and in person.
• To support in the production of the HDRC Public Health Reports, ensuring that all senior stakeholders have timely sight of, and input into, the report prior to finalisation. Will include drafting and circulating emails, documents, presentations and reports on behalf of the Director and delivery team.
• To act as gatekeeper, ensuring the HDRC programme (EI) generic email box is monitored routinely and queries/requests are dealt with in a fair, professional and timely manner,  as appropriate and exercising judgement on their behalf where appropriate.
• Ensuring that appropriate technology is used to facilitate the production and use of spreadsheets, reports and other documents to a high standard, leading where necessary on innovative thinking around creating of methods to enable user-friendly collation of survey results, contributing to a more streamlined survey process.
• Provide support to the Evidence Islington Director and team in their day-to-day duties, ensuring they are able to make the best use of their time and energy. This will include (but not be limited to) making sure they are aware of their daily schedule, upcoming important tasks/meetings, and ensuring meeting papers are available in advance where applicable.
• To establish and maintain effective relationships with Evidence Islington partners (Islington Healthwatch and academic partners), the HDRC funding body (NIHR) as well as other senior colleagues, including Corporate Directors, external Directors, senior NHS colleagues, Members, and contacts in collaborating organisations, representing Evidence Islington in a professional and approachable manner.
• To work collaboratively with the Evidence Islington delivery team to set up and participate in projects. To include using innovative methodology to create streamlined ways of logging findings and evaluation and dissemination of these.
  
  
• To have a good understanding of the Islington e-invoicing system and the Healthwatch Islington partner purchase order system including but not limited to creating purchase order numbers and processing invoices as required, as well as helping to maintain the department’s purchase order tracker.
• To lead on arranging logistics for Public Health HDRC meetings and events both face-to-face and virtual. To include organising dates and venues; drafting agendas; inviting speakers; taking and circulating minutes and following up action points; identifying issues arising; acting as a channel for information from and to the Delivery Board; dissemination of information, ensuring  appropriate facilities including adaptations for those with disabilities.
• To support in managing team resources, including liaising and building relationships with department colleagues, HDRC partners (VCS and HEI institutions) and resident/PPIE networks. Work closely with LBI engagement team to manage HDRC participating resident(s) ‘reward and recognition’ processes for payroll and expense claims. Maintain participant timesheet attendance and expense claim logs.  Archive official documentation including agreements, logs, reports, invoices etc in the HDRC SharePoint.
• To support the routine updating of the HDRC budget expenditure excel sheet(s), as well as follow up with the team to ensure the monitoring and evaluation plan is updated in a timely manner (quarterly or as appropriate).
• To support and on occasion to lead on identifying, investigating, implementing and documenting standard operating processes/procedural improvements and to act as a champion/ambassador for continual improvement across the service
• To undertake other duties commensurate to the grade of the post.