Departmental Planning and Performance Lead

The post holder will be joining an energetic, vibrant team, which plays a vital role in developing the Department's Plan and assessing and assuring its deliverability throughout the year. This is a challenging and exciting role in a fast-paced and dynamic environment, working with senior officials in the organisation. Your main responsibilities will include:

• Leading and iterating the process for the regular deliverability assessments of the Departmental Plan which take place on approximately a quarterly basis including in-year reviews and at fiscal events. This involves close collaboration across central teams and wider stakeholders to ensure we understand the ability of DWP to deliver what we have committed to within the Departmental Plan, and where there are challenges and constraints suggestions to address these are proposed to ET and other governance boards.
• At fiscal events, working closely with central teams in Finance and Strategy to understand the scope of proposed measures and with our 'deliverability community' of representatives from core enabling functions and delivery areas to understand the impact of accommodating the new measures. This involves proactive engagement at working and senior level to drive forward the deliverability agenda to ensure it is given due consideration in the decision-making process.
• Maintaining a strong stakeholder network across the deliverability community and central teams, leading regular cross-team meetings and building one-to-one relationships at working and senior level
• Issuing commissions to enabling functions and other central teams, and analysing the returns, distilling complex and at times contradictory information into clear, concise documents that can be used by ET and senior leaders to enable decision-making.
• Contributing to ET advice and ministerial briefings, occasionally deputising for Senior Leaders at ET meetings and ensuring the latest deliverability position is accurately reflected.
• Writing and delivering presentations to a variety of internal and cross-government audiences to raise awareness of deliverability and the Departmental Plan.
• Working closely with the Risk Management Directorate and Departmental Planning Performance Senior Leadership Team to ensure the principal risk of delivering our strategic outcomes and Departmental Plan is regularly reviewed and accurately reflects the mitigations and controls we have in place.
• Contributing to the wider team's work, including a quarterly update on the performance of key enabling functions as part of our ET-reviewed Performance Dashboard, and quarterly updates as part of our Departmental Plan reporting to Cabinet Office
• Contributing to and supporting wider work of the team on planning and engagement, occasionally providing cover for other leads and working flexibly across team boundaries.
• Leading and motivating a small team, building capability and adaptability, and empowering the team to think creatively and develop innovative approaches that support them to deliver a quality service in sometimes ambiguous environments.
• Contributing to the team's corporate activities e.g., strands of work to improve learning and development, team management and ways of working.
Role 2: Annual Report and Accounts (Performance Report) Lead The post holder will be joining an energetic, vibrant team, which plays a vital role in ensuring that the Performance Report provides a fair and balanced representation of what the Department has delivered over the reporting year. You will expertly manage your and the team's work to ensure objectives are met. Your main responsibilities will include:
• Leading and managing the Annual Report and Accounts Performance Report process, including planning the timeline, commissioning and drafting content to ensure a factual and balanced report that reads with a single voice.
• Leading and planning stakeholder engagement across the various stakeholder groups to ensure key stakeholders are engaged at the right time. Pro-actively managing the clearance process for Directors, Director's General, and the Permanent Secretary.
• Lead discrete sections of the Performance Report, building and maintaining relevant stakeholder relationships, negotiating, influencing and challenging as appropriate.
• Overseeing the continuous improvement process, ensuring that ongoing improvements to the Annual Report and Accounts process are captured, progressed, and tracked via existing processes.
• Leading and motivating a small team, building capability and adaptability, and empowering the team to think creatively and develop innovative approaches that support them to deliver a quality service in sometimes ambiguous environments.
• Contributing to the Team's corporate activities e.g., strands of work to improve learning and development, team management and ways of working.
  
  This is a fantastic opportunity to join the Departmental Planning and Performance Team (DPP) which sits within Strategic Finance Directorate in Finance Group. DPP is a kind supportive and inclusive team which puts a huge emphasis on work life balance and staff wellbeing. We are at the forefront of the DWP agenda to improve how we plan, monitor and improve performance across the department to support senior decision makers. Our work focuses on priorities for the Permanent Secretary, the Executive Team (ET) and the Secretary of State.
DPP is responsible for drafting DWP's Departmental Plan, assessing and monitoring progress against the Plan, through production of internal quarterly progress reports to ET and ministers and assessing the on-going deliverability of the Plan. In this context, deliverability is the degree to which we have confidence we can deliver the Departmental Plan in full, within the timescales of the Plan, within the cost and resource envelope set for the Department; and to the quality Ministers and the Executive Team and our customers/clients rightly expect. The team is also responsible for delivering the Performance Report section of the DWP Annual Report and Accounts, which is laid in Parliament and published in the public domain, allowing the public and Parliament to hold the Department to account. These are high profile and stretching roles, with frequent opportunities to work with senior officials up to and including the Permanent Secretary, Executive Team, and Ministers and a wide range of DWP's central teams and enabling functions. The role offers the post holder a wide range of developmental opportunities to lead on key elements of the team's work.