Facilities Administrative Assistant at Cancer Research UK

Cancer Research UK, the world’s largest independent cancer research charity, is seeking qualified individuals for this essential role. If you’re ready to make an impact in cancer research and support the organization’s mission, they want to hear from you!

About the Company

As a Facilities Administrative Assistant, you’ll be part of a dedicated team working to increase cancer survival rates to 75% by 2034. Cancer Research UK conducts vital research in cancer prevention, diagnosis, and treatment, with the goal of transforming lives. They’re looking for sharp, courageous, and collaborative professionals ready to make a difference.

Explore a career with Cancer Research UK and help change lives together.

Position: Facilities Administrative Assistant

Salary: £28,000 per annum

Job Type: Contract:  12 month fixed-term contract

Location: Stratford, London, UK

About the Role

Reports to: Property Manager

Department:  Chief Operating Office

Hours:  Part time 21 hours per week

Location: Stratford, London. Office-based with high flexibility (1-2 days per week in the office). We are open to flexible working requests.

At Cancer Research UK, we exist to beat cancer.

We are professionals with purpose, beating cancer every day. But we need to go much further and much faster. That’s why we’re looking for someone talented, someone who wants to develop their skills, someone like you.

Cancer Research UK’s Property team is essential to the smooth running and sustainability of our organisation. The team manages the facilities and maintenance (c.£6m spend), energy (c.£6m), renovation(c.£1m), and the opening of new sites across our retail and head office estates. This consists of 600+ stores, 40 superstores, 4 distribution hubs & online marketplaces; and two head offices across the UK. To pay for property services across all our sites, the team raised c.400+ POs worth c.£2.1m last year (one of the largest volumes of departmental POs across the charity).

As a Facilities Assistant, you will support our Central Property team in managing our retail and corporate estates by providing efficient and effective administrative support across the team. This will be a varied role with a range of responsibilities such as: supporting the team in managing and coordinating meetings, travel, and events; maintaining databases and communications channels; preparing documents, and handling utilities queries from staff across the charity. You will play a key role in raising a high-volume of POs (including staged POs) for all property services while handling the invoicing process and payment queries. Furthermore, you’ll have the opportunity to support on team projects, carbon reporting, and energy schemes.

If you are an experienced Administrator with strong planning and communication skills, we would love for you to join our mission.

Main Duties

  • Providing administrative support to the Central Property team by supporting the management of Cancer Research UK’s retail and corporate property estate (600+ stores and 2 head offices):
  • Providing administrative support on property performance in relation to rent, compliance, outstanding works, and projects.
  • Raising purchase order (PO) requisitions, checking invoices, managing goods receipts, running financial reports for budget management, resolving payment queries, and dealing with expenses.
  • Supporting the Head of Property and senior Property team in managing diaries, coordinating meetings, creating meeting agendas and minutes, and making travel arrangements.
  • Maintaining key databases (including compliance documentation) and feeding into reports and analysis for strategic planning.
  • Supporting the Facilities team with carbon reporting and Energy Savings Opportunity Schemes (ESOS) in coordination with the Sustainability Manager for auditing.
  • Supporting with utilities queries ensuring they are dealt with for corporate offices and the retail estate.
  • Maintaining the Property Services Intranet and SharePoint pages and communication channels.
  • Supporting project planning for corporate premises’ moves and capital programmes.
  • Organising Property team events & Quarterly Management Team Meetings.
  • Carrying out other ad-hoc property administration duties as required.

Qualifications

  • Administrative background (preferably within a property and facilities management environment but we welcome applicants from alternative backgrounds). 
  • Experience managing diaries, minute taking, and preparing documents (e.g., PowerPoint presentations, meeting agendas, correspondence).
  • Good written and verbal communication skills with the ability to communicate effectively at all levels, draft communications for different audiences, and handle queries.
  • Experience dealing with landlord and tenant-related queries would be advantageous but we welcome applicants without this experience. 
  • Strong prioritisation and planning skills with experience working under minimal supervision and keeping to deadlines.
  • Has built collaborative relationships with the ability to network across the organisation, work as part of a team, and manage expectations.
  • Identifies and understands the needs of others.
  • Champions new ideas and process improvements.
  • Strong attention to detail with good IT skills (e.g., data entry/ databases and Microsoft 365 packages such as PowerPoint and Word etc).
  • Experience with property systems would be an advantage but is not essential to apply.

Our organisation values are designed to guide all that we do.

Bold: Act with ambition, courage and determination 

Credible: Act with rigour and professionalism  

Human: Act to have a positive impact on people 

Together: Act inclusively and collaboratively

We’re looking for people who can believe in and embody these organisation values and can use them to drive forward progress against our mission to beat cancer.

If you’re interested in applying and excited about working with us but are unsure if you have the right skills and experience we’d still love to hear from you.

Benefits

Flexible working culture

  • We know that flexibility is important and we pride ourselves on the level of flexibility we offer such as home-working, reduced or flexi-hours, job shares, job-splits, compressed and core hours. We offer a high level of flexibility for most of our office-based roles, meaning that you’ll only be required to work from a specific location for one or two days a week on average.

Annual leave

  • Working with us, you’ll be encouraged to take your 25 days annual leave a year, plus bank holidays, and an extra day for Christmas Eve. We provide flexibility on all bank holidays meaning you can choose to use the eight UK bank holidays, plus the extra day for Christmas Eve at another time, whether it’s to celebrate another religious festival at a different time of year, or for however else you choose to spend your time. You can also choose to buy up to one week’s additional annual leave each year. 

Mental health support

  • Our occupational health and mental wellbeing support services are designed to be flexible and relevant to you and your family’s needs. We provide a suite of wellbeing services, offering you and your family a structured way to work through physical or mental health issues and financial difficulties.

Pension

  • Saving for the future is important. Our ‘Retirement Plan’ offers generous employer contributions, which could be worth up to 12% of your salary, depending on the level of your contributions. All employees are offered a flexible way to build a pension fund, no matter which stage of your career you are at. You will have the advantage of being given choice, control, financial benefits and valuable protection benefits. There is also the option of making sustainable investment decisions within your pension plan.

Insurance

  • We provide you with employer sponsored insurance policies, which means that there is no cost for those benefits paid by you. You will receive 50% of your salary if you are unable to work through long term illness and your beneficiaries would receive four times your salary, should the unthinkable happen and you die while in our employment. 

Family leave

  • We support you when having or adopting a child. We support three different kinds of leave for new and expectant parents, regardless of gender: Maternity/Adoption Leave, Shared Parental Leave, Paternity Leave. 
  • We understand that, throughout your time as a parent or guardian, circumstances arise where your child or dependent is ill, or care arrangements break down. That’s why we provide paid dependents leave in the event of an unexpected or emergency situation.

Payroll giving

  • We offer you a way to support any charity of their choice tax-free through their salary. Payroll Giving is a very effective way of supporting causes close to your heart: A £10 monthly donation will only cost you £8 as a standard tax-rate payer and even less, £6 if you are higher tax-rate payer.

Required Documents

  1. CV/Resume
  2. Cover Letter

Application Process

This vacancy may close earlier if a high volume of applications is received or once a suitable candidate is found, therefore we strongly recommend that you apply early to avoid disappointment. If you require more time to apply as part of a reasonable adjustment, please contact [email protected] as soon as possible.

Recruitment process: One competency-based interview

Interview date: From the week commencing 02 December 2024

How do I apply?

We operate an anonymised shortlisting process in our commitment to equality, diversity, and inclusion. CVs are required for all applications; but we won’t be able to view them until we invite you for an interview. Instead, we ask you to fully complete the work history section of the online application form for us to be able to assess you quickly, fairly, and objectively

Interested and qualified candidates should kindly CLICK HERE to learn more and apply

Application Deadline

November 26, 2024