Jess Hughes
Liver,Merseyside
Summary
Highly skilled professional with expertise in advanced diary management, meeting scheduling, and travel coordination. Demonstrates exceptional proficiency in Microsoft Office and Excel, coupled with strong task prioritisation and efficient multitasking abilities. Adept at budget management and stakeholder engagement, ensuring seamless operations and effective communication across all levels. Committed to delivering excellence through high-level communication skills and meticulous organisational practices.
Energetic professional with robust organisational and communication skills, coupled with aptitude for managing schedules and coordinating meetings. Adept in handling administrative tasks and fostering strong relationships with stakeholders.
Overview
6
6
years of professional experience
7
7
years of post-secondary education
Work History
PA to Director
Department of Energy Security and Net Zero
Salford, Manchester
10.2024 - 02.2025
- Diary and Inbox Management of Director (SCS2) and occasionally 4 Deputy Directors (SCS1)
- Prioritise, progress, assign and follow through all e-mails in the Director's absence
- Anticipate Director's diary, including anticipating future diary pressures and advising as appropriate
- Coordinating arrangements for the Director's meetings so they are fully prepared e.g
- Commissioning and collating briefings, anticipating and arranging relevant support and monitoring outcomes, ensuring representation at key meetings
- Booking in the Director's visitors, meet, greet and escort visitors
- General support of Director and Deputy Directors
- Regularly managing stakeholders and their expectations
- Active member of the Business Support Team providing wider team support through the management and maintenance of records/systems and providing support on recruitment and finance with opportunities to support work on governance, programme delivery and wider team
- Task Managing 1 O Band PA Apprentice
- Planning regular Off-Site Events
- Successfully planned a Christmas Drinks social for our directorate of 160 colleagues with no budget
- Successfully task managed O Band PA Apprentice
PA and General Support
HM Revenue and Customs
03.2024 - 10.2024
- Diary Management and Inbox Management of Two SCS1s
- Managing and organising priority tasks/emails
- Supporting colleagues with their diary management when required
- Secretariat duties, including note taking, room booking and other ad-hoc required tasks
- Organising travel for SCS1s
- General Ad-Hoc tasks to support colleagues in other areas
- Able to use previous techniques in PA roles to support SCS1 in a streamlined way
- Completed Open University Course ‘Information Security'
Data Handling Specialist Officer
HM Revenue and Customs
01.2024 - 03.2024
- Working with large sets of data to understand, interrogate, manipulate, convert, and analyse complex data using IDEA, CEDAT, Excel
- Uplift or otherwise obtain data securely from traders/businesses using appropriate methods
- Providing reports and associated data, preparing witness statements
- Taking active steps to raise the profile of the Data Professionals unit within Investigation Services
- Updated Retention dates on 2000+ cases past and present
IMT O Band Support
HM Revenue and Customs
10.2022 - 01.2024
- Diary and Inbox Management for G7: organising meetings; managing meeting requests; prioritising appointments and categorised and filed emails
- Managed Senior Office's inboxes and managed our team's shared inbox and allocated as appropriate
- Responded to queries from external colleagues
- Organised Team Meetings and organised the weekly agenda
- Regularly recorded the minutes
- Introduced new processes then provided analysis of new processes
- Supported G7 with the management SCT Tool and processing of new SharePoint Sites
- Provided Secretariat Support to Senior Officer with DSSG and DSWG meetings
- Completed Certified Data Protection Foundation (GDPR) and Google Data Analytics Training
- Supporting Senior Officer with record and retention awareness sessions to CCG delivered 14 sessions to 430 CCG colleagues
- Making documents accessible for all colleagues in CCG and widely shared on Team Talks and Viva Engage
- EDI Lead in our team – delivered presentation on Neurodiversity to colleagues
Security Office
HM Revenue and Customs
03.2022 - 10.2022
- Investigating and escalating security incidents
- Managed Dropbox licences/requests
- Managed and answered enquiries for two email inboxes
- Approving and creating SharePoint
- Created monthly stats of incidents for different directorates within CCG
- Supported with creation of Security Newsletter
- Supporting Senior Officers with delivering Security Presentations and raising awareness
- Upskilled and trained new colleagues in using the Security tool and monthly reports
- Supported in the creation of S&IM Newsletter
- Supported an Audit of Dropbox and licences
Customer assistant
Marks & Spencer
Nottingham, Nottinghamshire
12.2018 - 02.2022
- Upheld company policies whilst interacting with customers to maintain brand reputation.
- Dealt effectively with customer complaints, resolving issues professionally and amicably.
- Collaborated efficiently with team members to maintain smooth store operations.
- Increased sales through suggestive selling techniques.
- Managed high-pressure situations with ease, ensuring customer satisfaction during peak hours.
- Improved customer relations by promptly addressing queries and concerns.
Education
Access to Further Education - Social Science
New College Nottingham
Nottingham 09.2015 - 06.2016
BTEC Level 3 (2 A-Level Equivalent) - Applied Science
Bluecoat Academy
Nottingham 09.2012 - 06.2014
GCSEs -
Bluecoat Academy
Nottingham 09.2007 - 08.2012
Skills
- Advanced diary management
- High-Level and Influential communication
- Meeting scheduling
- Travel coordination
- Stakeholder engagement
- Efficient multitasking
- Microsoft office proficiency
- Task prioritisation
- Relationship building
- Customer Service
- Proper phone etiquette
- Efficient under pressure
- Detail Orientated
- Meticulous attention to detail
Custom
The G7 lead I supported required a system to track project progress and provide them with greater insight for reporting purposes. I took this as an opportunity to upskill in M365. Following research, I created a Microsoft Form for colleagues to complete and submit weekly. The advantage of this was it synced to an Excel Spreadsheet which collated the inputted data from the Forms. This provided the G7 an overall progress picture in one place stored in SharePoint. This process was initially met with resistance. Upon reflection I should have discussed the tool within the team, I could have pre-empted the resistance. To combat this and support colleagues with the new process, I used the team meeting to explain the purpose of the tool and give a demonstration. I also created a visual aid clarifying how to complete the Form, what SLT required in the updates and the resulting spreadsheet. This meant colleagues could better engage with this new process and support one another in their projects. My actions meant colleagues felt more confident using the tool leading to its success. The new process gave the team's SLT greater oversight of different tasks within the team. This resulted in the G7 efficiently updating SLT from one snapshot document instead of 1:1 discussions, allowing the G7 more time to focus on their priorities. The tool supported the team to work more collaboratively with one another and enriched their 1:1 discussions with the G7, as the G7 could see their latest update., Following feedback, I was tasked with reviewing the products to improve accessibility. Time was short because the lengthy 30-page M365 Governance Document itself had been updated and a Team Talk was ready for publication. I began by making a list of documents that required changes and assessed the time required. Recognising the challenge to meet the timeframe alone, I liaised with a colleague to help. The team had little experience with the accessibility tool previously. I upskilled them in its use as they were struggling. I kept a log of all changes made and how I did it, for future use and to support colleagues with future products. I began by updating the guidance that would require the least changes. Once completed, I reviewed timings for the remaining more complex guidance. Prioritising and engaging support meant I could complete this project without impacting any of my other duties. It also meant I could upskill colleagues which benefits to team. I consulted with a stakeholder who used accessibility software daily. By engaging the stakeholder, I was able to get guidance reviewed and take onboard feedback before submitting. My actions resulted in the guidance being updated on time and shared across 28,000 CCG staff supporting them with M365 policies, data protection compliance, UK GDPR, and best practice. Analytics following publication showed increased engagement with the CCG Information and Records Management Site. Now by having one document accessible to all meant our team had resource available to focus on priority work., I saw my new role supporting a G7 as an opportunity to explore smarter and more impactful working methods. I was tasked with presenting ways for us to work effectively together. I began by discussing what the G7 thought they needed the most support with and how they preferred to work. I researched tools available and presented possible solutions to the G7. Looking at their diary I knew their time management could be improved. I created a task tracker where the G7 could delegate tasks, we could communicate with one another. I also decided, after discussing this with their team and the G7, to reduce the weekly 1:1s to every other week. I also encouraged the G7 to make time for well-being breaks to support them at work. I also created a Managers Assurance Programme where we tracked colleagues' responses to quarterly checks and any important reminders such as Carer's Passport reviews. This meant I could be proactive in planning important meetings with their team. A successful trial of my programmes resulted in the G7 feeling less overwhelmed. Concentrating on well-being made their tasks appear more manageable. By changing the 1:1s from weekly to fortnightly meant the G7 was more time effective and the team able to focus on their deliverables. The decision to create the MAP meant I could take responsibility and support the G7 with admin management requests. I could easily pre-plan and organise the important meetings between the G7 and their team., In a previous role, I was new to the civil service and the team was new with roles not yet clearly allocated. Colleagues and I were inducted at different times, which meant we all had varying levels of ability and training. A colleague had confided in me that, they were frustrated with other colleagues who led on SharePoint creation requests, inbox queries and security incidents as it meant they couldn't develop their skills. None of this work was distributed amongst the team, which was becoming an issue. I decided to approach our team leader about this and provide a solution, so we all had equal opportunity. The solution was to create a weekly rota of when each colleague lead or deputised on our tasks. The rota allocated a colleague to leading on security incidents, SharePoint creation requests, our inbox requests. The team leader agreed and began to implement it. It was met with resistance as colleagues did not like the changes, but it was important that our whole team could develop and be confident on their work. My suggestions led to the rota being implemented. This meant all of the colleagues in our team had equal opportunity for tasks. Each lead was set up with a deputy alongside them which acted as a way to ease pressure if there was an influx or priority incident. The rota led to better team cohesion, and all our team being able to feel confident using the security tool and investigating different incidents., I was asked to support an SO with delivering awareness presentations about Records Management. This work supported the SO in completing the Information Management Report. I had more capacity than the SO and I took the lead with managing the sessions. I created MS Forms and support documents. I created a separate spreadsheet, and this is how I tracked attendance and sent invites. We kept this on our team's SharePoint so we both had access. Storing in SharePoint meant the G7 could share updates to SLT on the success of the presentations. The support document which detailed the tasks the support role needed to complete to support the SO and successful delivery. The document included meeting invites, when to include links for each slide and the MS feedback forms. By doing this, it meant the SO could focus the presentations and the support would be seamless as it was all written down and easy to follow. The actions I took led to the presentations being a success. I supported delivery of 14 sessions to 430 CCG colleagues. My actions meant I could track the registered attendees; I could provide support and meet my priorities outside of support work. By creating the feedback form, I pulled analysis from it, and this led me to suggesting improvements our presentations and further boost engagement on the sessions and our SharePoint. It also meant the SO successfully completed the Information Management Report with added detail of how we were supporting colleagues with records management.
Timeline
PA to Director
Department of Energy Security and Net Zero
10.2024 - 02.2025
PA and General Support
HM Revenue and Customs
03.2024 - 10.2024
Data Handling Specialist Officer
HM Revenue and Customs
01.2024 - 03.2024
IMT O Band Support
HM Revenue and Customs
10.2022 - 01.2024
Security Office
HM Revenue and Customs
03.2022 - 10.2022
Customer assistant
Marks & Spencer
12.2018 - 02.2022
Access to Further Education - Social Science
New College Nottingham
09.2015 - 06.2016
BTEC Level 3 (2 A-Level Equivalent) - Applied Science
Bluecoat Academy
09.2012 - 06.2014
GCSEs -
Bluecoat Academy
09.2007 - 08.2012
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