Philip James Sharples

DWP Finance Group Senior Business Manager

I have been a Civil Servant for over 25 years.

I manage the fiscal and operational delivery arrangements between the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) and the Valuation Office Agency (VOA), part of Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC). This encompasses the Service Level Agreement of £7.8m per year, which provides DWP with Local Housing Allowance Rateable values and sets national benefit thresholds for Housing Benefit (HB) and Universal Credit (UC):

• Work with finance and delivery colleagues to identify and drive out efficiencies in current process and practice
• Establish long term cross government relationship with VOA Directors and Operational Management, building trust and delivering/receiving open and honest feedback
• Lead performance review meetings ensuring value for money and operational metrics achieved
• Impact and review updates to national policy and work to design key legislative change

Business Manager for a member of the Senior Civil Service (SCS), managing her work plan, divisional performance outputs and providing effective challenge to management structure to meet changing business responsibilities and evolving outcome targets incorporating:

• Assurance to Internal Audit and assisting National Audit Office colleagues on external reviews
• Delegation of key meetings, responsibilities and management work flows to ensure timeous delivery
• Designed and managed all staff conferences and events including annual conference of over 150 colleagues - incorporating departmental values and defining objective setting for the next 12 months
• Evaluation and analysis of staff survey results and supporting development of activity to drive future year improvements
• Management of divisional budget including Annually Managed Expenditure (AME) of over £15 billion and Delegated Expenditure Limits (DEL) of around £400 million

I manage the DWP Hartshead Square Office in Sheffield, as Senior Responsible Officer, housing over 800 colleagues:

• Monitoring health and safety measures for guaranteed compliance
• Managing relationship with Trade Union Colleagues and chair all Health and Safety meetings
• Member of National DWP Health and Safety Board
• Developing organisational policies for administrative oversight and internal controls

Workforce Planning

• Designed recruitment and retention training programmes including recording and utilising upskilling videos and training material
• Ran all ad-hoc recruitment exercises to fill vacant positions and managed all temporary duty appointments to backfill staff departures
• Ran exercise with over 1500 applicants for a 20 role recruitment event

Personal aide to SCS

• Managing diary, calls, all e-mail traffic and inbox management, ensuring SCS was always briefed and prepared
• Direct line management of SCS support team of between 4 and 8 staff, managing performance and monitoring outputs and outcomes
• Managed all mandatory divisional Learning & Development was delivered and up-to-date, ensuring colleagues had the right skill sets to deliver
• LEAN trained to drive out efficiencies, reduce costs and streamline processes where possible

Estates Management

• Responsible for movement of staff for Finance Group - relocation of all staff and equipment from a rationalised estate, closing 3 buildings across Sheffield
• Managed timelines to ensure no fiscal contract penalties for overrun
• Built excellent working relationships with removal contractors
• ensuring all confidential information destroyed to departmental standard
• Management of all asset registers and worked closely with digital colleagues to ensure all new IT set ups captured and met disability standards