Referencing and Vetting - Vetting Academy Manager

This is an exciting time to be working as the Vetting Units Academy Operations Manager for the Metropolitan Police Service. In addition to large-scale transformation, there's the unique and ever-evolving challenge of policing London. This means that as a Academy Operations Manager, there are more opportunities for you to get involved with making London the safest global city in a time of unprecedented change within the UK's largest Police Service.

Job Purpose

The post holders are Team Leads for the following Referencing & Vetting services:

The Vetting Unit requires an Academy Operations Manager to lead, manage, coach, mentor and support a team of Vetting new starters. The role holder will organise academy operations by ensuring that new starters are paired with appropriate mentors and will over-see the academy staffs’ progress against key developmental milestones. The role holder will facilitate academy staff reaching their appropriate quality and production targets to ensure that they are prepared for a role within Vetting production teams.

The role holder will also support production by being a second-tier decision maker within the three tiered decision making model. The role holder will be expected to provide feedback on first-tier decision making to team members.

Knowledge, Skills and Experience

• Working knowledge of Vetting Standardisation –and how it is used at an operational level to complete Vetting casework (or a willingness to learn)
• Working knowledge of vetting case allocation: A knowledge of the case allocation system and how it operates within Vetting (or a willingness to learn).
• Managing Relationships: strong knowledge of the theory and practice of relationship management.
• Leading People and Change: knowledge of the theory and practice of successfully leading a team through change (Human Resource Management)
• An awareness and understanding of HR policies and procedures including flexible working; absence management; disciplinary; probationary reports; reasonable adjustments and personal evacuation plans.  
• Knowledge of the Organisational Structure of Vetting, Organsational Development and the MPS.
• A good grasp, and ability to articulate the strategic aims of Vetting.

Key Result Areas

• Strategically managing the Vetting Academy through from recruitment to training to joining Academy. Balancing new intake numbers with graduation dates to prevent overflow of staff on the Academy.
• Strategy: Work effectively with fellow Team Leaders and Senior Leaders to contribute and deliver upon the departmental strategy
• Support: Supporting, leading and enabling a team of new caseworkers to reach daily and weekly production and quality assurance targets to ensure service delivery meets or exceeds customer demand.
• HR: Ensuring team compliance with corporate HR policies.
• Leadership: Proactively managing performance within their individual team and the wider unit where necessary.
• Inducting New Mentees to the Academy: co-coordinating a handover from training to academy ensuring that information is gained about mentees progress and development needs identified during training. Ensuring that each new mentee is allocated the most appropriate mentor and delivering an induction session to mentees to ensure that they understand the academy process.
• Monitoring Mentee Progress: Ensuring that mentees develop in line with their development plan by holding weekly development meetings keeping and explaining a log of areas for mentee development. Holding a weekly information sharing meeting with mentors, QA & decision makers to ascertain mentee performance in key areas of production, quality and decision making and feeding this information back to mentees through empowering, coaching and mentoring.
• Managing Academy Intake progress: Undertaking a monthly QA Log review to identify patterns/trends Intake-wide for the previous 4 week period, identifying department wide areas for developmental improvement. Providing feedback to Mentors and the Training Team where applicable, requesting updates to guidance & policies if appropriate.
• Managing Academy Panel Review Process: Set-up and attend Academy Progress Review meeting. Co-ordinate the logistics of the meeting by booking the room, inviting attendees and creating the agenda. Analyses and present data around mentee progress and recommend graduation timescales to SLT for approval. Working with production managers to allocate graduated mentees to appropriate teams. Proving a comprehensive handover to their new line managers.
• Resource Management: Ensuring that there are sufficient mentors and decision making reviewers to support new starters. Raising resourcing requirements in a proactive manner to SLT to ensure that resourcing meets demand.
• Change Management: Using visual management techniques to support team production and problem solving. Contributing to daily reviews of departmental performance in collaboration with other team leaders and Senior management. Manage risk and agree countermeasures in relation to key metrics - delivery, quality, people and cost. Lead and participate in all phases of improvement events including preparation, design, implemention, embed and sustain changes to realise benefits. Contribute to wider Referencing and Vetting Departmental-wide improvement projects.
• Training and Development: Working with the Performance Analyst and Training Team to identify training needs for the Vetting team. Working with the Training Team to ensure that the training needs are met.

If you have any queries in respect of this opportunity, or need support in applying, please contact the Met's Recruitment Team at Enquiries.PoliceJobs@police.sscl.com  or by telephone on  01633 632500. The team are available Monday to Friday, 8:00am to 10:00pm (excluding Bank Holidays).

We view diversity as fundamental to our success. To tackle today’s complex policing challenges, we need a workforce made up from all of London’s communities. Applications from across the community are therefore essential.

As a Disability Confident Committed Employer the Met have committed to ensuring that disabled people and those with long term health conditions have the opportunities to fulfil their potential and realise their aspirations.

Does this sound like you? If yes, start your application now.