South Yorkshire Pensions Authority Service Managers

Welcome, and thank you for your interest in joining South Yorkshire Pensions Authority as a Service Manager based within my team.

As the Assistant Director - Pensions, I am responsible for the Authority's main customer facing operations and for maintaining relationships with scheme members and employers. The service’s responsibilities include:

Maintenance of scheme member records
Calculation and payment of benefits
Relationships with scheme employers including admissions and terminations
Customer Contact

We are proud of the track record that South Yorkshire Pensions Authority has achieved over a long period. As we progress, we are seeking to build on this, whilst preserving the long-term stability of our pension fund.

As we continue our journey towards excellence and look to meet the challenges ahead, I am looking forward to recruiting Service Managers who will help us realise our ambitions and so I am looking for 2 dynamic individuals to join the team:

Service Manager – Employer Services and
Service Manager – Technical Support

These roles are vital to leading the Authority’s employer facing operations and the internal support and training for the whole Pensions Team. Whilst others may think of Pension Administration as a processing function we see it as much more, crucial though that aspect of our work is. Your role is to make the best use of the talented individuals in your team and help them achieve their full potential.

For these roles, we will require individuals who have experience of interpreting technical guidance and being able to apply it in practice along with working knowledge of Pensions Administration Systems. You’ll also bring extensive technical knowledge of the legislation governing pension schemes and specifically the Local Government Pension Scheme.

This is an exciting opportunity to join our small, friendly, and forward-looking Pensions team in this well-respected, award-winning organisation managing a £10 billion pension fund.

We are both a local authority and a pension fund and we’re unique within the Local Government Pension Scheme as the only democratically accountable single purpose pension organisation in the UK. As a local government body, we have a public sector ethos and place a great deal of importance on our organisational Values and Behaviours – which are all about being honest and accountable, professional, progressive, and empowering.

We are very proud to win the first ever Impact Investing Adopters Award (November 2021) from Pensions for Purpose and we were also re accredited by Customer Service Excellence in May 2022, having met this standard for over 20 years. In December 2022 we won the LAPF Investment Awards LGPS Fund of the Year (Assets over £2.5 billion).

More recently we added another award win to our collection in November 2023 when we won the Place Based Impact Investing Award at the annual Pensions for Purpose stakeholder event. The victory was a testament to our unwavering commitment to impactful local investments. The award-winning submission highlighted our extensive efforts in investing within South Yorkshire. It really is an exciting time to be joining us.

We have a culture that encourages work-life balance, and to recognise this for our employees, as of April 2024 we will be introducing a 35 hour (instead of 37 hour) working week with no impact on annual pay. We offer flexible working hours and hybrid office / home working (including a non-taxable allowance towards the cost of working from home). Our newly refurbished Barnsley office provides a state-of-the-art working environment; and with on-site parking and located within 10 minutes’ walk of both the train and bus stations, it makes us easily accessible. At SYPA we are big on your professional development, you’ll have a learning and development plan, and we’ll support you to keep your CPD updated. Perhaps most importantly you will be welcomed by talented teams.

If you are interested in joining our team and are inspired to contribute to the next phase of our journey, we look forward to your application. In the meantime, following an initial conversation with our recruitment partners at The Resourcing Solution I would be delighted to discuss this opportunity with those who might wish to learn a little more.

Take a look at our LinkedIn page to find out more about us and see what we’ve been up to recently!

Service Manager – Employer Services

Job title: Service Manager – Employer Services

Location: Barnsley / Hybrid

Contract: Full-time (37 hours per week Monday to Friday) / Permanent – From April 2024, 35 hours per week.

Salary: £44,428-£47,420 plus benefits & relocation support

As the organisation’s lead manager for Employer Services, you will be central to driving quality and the highly effective delivery of our corporate priorities.

The Employer Services Team’s primary focus is to manage the employer lifecycle within the Fund and to ensure that we are providing the training and support necessary to ensure that employers can fulfil the duties which fall to them from participation in the Fund.

You will be responsible for the strategic leadership of the team and drive forward service changes and improvements ensuring that the team provides effective support to employers and leading on the implementation of new and innovative ways of delivering training and support.

Another big part of your daily work in this rewarding role will involve responsibility for developing positive relationships with employers whilst monitoring their performance in meeting their statutory duties and working to ensure compliance.

You will be responsible for the processes of admitting new employers to the Fund and facilitating the exit of employers from the Fund in line with statutory requirements

You will hold responsibility for ensuring the receipt of accurate and timely monthly data submissions from employers and ensuring the updating of scheme member records and the provision of information to generate direct debits for contribution collection.

As a manager of around 12 FTE members of staff (which includes 2 Team Leaders posts) we are looking for a role model to support and encourage those individuals; to manage workloads, motivation and morale across the team.

The team handles all arrangements for onboarding new employers as well as those exiting the fund. As much of the focus of this team is on support and engagement, the team operate on a more “outreach” basis - actively visiting employers to ensure we are supporting them to complete their statutory functions as effectively as possible.

You will actively support the Senior Management Team in relation to corporate initiatives that support development, health and well-being and also ensure employee performance, attendance and behaviour is managed in accordance with appropriate policies.

What you'll be able to offer:

Degree or equivalent, or significant vocational experience showing development in a series of progressively more demanding relevant work/ roles.
Professional qualification or able to evidence knowledge and understanding of appropriate business disciplines.
Comprehensive knowledge of computerised business systems in terms of functionality and capability (some roles at this level).
Knowledge of principles, practices, policies and procedures relating to business planning and financial and organisational management.
Proven written and oral communication and interpersonal skills with the ability to work collaboratively with internal and external partners/ professionals.
Ability to understand, meet and exceed customer expectations.
Proven problem solving skills with the ability to exercise high levels of initiative to devise and implement workable solutions.
Proven ability to manage a range of projects through to completion.
Practical or professional experience and understanding of business, supporting service teams and/or providing support to the public.
Previous management experience including staff supervision, development and organisational skills.

Job Description / Person Specification - Service Manager – Employer Services

Pay and Benefits – Employer Services

Service Manager – Technical Support

Job title: Service Manager – Technical Support

Location: Barnsley / Hybrid

Contract: Full-time (37 hours per week Monday to Friday) / Permanent – From April 2024, 35 hours per week.

Salary: £44,428-£47,420 plus benefits & relocation support

As the organisation’s lead manager for Technical Support Services, you will be central to driving quality and the highly effective delivery of our corporate priorities.

The Technical Support Team has two primary functions, one is to provide (pensions) technical support to the Benefits, Customer Services and Pension Systems teams and the other is to provide leadership and direction to work to maintain and improve data quality.

You will provide technical pensions support to all teams within the Administration service and to pension fund employers and to ensure the Authority abides by the Pensions Regulators General Code and is fully compliant with the statutory provisions of the LGPS and wider pension legislation, providing guidance to internal teams and implementing measures to ensure compliance where required.

As a manager of around 7 FTE members of staff (which includes a Technical Support Manager) we are looking for a role model to support and encourage those individuals; to manage workloads, motivation and morale across the team.

The team is responsible for providing technical guidance, developing and maintaining training manuals and documentation, and maintaining an on-line reference library. They provide training to support other teams in respect of new legislative provisions and deliver training to staff progressing through the Authority’s career grade scheme as well as being responsible for ensuring the objective assessment of progress against the career grade scheme.

What you'll be able to offer:

Degree or equivalent, or significant vocational experience showing development in a series of progressively more demanding relevant work/ roles.
Professional qualification or able to evidence knowledge and understanding of appropriate business disciplines.
Comprehensive knowledge of computerised business systems in terms of functionality and capability (some roles at this level).
Knowledge of principles, practices, policies and procedures relating to business planning and financial and organisational management.
Proven written and oral communication and interpersonal skills with the ability to work collaboratively with internal and external partners/ professionals.
Ability to understand, meet and exceed customer expectations.
Proven problem solving skills with the ability to exercise high levels of initiative to devise and implement workable solutions.
Proven ability to manage a range of projects through to completion.
Practical or professional experience and understanding of business, supporting service teams and/or providing support to the public.
Previous management experience including staff supervision, development and organisational skills.

Job Description / Person Specification - Service Manager – Technical Support

Pay and Benefits – Technical Support

What's in it for you?

Key Documents

We are a growing public sector organisation with a team of around 110 staff who run the workplace pension scheme, managing a Fund of over £10 billion on behalf of nearly 600 employing organisations, including Local Authorities and other public / not-for-profit sector bodies.

South Yorkshire Pensions Authority is responsible for administering the Local Government Pension Scheme in South Yorkshire. The Authority was created in 1988 as part of the arrangements put in place following the abolition of South Yorkshire Metropolitan County Council. The Authority itself is made up of 12 Councillors drawn from the 4 districts in the County.

The Pensions Authority's workforce is headed by the Director and is organised around three streams of activity, each led by an Assistant Director, reflecting the focus of its work in relation to:

Scheme members
Investment of the Pension Fund's assets, and
The running of the organisation

The diagram below shows the management structure of the Authority.

The last year has been another busy year for the Authority with a number of key events:

The three yearly valuation of the Pension Fund by our new actuary Hymans Robertson which concluded that strong and consistent investment performance had delivered a surplus of assets over liabilities for the first time since at least the 1990’s. This has allowed us to provide greater long-term stability to employer contributions.
A revised investment strategy including changes designed to enable us to accelerate the rate of progress towards our investment portfolios becoming Net Zero.
The agreement of a medium-term resourcing plan designed to ensure that the Authority has sufficient staff resources to maintain a sustainable organisation and to deliver the quality-of-service members rightly expect going into the future.
Approval for the creation of a Place Based Impact Investment portfolio focussed on investment in South Yorkshire.
Improving the quality of our communication with scheme members using more modern approaches through social media and also more traditional means such as our regular newsletters.

Alongside all these important developments we are also paying attention to the corporate infrastructure with an emphasis on delivering a range of improvements to our governance and ensuring we have the resources and tools needed to deliver on the corporate strategy.

Corporate Objectives

SYPA operates to deliver a number of corporate objectives the achievement of which will allow us to deliver on our mission which is:

Making sure we deliver against the objectives below will allow us to achieve this:

Values and Behaviours

How we achieve our objectives is as important to us as what we achieve, and we operate with a framework of values and behaviours which signify the type of organisation we want to be:

Values	Behaviours
Honest and Accountable	Telling it like it is, and taking responsibility for our actions even when we have made a mistake
Progressive	Welcoming of change, while taking sensible risks and learning from our mistakes and from others
Professional	Being highly skilled and competent and managerially applying rationality to decision making processes
Empowering	Providing the freedom for individuals to identify and implement solutions to problems

In addition, if we are to live those values then our managers must demonstrate specific management behaviours as shown below:

*Management Behaviours*	*Demonstrated by:*
We model positive behaviours to each other and to all staff	We regularly offer encouragement and praise for positive behaviours We challenge inappropriate and unacceptable behaviour We give and receive authentic feedback We hold staff to account for their performance
We take responsibility for improvement - within a clear framework	We get on with making improvements and changes rather than wait for permission (within a clear advice frame that sets out what we can get on with and what we can’t). We trust people to do their job, we don’t micromanage. We give a heads up when we plan something new, we speak up early when there is a problem or when things aren’t going well. When something doesn’t go well, we look for what we can learn and what we can do differently next time.
We all get behind a common goal	We have a clear vision that sets out what our goals are and clear priorities which set out what our most important changes are. We make the time to understand what we need to do to contribute to that vision. We work together across the organisation and contribute to the organisation as a whole. We challenge and question rumours and use discretion in sharing what gets discussed amongst managers.
We involve and engage people in decisions that will affect them	We keep people in the loop about things that will affect them. We seek and value the opinion of the people we manage and of other teams. We take the time to set out plans, then listen to the concerns and recommendations of those involved as to how we can strengthen those plans. We communicate regularly and clearly to all staff.

About Barnsley, South Yorkshire

Contact us

For an informal confidential discussion about these opportunities, please contact either:

Leanne Auton on 07815 028548 or Leanne.Auton@northyorks.gov.uk

Penny Keatings on 07811 411462 or Penny.Keatings@northyorks.gov.uk

Key dates

Closing date: Midnight Sunday 17 March 2024

Shortlisting date: Tuesday 19 March 2024

Please note, an Occupational Personality Questionnaire (OPQ) will be issued to shortlisted candidates prior to interview.

Interview and presentation date: Thursday 11 April or Friday 12 April 2024

Apply

To apply please provide us with your CV including a supporting statement in one Microsoft Word document. Your supporting statement should outline your motivation for applying and how you meet the criteria for the role.

Applications should be emailed to Executive.ResourcingSolutions@northyorks.gov.uk

Please make it clear which role you are applying for in the header of your email.

It is important that your CV includes: your full contact details (telephone, email, address), full employment history (name of employer, job titles, dates of employment and salary), full education history (qualification, grade, dates and place of study), explanation of any gaps in employment and the contact details of at least two referees including your current / most recent employer indicating whether you consent to us contacting each referee prior to interview. Please also provide details of your current salary and notice period.

South Yorkshire Pensions Authority is an equal opportunity employer and values diversity.

We are committed to equality of opportunity for all staff. We welcome applications from individuals regardless of age, any disability, sex, gender reassignment, sexual orientation, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief.

We will not accept applications from agencies.

Your Privacy

South Yorkshire Pensions Authority is committed to protecting your privacy when you use our services. Please refer to the Privacy Statement which explains how we use information about you and how we protect your privacy.

South Yorkshire Pensions Authority – Service Manager roles

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