View Vacancy - MNL - Visa Outreach Officer, HEO
The British Embassy Manila is a large diplomatic mission delivering a dynamic and rapidly expanding programme of activity in support of the UK’s objectives on prosperity, security and consular matters. The Embassy is a modern, diverse and inclusive employer where everyone contributes to the Embassy’s WORC Values of Wellbeing, Opportunity, Respect and Collaboration.
Main Purpose of Job:
UK Visa Outreach Officers’ key responsibilities will be:
1. Representation and Stakeholders: Promoting awareness and understanding of the UK’s visa offer; delivering regionally tailored customer and stakeholder communications, assisting with high profile/value applications, and working with Government Partners (including FCDO, DIT, Visit Britain and the British Council) to increase understanding of visits, study and investment visa offers.
2. Assurance and Integrity: Assuring the quality of the customer experience in Visa Application Centres and Secure English Language Testing Centres through visits, information from travel/education and PAG stakeholders, as well as formal audits as directed by the Assurance and Integrity Regional Manager.
3. Customer Insight and Innovation: Collecting and reporting market insight and customer intelligence to Visa teams in the UK, driving continuous improvement of the UK visa service and our customer offer, including identifying opportunities for change and innovation.
4. Supporting visa processing teams: Promoting streamlined processing schemes with HMG partners and stakeholder, and undertaking regional insight taskings from UK teams.
Roles and Responsibilities:
- Represent UK Visas in your key markets, acting as first point of contact on visa issues for HMG partners; attend Heads of Sections meetings in your post and provide UK visa updates.
- Work with your Head of Region to ensure UKVI interests are represented in Country Plans in your priority markets; and work with other Home Office teams at Post to ensure effectively joining up on wider Home Office priorities.
- Support high profile events and high value applications, distributing event specific communications (e.g. King’s Coronation, sporting events), liaising appropriately with visa decision making centres.
- Build and develop a network of key HMG, travel and industry stakeholders in your region. Plan and deliver an annual comms & engagement plan taking into account key events for implementation of changes to visa system, and working with Partners Across Government to maximise reach. Record engagements in the annual Engagement Log
- Deliver quarterly upskilling sessions for HMG Partners in your geographical remit to increase their capability to manage visa queries and to reduce the number of cases escalated to Decision Making Centres.
- Work with External Relations and International Communications Managers to distribute regionally tailored communications, including delivery of annual strategic campaigns, operational messaging and crisis support
- Manage the Regional Outreach inbox on a rota basis, replying to queries from HMG, businesses & governments within 24 hours
- Conduct formal audits of Visa Application Centres (VACs) and Secure English Language Testing Centres (SELTs) to ensure compliance with UKVI standards, within timescales set by the Assurance and Integrity Manager in the yearly Integrity Plan.
- Conduct regular ad-hoc visits to VACs and SELTs to gather local insight and intelligence from customers. Escalate any customer experience issues or integrity concerns to Assurance and Integrity Lead and Head of Region
- Investigate local customer experience issues identified via VSI Customer Insight Dashboard, stakeholder insight, VAC visits and social media listening; and suggest options for improvement.
- Provide ‘on-the-ground’ market insight data and intelligence to UK teams, including identifying demand and opportunities for innovation to continuously improve our customer offer, and work. Dedicate 20% of your time to taking on customer insight or engagement tasking from UK teams
- Support piloting and roll out of Commercial Partner service innovation, for example Commercial Partner Remote Printing and On Demand Mobile Visa services
- Support Visa and Citizenship Application Services implementation overseas in line with Supplier Relationship Services timeline
- Develop expertise in your designated specialist visa routes (e.g. Business, Visit or Education) and share knowledge with others in the the Outreach Network. Attend monthly Service Line Board for your area of expertise.
- Implement streamlined processing schemes in your geographical remit, including the Global Partner Programme. Work with HMG Partners such as the Department for Business and Trade to identify potential programme members and work with Decision Making Centres to ensure assurance checks conducted within agreed timescales
- Provide regional critical incident or major event support (Afghan Resettlement, CWG) and other ad-hoc tasks as directed to support UKVI regional operations/objectives.
Essential on Arrival:
- Ability to work independently, including planning and delivering long-term projects, manage workload and deliver results.
- Ability to work collaboratively within a team located in different locations across the region, and with teams across the globe including in the UK.
- Experience of representing your organisation, including with senior stakeholders
- Well developed communication skills – both written and oral
- Confidence in speaking in public, engaging with stakeholders and delivering public presentations, including virtually
- Experience of working collaboratively with other organisations
- Ability to manage range of different tasks, to prioritise effectively, meet deadlines and maintain high quality standards.
- Ability to travel within the region and to the UK
Desirable:
- Proven track record of resilience and regular attendance to the office in sometimes difficult circumstances.
- Applicants who have had previous experience in passport and/or visa and immigration work.
- Proficiency in local language or a language within the region
Benefits:
The British Embassy Manila offers the following:
- A competitive compensation package
- 36-hour work week
- Guaranteed 13th and 14th month pay
- 20 days paid annual leave (calculated on Pro-rata basis if joined after 1 January)
- Extensive medical insurance
- Life insurance
- Access to a guaranteed 5 days of learning opportunities a year.
Learning and Development Opportunities:
The British Embassy is committed to being a learning and development organisation and encourages all staff to pursue continued learning and development in the workplace. We offer a supportive and friendly working environment where staff work to the values of: integrity, honesty, objectivity and impartiality. Everyone is encouraged to take responsibility, be innovative and work together.
The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office is committed to developing its staff, working hard to provide a comprehensive L&D offer. Staff have access to a wide variety of online resources and are strongly encouraged to take advantage of all the available opportunities. All new staff undertake a workplace induction and there are a number of mandatory e-learning courses covering areas such as diversity, health and safety, and information management.
Working Patterns:
36 hours per week, flexible working available.
Other Information:
Employment offers are subject to successful clearance of pre-employment checks. Staff recruited locally by the British Embassy Manila is subject to Terms and Conditions of Service according to local Philippine employment law.
No accommodation or relocation expenses are payable in connection with this position. All candidates must be legally able to work and reside in the country of the vacancy with the correct visa/work permit status or demonstrate eligibility to obtain the relevant permit. Any costs related to obtaining or renewing permits and visas are the responsibility of the successful applicant.
Employees who are not liable to pay local income tax on their Mission salary may have their salaries reduced by the equivalent local income tax amount.
Candidates are expected to have a valid NBI Clearance.
Please note that your application must be submitted before 23:55 on the day mentioned in the above field "Application deadline."
Please be aware that the deadline for submitting applications is considered to be the time zone for the country where the vacancy has arisen.
We advise you to allow enough time to complete and submit your full application since only applications completed and submitted before the deadline will be considered. Applicants called for an interview will be assessed on the core behaviours listed above.
All applicants are required to mandatorily fill the online application form completely including the employment and educational details, experience, professional skills and behaviour-based questions. We will be thoroughly reviewing the applications and incomplete form in any respect may not be considered while shortlisting for the next stage.
Only shortlisted candidates for interview will be contacted. Interviewees will be assessed on the core behaviours/qualifications listed above. Unsuccessful candidates will be notified via the system in due time. Appointable candidates who were unsuccessful may be placed on a ‘reserve list’. If during the reserve period of 6 months the same or a largely similar role becomes available, that role may be offered to the second or subsequent candidate.
For inclusivity and diversity, please remove the following personal information when uploading your CV: name, address, email address, age, date of birth, gender, and nationality.
The start date mentioned in the job advert is a tentative start date and the successful candidate will be required to undergo security vetting procedures. Any offer of employment will be subject to the candidate achieving suitable clearances.
This opportunity is closed to applications.
