Programme Management Officer

At M&G our purpose is to help people manage and grow their savings and investments, responsibly. As a business, we are continuing to take steps towards a sustainable future, delivering better long-term solutions for our customers and clients and identifying new opportunities to make a positive impact for our environment and communities . To help us achieve our vision we're looking for exceptional people who live our values of care and integrity and who can inspire others; embrace change; deliver results and keep it simple.

We will consider flexible working arrangements for any of our roles and also offer work place accommodations to ensure you have what you need to effectively deliver in your role.

The Role:

Reporting to a Lead Project Management Officer you will own delivery of the complete range of PMO services for a programme or portfolio, including cost control, resource management and supporting governance meetings with appropriate reporting, and facilitate workshops such as stage gate reviews. You will guide and support project managers in the practical application of the Project Change Standard and tools, assuring appropriate adherence and constructively challenging with recommendations to reduce risk and improve control.

Key Responsibilities Include:

• Advise PM on invoices received and paid, remaining approved amount, and recommend accruals. Review and correct draft accounts payable reports
• Induct PMs to the Project Change Standard and Guidelines
• Review projects adherence to the Project Change Standards
• Co-ordinate a stage gate review, coaching PM as required, providing supporting evidence and recording the outcome
• Explain the risk and issue management guidelines and tools, facilitate the regular review of risks and issues
• Attend the programme steering committee, issuing packs and minutes
• Train and provide first line support for PM users of ServiceNow
• Use the resource management framework to elicit and review resource needs from project managers.
• Supports the development of others by sharing personal knowledge, skills and experience.
• Investigate anomalies in project reporting and raise suggested areas for improvement or further scrutiny from programme manager
• Aggregate project level information e.g. costs, resources, achievements as input to a programme status report including objective commentary.
• Guides and assists Project Managers and Programme Managersin application of planning standards and guidelines, such as baselining, tolerances, milestone levels, planning stage checklist, plan approval arrangements.

Key Skills and Competencies Required:

• Organisational skills to produce executive level packs and minutes for a formal governance group
• Ability to keep track of costs expected, approved and paid; intervening to control spending to approved limits
• Ability to facilitate small workshops and meetings
• Ability to use, and guide others in using, a project management system such as ServiceNow
• Strong communication skills verbally and in writing so that key messages are understood
• Ability to exert control of project risk by application of stage gates
• Ability to apply common project controls as specified in the Project Change Standard -such as milestone-based scheduling, RAID management, status reporting, change requests, document control and retrieval
• Comfortable to train and coach others on specific M&G project management methods and tools
• Analytical skills to probe and deconstruct what you read, combining data from multiple sources, identifying inconsistencies

Experience Required:

• Application of project methodologies in a mature change environment
• Operated in an environment with formal programme governance
• Experience of using an enterprise project management tool such as ServiceNow
• Cost tracking of a multi-million pound project
• Resource and milestone planning and tracking

We have a diverse workforce and an inclusive culture at M&G plc, underpinned by our policies and our employee-led networks who provide networking opportunities, advice and support for the diverse communities our colleagues represent. Regardless of gender, ethnicity, age, sexual orientation, nationality or disability we are looking to attract, promote and retain exceptional people. We also welcome those who take part in military service and those returning from career breaks.