Portfolio Manager

Salary: £50,000 to £55,000 per annum

Hours: 37.5 hours per week, Monday to Friday.

Reports to: Programme Director

Location: Harlow, Essex. Easily commutable from London Liverpool Street or Tottenham Hale Station. We offer a free minibus service to/from Harlow Town Train Station as well as free parking and EV charging on site.

Extra Information: Open to conversation on hybrid, flexible and compressed working arrangements, 2 days minimum office based.

About the role:

At the Motability Foundation, we fund, support, research and innovate so that all disabled people can make the journeys they choose.

The Transport Solutions Team (TST) delivers a diverse portfolio of grants, research, innovation, partnerships, policy activity and commercial interventions designed to improve transport and mobility for disabled people.

As Portfolio Manager, you will play a critical role in enabling the successful delivery of this portfolio. You will lead the development and management of systems, processes, governance arrangements and operational approaches that support the team to work effectively and efficiently.

Working across multiple programmes, themes and delivery routes, you will provide oversight of team capacity and resource planning, coordinate key internal governance and assurance processes, manage core systems and reporting, and act as a central point of coordination between TST and other functions including Legal, Governance, Finance, Change and Transformation, Data Protection and IT.

This is a highly collaborative role requiring exceptional organisation, strong stakeholder management skills and the ability to bring structure and clarity to complex a portfolio.

What you will be doing:

• Maintain oversight of the TST portfolio, ensuring accurate reporting on projects, programmes, risks, dependencies, milestones and delivery progress.

• Develop and implement systems, processes and tools that improve planning, coordination and delivery across the team.

• Produce portfolio reporting, dashboards and performance information for senior leaders.

• Identify delivery risks, resource pressures and operational issues, proposing solutions and mitigations.

• Maintain oversight of team workload, utilisation and future demand, supporting Programme Directors and managers to prioritise effectively.

• Produce regular reporting on team capacity, recruitment requirements and portfolio delivery risks.

• Act as the primary liaison between TST and corporate functions including Governance, Legal, Finance, Procurement, Data Protection and IT.

• Coordinate governance processes and ensure compliance with organisational policies and requirements.

• Ensure appropriate audit trails, records management and decision-making documents are maintained.

• Coordinate due diligence and information gathering for grants, contracts, partnerships and commercial activities where required.

• Act as owner for key operational systems used by TST, including DocuSign and other portfolio management, reporting and workflow tools we may adopt.

• Support Product Owner of our grant management system on new deployments and continuous improvement.

• Represent TST in new organisational systems development, process improvements and user adoption activities.

• Coordinate key internal meetings, planning processes and cross-functional working groups.

• Represent the team in organisational initiatives relating to systems, governance, planning and operational improvement.

Your experience:

Must haves:

• Experience in portfolio management, programme management, PMO, business operations or a similar role.

• Proven experience developing and implementing systems, processes and/or operational approaches that improve organisational effectiveness.

• Experience managing resource planning, capacity management and workload prioritisation across large or complex teams.

• Strong understanding of governance, risk management and assurance processes.

• Experience managing organisational systems and working with digital tools to support delivery and reporting.

• Excellent organisational skills, with the ability to manage multiple priorities and competing demands.

• Strong analytical skills and ability to translate information into clear reporting and recommendations.

• Strong stakeholder management skills, with experience working across multiple teams and functions.

• Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to influence senior stakeholders.

• Advanced Microsoft Office skills, particularly Excel, PowerPoint and reporting tools

Nice to haves:

• Experience working within a grant-making, charitable, public sector or social impact organisation.

• Experience supporting innovation programmes, research projects or complex partnerships.

• Experience with CRM, grant management, contract management or portfolio management systems.

• Knowledge of project and programme management methodologies.

• Knowledge and understanding of disability and transport issues, including relevant barriers, legislation, and the social model of disability

• Experience supporting organisational change, transformation or continuous improvement initiatives.

If you’re interested in applying and excited about working with us but are unsure if you have the right skills and experience, we'd still encourage you to apply.

Benefits

Who are we?

We are building a future where all disabled people have the transport options to make the journeys they choose.

We fund, support, research and innovate so that all disabled people can make the journeys they choose. We oversee the Motability Scheme and provide grants to help people use it, providing access to transport to hundreds of thousands of people a year. We award grants to charities and organisations who provide different types of transport, or work towards making transport accessible. We also carry out ongoing research, in partnership with disabled people and key stakeholders in the industry, to inspire innovations that continue to champion accessible transport for all.

Why choose us?

We want working for the Motability Foundation to be the best career move you’ve ever made. When you join the Motability Foundation you will join a group of people who are supportive, innovative and motivated to improve the lives of our beneficiaries.

We value everyone’s unique qualities and celebrate having a diverse, equitable and inclusive culture where everyone feels safe to be their authentic selves. This is embedded into our values, Collaborative, Respectful and Evolving.

We bring our people together through our People Forum, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Forum, Social Squad and our Wellbeing Champions and our employee Spotlight Awards help us recognise the excellence and dedication of our staff.

We are proud to be recognised as Disability Confident Leader, have attained Platinum Level Award for Investors in People and are members of the Business Disability Forum.

A career with Motability Foundation can offer you so much more than earning potential, we pride ourselves in offering some fantastic benefits. Some of these include:

• 26 days annual leave, plus the option to buy/ sell up to five days.
• One wellbeing day for extra flexibility.
• Pension scheme - Up to 20%, including a 10% non-contributory contribution and matched contributions up to 5%.
• Life Assurance of four times your salary.
• Private healthcare through BUPA for you and your family, along with a Medicash Health Plan.
• Employee assistance programme: GP appointments, eye tests, flu vaccinations, sick pay and free gym and yoga sessions.
• Enhanced Parental Leave, including Adoption Pay.
• Free parking, EV charge points and a minibus service to/from the town centre and train station.
• Fresh fruit, breakfast snacks, and a Dress for Your Day dress code.
• Learning and development opportunities to help you grow.

Our vision is to create a charity where everyone feels like they belong, benefits from and participates in, the work we do. We actively encourage applications from people of all backgrounds and cultures, and we aim to be an employer of choice for candidates with disabilities.

As a Disability Confident Leader, we have committed to ensuring that disabled people and those with long term health conditions have the opportunities to fulfil their potential. We want to ensure everyone has the opportunity to perform their best when interviewing and when working with us, so if you require any reasonable adjustments that would make you more comfortable, please let us know so that we can do our best to support you.

To help us create an inclusive workplace we are committed to offering to interview every disabled applicant who meets the minimum criteria for the job. Some of our roles attract a high volume of applications and in some circumstances, we may need to limit the number of interviews offered to disabled and non-disabled candidates.