Purchasing Officer - ref. g90104903
Work in an organisation that supports its staff and focuses on staff experience as much as it does the experience of its patients? You can live and breathe in an area that has the cleanest air, cost effective living, great nightlife, some of the best schools with a wealth of history available on your doorstep.
Sound too good to be true? Well it isn’t, this is what you get when you work for Northumbria Healthcare and, this is…the Northumbria Way!
What the Northumbria Way means for you:
- Extensive staff health and well-being programme including access to our specialist Wellbeing Hub
- Support and connection through a variety of Staff Network groups
- A range of flexible working opportunities
- Generous annual leave and pension scheme
- Access to lease car and home electronics scheme (qualifying criteria applies)
- Opportunities to improve your professional development through our vast training programmes
- On-site nursery places via salary sacrifice
- Access to savings scheme via salary sacrifice with Northumberland Community Bank
Our teams deliver care from hospitals, a range of community venues and people’s homes. Our hospitals include a specialist emergency care hospital (the first of its kind in England), three general hospitals and community hospitals. In the community we deliver a wide range of community and public health services.
We lead in innovation and quality, having opened the Northumbria Healthcare Manufacturing and Innovation Hub during the Covid-19 pandemic and have recently launched our Community Promise – a pledge to make a real impact not just in healthcare but on the wider factors that affect people’s lives, such as education, employment and the economy.
If Northumbria Healthcare sounds like somewhere you could belong we would love to hear from you. Visit our website to catch up on our latest news.
Whilst Northumbria Healthcare are a highly innovative organisation, the use of Third Party Artificial Intelligence (AI) presents a risk to the integrity of our Recruitment & Selection processes. If you use AI, and it poses a risk to the integrity your individual recruitment process, we may withdraw your application at any stage of the process.
Job overview
We are looking to appoint a well-motivated, outgoing, conscientious person to join our Purchasing team. The Purchasing Team consists of 5 Purchasing Officers, and 2 Senior Purchasing Officers. The successful applicant will be expected to provide a Purchasing Service across the Trust, and work as part of the team based at Cobalt Business Park.
You must have previous experience of working in a Purchasing environment. You should also be PC Literate with experience of Microsoft Packages. You should have analytical, verbal and written communication skills and a confident telephone manner.
Please note we reserve the right to close this vacancy prior to the closing date once the required number of suitable applications have been received.
Main duties of the job
The post is to be based at Cobalt Business Park, but the post holder may be required to work on other sites within the Trust.
Main duties of the job
Main purpose of the job is to provide and effective and efficient Purchasing service for medical and non-medical equipment, consumables and services in accordance with the Trust’s Standing Orders and Financial Procedures. Ensuring all orders are promptly generated and expedited as appropriate, identifying suppliers, selecting products, negotiating prices and using your own initiative to resolve delivery and quality problems.
Working for our organisation
We manage four major acute hospitals, North Tyneside General Hospital, Northumbria Specialist Emergency Care Hospital, Wansbeck General Hospital and Hexham General Hospital. We also provide a service for a number of smaller community hospitals and clinics from Tynemouth to Berwick on Tweed.We care for people in their homes and provide services from facilities in local communities such as health centres. We give people greater choice and control over their care to help them to live independently at home and avoid hospital admission where appropriate.
High quality patient care is at the heart of everything we do and we strive to ensure every single patient and service user has an exceptional experience with us. We have one of the most extensive patient experience programmes of any trust in England.
Detailed job description and main responsibilities
The Purchasing Officer has overall responsibility to provide an effective and efficient Purchasing service for Medical and Non-medical equipment, consumables, excluding Pharmacy, across Northumbria Healthcare Trust and Primary Care Trust sites.The services are in accordance with the Trust’s Standing Orders and Financial Procedures, and ensure all orders for goods and services required are appropriately sourced, generated and expedited in the agreed timescale.
The post holder will work with other members of the team to ensure orders are correctly processed to provide quality orders, correctly sourced enhancing high safe patient care. As well as working together within your team, you must also have the ability to work independently supporting the daily tasks of the team, ensuring all queries relating to orders are dealt with in a timely fashion.
Post holder will communicate on all levels building relationships with staff and colleagues throughout the Trust. Internally you will be working closely with other Procurement Team members and our Finance department. A close relationship with staff in Finance is essential to solve any problems in processing invoices arising from variances in order prices, quantity delivered.
Communication skills are required when dealing with customers enquiring over incorrect orders or late deliveries, this will require calmness and tact as customers can occasionally be angry and/or impatient.
Communications will be in person, telephone, teams, and e-mail.
We operate via an agile hybrid approach to maximise the benefits of working across both healthcare & corporate sites and from home.
Person specification
Qualifications
Essential criteria- Knowledge of professional purchasing principles acquired through vocational level 3 qualification or Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply (CIPS) Foundation, or equivalent experience.
- Knowledge of contract law acquired through short courses and experience
Experience & Knowledge
Essential criteria- Range of work procedures and practices, majority non-routine, intermediate level theoretical knowledge.
- A good level of awareness and understanding of Procurement terminology e.g. Transfer Point, delivery schedules
- Deal confidently and helpfully with all levels of staffing within a hospital environment and with outside suppliers.
Skills and Abilities
Essential criteria- Good organisational skills.
- Ability to work without close supervision
- Able to organise own workload to meet ordering deadlines
- Ability to communicate confidently and effectively
- Must be able to demonstrate the English language proficiency level required for this post
Applicants who are members of the Armed Forces, and those who have a disability that requires support in the work place (two ticks pledge) and who meet the essential criteria will be interviewed under the Trust's interview guarantee scheme.
We recognise the positive value of diversity and inclusion and are committed to a workforce that is diverse, equal and inclusive. We welcome and encourage job applications from people of all backgrounds. We particularly welcome applications from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) candidates as BAME people are currently under-represented in our workforce as well as other under-represented groups such as LGBT+ and disabled candidates.We are proud to be a Disability Confident Employer, a Stonewall Diversity Champion, we have a Gold award from the Defense Recognition Scheme, and we are delighted to support Apprenticeships, Age Posi+ive and are a mindful employer.
If you require any reasonable adjustments to attend interview please make the recruitment team aware as soon as possible by calling our HR Recruitment Team on 0191 203 1415 option 2.
Applicants who meet the Fit and Proper Person Requirements (FPPR) will require additional pre-employment checks in line with CQC and NHS England statutory guidance.
Make sure to read the ‘applicant guidance notes’ before submitting your application and make sure you know everything there is to know before joining our fantastic trust!
Please note that it is a requirement of this Trust that all successful applicants pay for their own DBS certification if a DBS check is required for the post. The method of payment is a salary deduction from your first monthly pay.