Resourcing Assistant Manager – Channel Islands

Reports to: Resourcing Manager
Location: Jersey (on-island, office-based role)
Coverage: Jersey and Guernsey

The opportunity

We are looking for a Resourcing Assistant Manager to join our Channel Islands Assurance practice. This is an on-island role based in our Jersey office, covering Jersey and Guernsey. It would suit someone from a resourcing, operations, HR or recruitment background.

You will own day-to-day engagement allocations, using your judgement and local knowledge to resolve clashes, manage shortages and make deployment decisions that optimise utilisation and chargeability. You will also take a forward view, analysing the pipeline and forecasting headcount, hours and utilisation to anticipate demand, highlight capacity gaps and inform the financial forecast.

As the visible, trusted point of contact for resourcing, you will work closely with engagement leads and teams and coordinate offshore support.

Key responsibilities

Engagement allocations and deployment

• Take responsibility for allocating resources to engagements, taking into account timing, grade, skills and experience needed.
• Resolve competing demands and allocation conflicts in real time, working face-to-face with engagement leads, particularly during busy season.
• Oversee the accuracy of the EY resource planning tool, resolving data issues with engagement teams and offshore support.
• Coordinate day-to-day offshore resourcing support, reviewing outputs and retaining ownership of local allocation decisions.
• Identify opportunities to use technology and AI to improve resourcing processes.
• Analyse the pipeline and maintain a forward-looking view of upcoming engagements, proactively engaging with engagement leads to ensure resource requirements and demand are identified sufficiently in advance.
• Work with the Resourcing Manager and liaise with the business, counsellors and HR to keep abreast of staff development needs to ensure planning is appropriately aligned.

Planning and forecasting

• Apply knowledge of the Channel Islands client base, local regulatory reporting cycles and seasonal peaks to anticipate demand and plan resources accordingly.
• Support the Resourcing Manager with headcount forecasts, reflecting recruitment, leavers, secondments and demand, and highlighting capacity gaps or surpluses.
• Forecast hours and utilisation weekly, monthly, quarterly and annually, using these to calculate the financial forecast.
• Interpret the weekly availability analysis provided by offshore support, identifying periods of under-utilisation and coordinating actions with engagement teams, escalating accordingly to ensure utilisation is maximised.
• Review management information produced by offshore support on utilisation, budget vs. actual, headcount, timesheets and wider operational excellence metrics, querying anomalies and presenting insights and recommendations to the Channel Islands leadership group.

Stakeholder management

• Act as the visible, on-island point of contact for resourcing and deployment, building strong relationships with the leadership group and engagement teams.
• Understand and communicate key business developments which may affect upcoming performance.
• Meet regularly with the Resourcing Manager and Operations Director to update on deployment, key issues and agreed actions.

Skills and experience

Essential

• Excellent organisational skills to manage complex, changing allocations, balance competing priorities and make pragmatic decisions, with a proactive approach.
• Strong stakeholder management and communication skills, with the confidence to engage senior stakeholders and constructively challenge requests where demand exceeds capacity.
• Strong Excel and data skills, with the ability to interpret management information, turn insights into action and handle confidential people data with discretion.

Desirable

• Resource management, workforce planning, engagement management or operational planning experience.
• Experience coordinating work delivered by offshore or remote teams.
• Experience within Assurance, a professional services environment and/or the financial services sector, including an understanding of Assurance engagement structures and the different experience and skill requirements across engagement teams.