Student Support Manager
Location: University of Southampton Delhi, Gurugram, India
Type of Contract: Permanent, Full Time
Salary: Competitive
Job Purpose
This role is responsible for delivering high-quality wellbeing and disability support to students, offering expert guidance, managing complex cases, and ensuring safe, compliant, and student-centred practices across the student support function. As an individual contributor, the post holder will help design and develop services that meet evolving student needs and support institutional priorities.
Key Responsibilities
Responsibilities include providing professional expertise, direction, and oversight for the Student Support function, with the expectation of contributing to the development of the service and supporting its future growth.
1. Lead the Student Support function
- Offering expertise to foster a culture of student-focused continuous improvement and innovation, aligned with Support Services and University strategies.
- Identifying the most effective structures, processes, policies, and technologies to maintain high standards of student support and meet evolving student needs.
- Determining service priorities in situations of competing demands or resource constraints, informed by service data, University priorities, and risk considerations.
- Setting service standards, reviewing delivery, benchmarking against other universities, and developing new services or delivery methods to enhance student experience and support retention.
- Managing staff recruitment, induction, motivation, performance, development, and annual appraisal to maximize contribution and encourage engagement and inclusion.
- Ensuring compliance with relevant legislation (e.g., Health & Safety, GDPR).
- Ensuring alignment with recognized service frameworks and quality standards, such as the Student Mental Health Charter.
- Ensuring safe and ethical operations through appropriate risk assessments, risk management planning, confidentiality practices, and boundaries.
2. Support for serious incidents & Risk Management
- Support the Student Experience team in responding to serious incidents and carrying our serious incident reviews.
- Develop and deliver risk-based processes to keep students safe from harm to themselves or others
- Deliver Student Support Fitness to Study meetings and associated activities in line with University regulationsPromote and safeguard the physical and mental health of students, including through preventative measures.
- Provide advice and guidance to staff so that they know when to raise a concern in relation to a student’s wellbeing
3. Disability Coordination
- Provide planning and implementation support for students with disabilities, including coordination of Student Support Recommendations so that students have individual reasonable adjustments in place in a timely manner
- Provide support and guidance to students in relation to examinations, including timely implementation of Additional Exam Recommendations
- Provide planning for and coordination of Personal Emergency Evacuation Plans (PEEPs) with the Facilities Manager.
- Provide advice and guidance to staff in relation to disabled student support
4. Budget management
- Manage and monitor the Student Support budget to ensure effective use of resources and value for money within agreed limits.
- Represent the Student Support team during the annual budget planning cycle.
5. Professional advisory responsibilities
- Provide expert advice to the University on key wellbeing topics, including mental health risk management and suicide prevention.
- Ensure staff across relevant areas maintain an understanding of best practice in student wellbeing and disability support.
6. Policy compliance and development
- Ensure institutional and local policies meet statutory and regulatory requirements.
- Lead or contribute to policy development to meet emerging needs and changing requirements.
- Ensure all relevant organizational and student risk assessments are completed, maintained, and reviewed regularly.
7. External agency engagement
- Develop and maintain productive relationships with external agencies to ensure early intervention and coordinated care.
8. Internal engagement and collaboration
- Build strong working relationships with Professional Services and Faculties, including Personal Academic Tutors and Senior Tutors.
- Liaise on services provided by the Student Support team, strengthen partnerships, and contribute to university committees and working groups.
9. Other duties
- Undertake additional duties as assigned by the line manager, following consultation.
- Undertake additional duties assigned by the line manager, following consultation.
Person Specification
Qualifications, knowledge and experience
- Skill level equivalent to achievement of a professional qualification or postgraduate degree
- Significant years of managing outcomes in relation to student well-being
- Proven people management skills
- Proven financial management skills
- Knowledge of higher education environment and current priorities
- Able to apply experience and awareness within a specialist field.
- Excellent IT skills, including standard Microsoft Office packages and confidence in working with new technologies
- Proactive and responsive approach to work tasks or requests
- Membership of a relevant professional body
(Desirable)
Planning and initiative
- Able to identify broad trends to assess deep-rooted and complex issues
- Able to apply judgement and initiative in modifying existing approaches to resolve complex problems
- Able to make decisions and own these decisions with confidence, authority and ultimate responsibility
- Proven ability to use rigorous data collection and analysis to inform decision making and trouble shoot problems effectively
- Able to identify development needs in department and apply creative solutions
- Able to respond proactively to events to achieve goals and take hard decisions, often in pressurized situations where all the facts are not yet known
- Self-sufficient, capable of target setting and monitoring, actively seeking information from internal or external sources as required
Management and Teamwork
- Proven experience of managing a successful team
- Able to manage team dynamics, ensuring any potential for conflict is managed effectively
- Able to formulate development plans for own staff to meet current and future skill needs
- Able to provide expert guidance and advice to colleagues to resolve complex problems
- Team player, able to work collaboratively with others to disseminate and share knowledge and information
- Able to understand a wide range of new information quickly and accurately
- Able to work well with people from diverse backgrounds, perspectives and approaches
- Motivational, with the ability to engage stakeholders in direction of work
Communicating and influencing
- Able to receive, understand and convey complex ideas or information and transform them into implementation plans
- Able to produce focused, professional and persuasive reports, including statistical analyses, on a wide range of complex topics
- Able to collaborate with a range of people, including internal and external stakeholders, in order to foster and maintain relationships
- Able to resolve tensions and difficulties as they arise
- Able to produce effective stakeholder communications that ensure engagement
- Excellent written, presentation and verbal skills, with the ability to communicate at a variety of levels
- Confidence to encourage and facilitate constructive debate
Other skills and behaviours
- Able to demonstrate alignment with the University’s core values in all areas of work, and champion those behaviors in the department
Special Requirement
- The student health and wellbeing service operates 24/7, 365 days a year. The post holder will therefore be required to work flexibly to meet the needs of the service.
- The post holder will be expected to participate in an Out of Hours rota that provides management-level escalation support for our 24/7 service.
- The role includes supporting and contributing to Student Experience frontline services, which may involve attending events such as Open Days, ceremonies, and corporate activities.
Oxford International is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children. Recruitment checks, including checks with past employees, are undertaken in accordance with our Recruitment and Selection policy.
Oxford International is an equal opportunity employer. Every applicant and employee has the same opportunities regardless of race, colour, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender, gender identity or expression, or veteran status.
