Overview

Personal Assistant – (12 Month Maternity Cover) – London, Greater London

Everyone is welcome at M&S. No exceptions. It’s your background, abilities and differences that make you, uniquely you. And when you’re part of M&S, that individuality has the potential to make waves.

Summary

Personal Assistant – (12 Month Maternity Cover)

All the details

Job Purpose

To provide comprehensive secretarial and administrative support by delivering a confidential and discreet service, ensuring accurate and timely information, maintaining strong working relationships across the business, and managing all levels of administration promptly and efficiently.

Key Accountabilities & Measures

  • Provide high‑level support to Directors/Heads of Department, acting as a trusted first point of contact, representing the function professionally, understanding priorities and deadlines, and adapting to changing business needs.
  • Manage complex administrative demands, including diary coordination, meetings, events, travel, expenses, POs, HR administration (holidays, rotas, MyHR), and ensuring all tasks are delivered accurately, on time, and to a high standard.
  • Coordinate and support leadership and departmental activities, including preparing agendas, minutes, papers, presentations, reports, and following up on actions to ensure completion within agreed timeframes.
  • Build strong relationships and collaborate effectively, working closely with the PA community and wider colleagues to drive inclusion, share best practice, simplify processes, and improve ways of working.
  • Maintain confidentiality and role‑model professionalism, demonstrating sound judgement, proactive problem‑solving, effective prioritisation, and consistently promoting a high‑performance, brand‑ambassador culture.

Technical & Business Skills Required

  • Advanced IT proficiency, including Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Teams), MyHR, finance systems and other productivity tools, with the ability to create and edit high‑quality documents, spreadsheets and presentations.
  • Strong email, calendar and organisational capability, managing schedules, appointments, deadlines and communications with accuracy, efficiency and minimal errors.
  • Effective planning and coordination skills, including travel arrangements, event organisation (team huddles, away days) and applying a commercial mindset with proactive, can‑do problem solving.
  • Excellent communication and stakeholder management, demonstrating strong written and verbal skills, the ability to influence and engage at all levels, and maintain professionalism, confidentiality and sound judgement.
  • High-level multitasking, prioritisation and time‑management, working at pace in a fast‑moving environment, handling competing priorities, resolving issues, and delivering consistently high‑quality work under pressure.

What’s in it for you?

Working at M&S means being part of something bigger – helping to deliver quality, value and service to millions of customers every day. We’re inclusive, fast-moving and always evolving, with a strong sense of purpose and a focus on doing the right thing.

Here are just a few of the benefits that make working here even more rewarding:

  • 20% colleague discount on all M&S products and many third-party brands for you and someone in your household, available once you’ve completed your probation
  • Competitive holiday allowance with the option to buy more
  • Discretionary bonus schemes linked to your performance and ours
  • Strong pension and life assurance to help plan for the future
  • Tailored induction and training to support your development from day one
  • Exclusive perks and savings through our M&S Choices portal
  • Market-leading family policies, including parental, adoption and neonatal leave
  • 24/7 wellbeing support, including virtual GP access and mental health services
  • One paid volunteer day a year to support a cause that matters to you

Everyone’s welcome

We are ambitious about the future of retail. We’re disrupting, innovating and leading the industry into a more conscientious, inspiring digital era. We’re transforming how we work together and offering our most exciting opportunities yet. Marks & Spencer strives to be an inclusive organisation, trusted and admired by our colleagues, customers and suppliers. Join us and make change happen.

We are committed to building diverse and representative teams, where everyone can bring their whole selves to work and be at their best. We support each other and work together to win together.

If you feel you’d benefit from any support or reasonable adjustments during any stage of the recruitment process, please don’t hesitate to let us know when completing your application. This information will be picked up by our team, so we can try and put steps in place to help you be at your best through this process.

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IMPORTANT: Before applying for this role, please make sure you have the right to work in the country where the role is based. Unless it clearly stipulates within in the job advert above that the hiring company is looking to or able to sponsor applicants it is deemed that the hiring employer will only consider applications from those able to comply with and work in the country where the role is based.