Operations Director - Coworking / Serviced Office / Commercial

Director of Operations:

Our client are on a mission to create the best places for businesses to innovate and grow.  They are backed by the UK’s leading venture builder behind some of the UK’s most successful start-ups. 

They want their locations to be the best place to build a business and their goal is to take away all the hassles of managing an office, so their customers can focus on what is important – growing their businesses.

Delivering a great product and service requires them to have great buildings, designed, built and fitted out well and well looked after by teams passionate about great customer service.  They want to meet their customers’ needs and to be responsive to their requests – which means they need to be obsessive about service, deliver a great experience every day, be great at projects whilst developing standards and know-how to create a scalable and repeatable model.

They are also part of a joint venture with a London based university who are co-creating a brand new space – this will be a 200,000 sqft innovation centre in West London, opening in 2020.  

The Role

We are looking for a talented, passionate and commercially minded individual to take responsibility for the experience delivered to members across all their sites. They want their members to have a fantastic experience, at all points of interaction.  They want to deliver them a great space, with fantastic support and help build a vibrant and supportive community.

Our client wants to deliver a truly differentiated experience, so you’ll own the operational strategy, putting in place policies and procedures and developing our staffing and talent plans.  You’ll be responsible for the systems and operational processes to make sure we deliver that great experience, every day.  And you’ll develop the standards and “know-how” so they can launch new sites quickly and deliver the service experience with new teams.

You’ll make sure the team in each site are delivering the promise to customers every day and living up to the company values.  You’ll make sure you are tracking company performance and identifying opportunities to improve.

This isn’t just about the buildings, it is the community they build, the sharing of knowledge, the programme of events and the engagement and visibility in their communities.

You’ll control the operational budget for properties, and you’ll be responsible for ensuring that the company deliver against financial goals for each property.

You’ll make sure the company maintain the physical structure of their buildings and deliver key building related projects.  Working with designers, the facilities team, site operations teams and their network of external consultants and suppliers, you’ll make sure the companies buildings are well designed, well maintained, delivering a great environment and experience.  Our client want their buildings to feel different and special and they want them to be full of entrepreneurial, disruptive, ambitious, technology enabled businesses.

Key responsibilities will include:

• Deliver a great experience to all users of all their buildings, whether tenants or visitors;
• Deliver an excellent service to members, building a culture of customer service excellence and developing policies and procedures to ensure delivery of key service interactions;
• Maximise member satisfaction and retention through engagement with members and the delivery of valuable and meaningful events and member benefits;
• Representing the brand externally to the public and to potential customers and users of the building;
• Effective management of the on-site teams, to deliver a branded, “values-led” experience – taking away hassle for customers;
• Regular maintenance programmes to ensure reliability of key building systems and compliance with building regulations;
• Ensuring the efficient delivery of high-quality services including cleaning, maintenance, catering through supplier relationship building and contract management;
• Delivery of key financial targets;
• Ensure the company have the right technical solutions in their buildings and that they are maintained to a high standard
• Regular maintenance programmes to ensure reliability of key building systems and compliance with building regulations
• Delivery of key facilities activities including cleaning, decoration and repairs
• Own the company standards and policies for procurement of physical equipment in buildings and for use of contractors and consultants
• Drive reduction in costs and improvement in delivery quality
• The buildings will be supported by Community Managers, Front of House specialists and facilities / support staff. You will develop plans to maximise the effectiveness of those teams along with any central resources, optimising the balance between local and central team members
• Reporting progress, performance, opportunities and issues to key stakeholders.
• Manage key building projects
• New site development / refurbishment
• Internal client-led design changes

Key Skills

• Commercially minded 

• Operations management in an environment that delivers a “branded” customer experience

• Strong project delivery skills and experience

• Team management and leadership

• Customer management

• Contract management

• Supplier management

• P&L management / budgeting / financial monitoring

• Policy and procedure development

• Monitoring and management of customer service delivery

• Inquisitive forward-thinking mind set – able to research