About this role
The culture and operations director (COD) will lead on strengthening and further embedding our culture of freedom and responsibility by providing excellent operational leadership across Frontline. To effectively operate a culture of freedom and responsibility we need robust financial controls, excellent governance and strong relationships at our foundation – the COD will build on our excellent foundations. We are an ambitious organisation - we work hard to create an inclusive culture which supports our hard-working teams through data, feedback and technology. As COD you will lead on galvanising our leadership group to ensure they have the necessary resources, collective focus and communication channels across teams nationally. We have recently bid to join the delivery framework for the Department for Education’s ambitious new Social Work National Professional Development Offer. If successful, this will require design and delivery of up to 5 new programmes, increase the organisation’s size by roughly one third and require us to review our organisational structure to ensure we are optimally set up. The COD will implement an operational review to put in place the optimal structure and working arrangements to deliver on any new work which arises. This will require significant skill in leading a change management process as roles change and new staff join the organisation. The culture and operations director (COD) will ensure Frontline is high-performing, well-governed organisation with a strong culture of freedom and responsibility - a place people can do their best work to achieve Frontline’s mission. The COD has strategic responsibility for high-level, cross-team plans which ensure Frontline’s operational functions, effective support teams to navigate challenges and maximise opportunities. The COD will play a key leadership role, alongside other members of SLT by: - Maintaining a high-level oversight of Frontline’s finances, supporting the head of the team with robust decision-making to ensure financial stability - Overseeing the development of Frontline’s annual budget and priority setting, alongside the head of finance and leadership group - Embodying freedom and responsibility in leading the operational managers at Frontline, constantly seeking ways to improve on efficiency and quality, implementing strategies to ensure Frontline’s success - Ensure communication channels are in place to keep teams connected and informed, creating new opportunities for collaboration and leading on existing activities such as annual all-staff away days and monthly gatherings. - Ensuring Frontline adheres to legal and regulatory requirements, maintains high standards of corporate governance whilst mitigating risks which could negatively impact Frontline’s operations or reputation - Building and maintaining strong relationships with key stakeholders, internal and external including the Frontline board and the Department for Education (DfE) - Develop a plan to inform Frontline’s approach to AI, draining on internal champions and partners, to define how we will embed tools in our work over the next three years. The COD will lead teams delivering on operational priorities in line with freedom and responsibility, to ensure we remain high performing: People: - Lead the people team to identify new and creative ways to further strengthen our culture of freedom and responsibility - Manage the head of people and our culture project lead, to ensure excellent HR administration, support and use of data (e.g. staff turnover, sickness levels and performance reporting) - Design, deliver and evaluate high-quality training and induction and maintain cutting edge approaches to recruitment to best support managers. Finance: - Manage the head of finance and compliance, supporting them and the finance team to deliver sound financial controls/clear reporting and manage an annual budget of £25m - ensuring financial capability and clear cross-team communication - Lead the charity’s relationship with the Finance Audit and Risk Committee (FARC) and chair, to support the financial leadership of the charity. Build in the necessary checks and draw on the input of the head of finance and CEO as required, to ensure continued financial sustainability. IT/CRM/Information security: - Manage and support individual leads to ensure they have the required resources, systems are robust and compliance mechanisms are in place.