Central Operations Lead (Options)

Acorn Care and Education; Bolton; Hybrid; GBP 30,000 - 42,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading educational organization in Bolton seeks a Central Operations Team member. This role includes stakeholder management, operational compliance, and reporting to the Head of Central Operations. With a focus on relationship management and excellent customer service, the ideal candidate will oversee communication between central services and operational sites, ensuring compliance and providing proactive support. Benefits include a pension scheme, mental health support, and flexible working arrangements.

Benefits

Life Assurance

Pension scheme

Mental health support services

Enhanced maternity and paternity leave

Health and wellbeing benefits

Discount options

Cycle to Work Schemes

Electric Car Purchase Scheme

Critical illness cover

Qualifications

• Experience in stakeholder management and customer/client relations.
• Excellent attention to detail in written communication.
• Ability to take initiative and ownership of tasks.

Responsibilities

• Report progress and outcomes to the Head of Central Operations.
• Work proactively with central service and ops site leaders.
• Identify trends, issues, and potential improvements.

Skills

Stakeholder management

Excellent customer service

Strong written communication skills

Ownership and initiative

Performance reporting

Continuous improvement

Time management/organisational skills

Knowledge of key systems (Microsoft Office, Reach, XD)

Tools

Microsoft Office

Reach

XD

Job description

The role of the Central Operations Team is to act as the link between central services and operational sites across the Acorn and Options divisions.

Areas of focus

• Stakeholder Management
• School/site visits
  • Attend regular (ideally weekly) meetings with site leaders and key colleagues in your Division (in‑cl. admin/finance/IT) to understand barriers to growth/development/issues (process and/or system).
  • Develop relationships and widen understanding of sites/service.
  • Gain feedback on weekly bulletin (In Focus) and identify areas for improvement.
  • Working with Head of Central Operations to identify trends/improvement opportunities and work with central depts. to resolve.
  • Identifying sites that may need further support/training on a process/system.
• Central Directory
  • Working with the other Central Operations Leads, ensure the central directory is kept up to date, and published monthly.
• Supporting Integration & Onboarding of new acquisitions
  • Working closely with the project team to support integration of new acquisitions (schools and other businesses).
  • Delivering proactive support (‘hypercare’) to sites as they onboard into OFG. This will include organising orientation/briefing days; collating FAQs; managing new SharePoint sites; & proactive stakeholder management (including visits).
  • Feeding back issues/barriers and working with Head of Central Operations and central functions to deliver improvements (process/system).
• Operational Compliance
  • Managing the flow of information and requests between central services and operations, including the distribution and/or return of operational compliance information to ensure sites are compliant with key areas of day‑to‑day activity.
  • Weekly Bulletin: ensuring central service ops actions/data requests and information sharing is channeled through the weekly ops bulletin (In Focus), copy editing as required and publishing the bulletin each week (Monday).
  • Managing bulletin deadlines and pushing back where required.
  • Site reminders: ensuring that ops sites receive reminders to submit central actions/returns and chasing‑up submissions when required.
  • Operational Planner: ensuring central services information/data requests are channeled through the weekly planner in a coordinated and well managed way to ensure efficiency and timeliness of requests.
  • Reporting performance on the above to the Head of Central Operations through monthly compliance dashboards, including assisting in the scope and design of the dashboards.

What you’ll do

• Reporting progress/outcomes to the Head of Central Operations.
• Work proactively with central service leaders/managers and ops sites leaders/managers.
• Develop relationships with key operational site leaders to ensure receipt of inbound information/data as required and respond to queries or issues in a timely manner.
• Identify and report back trends, issues, and potential areas of improvement across all areas of responsibility to the Head of Central Operations.
• Contribute to the team strategy and ongoing performance by attending regular team meetings, and 1‑1 development meetings.
• Ensure clear communication around expectations and deliverables is delivered to both central functions and operational site leaders/managers and staff.
• Flexible working: specified as two days in the office; maximum two days working from home (WFH); and one 4‑Day Working Week (4DWW) wellbeing day. (NB: 4DWW day subject to eligibility and work priorities/deadlines; WFH days subject to change by Head of Central Operations where required i.e. to meet individual/team workload objectives and KPIs).

What we’re looking for

• Stakeholder management – experience of working with customers/clients and delivering to relationship management plans.
• Deliver excellent customer service – ensure all tasks are dealt with in line with agreed central service/operational/team KPIs/SLAs.
• Strong written communication skills – excellent attention to detail.
• Ownership and initiative – take full ownership of your allocated division and use initiative to find effective solutions where required.
• Performance reporting – ensure all reporting on performance is delivered to your line manager per deadlines/KPIs.
• Continuous improvement – feedback regularly (team meetings/1‑1s) on the effectiveness / issues of service delivery and potential areas of improvement.
• Strong time management / organisational skills – have ability to be flexible and prioritise tasks to meet deadlines.
• Knowledge of key systems: Microsoft Office, Reach, XD etc.

Benefits

• Life Assurance
• Pension scheme with options to increase your contributions
• “Your Wellbeing Matters” – access to a wide range of first‑class mental health support services and physical health checks
• Family Growth Support – inclusive benefits package covering enhanced maternity and paternity leave, along with paid fertility treatment support.
• A wide range of health, wellbeing, and insurance benefits
• 100’s of discount options valid in the UK and abroad
• Cycle to Work Schemes
• Electric Car Purchase Scheme
• Critical illness cover

We are committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and young people and we expect all employees to share this commitment and undertake appropriate checks.

All applicants will be subject to social media checks and successful applicants to a fully enhanced DBS.