*Internal Secondment* Lead Operator - Nights

Yeo Valley Organic; Highweek; On-site; GBP 28,000 - 36,000; Full time

Job summary

Yeo Valley Organic is seeking a Lead Operator for the Nights shift in the Desserts department at Newton Abbot. The role runs 18:00–06:00 on a 4 on/4 off pattern, offering exposure to night-shift manufacturing leadership and opportunities to develop supervisory skills within a British food production environment.

The position emphasizes safety, hygiene, and efficient changeovers, with a focus on team energising, data sharing, and continuous improvement across shifts.

Qualifications

• Leadership experience in a manufacturing setting.
• Comfortable performing manual tasks on a night shift.
• Strong attention to detail and consistency.
• Clear communication within a shift team and with support functions.

Responsibilities

• Energise the team and encourage quick action.
• Maintain health and safety practices and escalate issues as needed.
• Uphold hygiene, PPE and dress code standards.
• Lead 5S/5C style organisation and visual management.
• Support changeover optimisation to improve asset utilisation.
• Share performance data and explain how roles contribute to shift success.
• Undertake basic fault finding and assist root-cause analysis.
• Care for equipment and ensure cleaning validation schedules are followed.
• Collate and implement improvement ideas within and across shifts.
• Coordinate handovers to address common challenges and opportunities.

Skills

Team leadership

Manual tasks

Attention to detail

Effective communication

Job description

So, what will I be doing?

*For Internal Applications Only*

We have an internal 3 month Secondment opportunity for an enthusiastic and motivated Lead Operator to join our Nights Shift within our Desserts department at Yeo Valley Newton Abbot. This role is a 4 on, 4 off Days shift, working 18:00 - 06:00. This opportunity would provide valuable exposure to Night shift Desserts for anyone looking to broaden their experience and develop their leadership skills.

Key Responsibilities

• Energises the team and demonstrates a consistently enthusiastic approach, taking action quickly and encouraging others to do the same.
• Demonstrating a commitment to Health & Safety by working in a safe manner, role modelling our safety behaviors, challenging unsafe practices, rectifying unsafe conditions and escalating to other team members when support is needed.
• Understanding, leading and maintaining good manufacturing practices and company standards of hygiene, PPE, and dress code.
• Role models a 'Clean as You Go' approach, leading workplace organisation and visual management standards with the team.
• Active involvements in changeover optimsation with the team, identifying areas of opportunity and resource coordination that improve asset utilisation.
• Communicates and shares performance data and ensures team awareness and connection of how their role contributes to the success of the shift, site and business.
• Undertake basic fault finding and rectification on equipment and actively support the identification of root cause when escalating to the wider support team when required.
• Ensuring all equipment is properly cared for through the layered validation of the cleaning tasks and the compliance to the schedule.
• Collate, suggest, initiate and implement improvement activities within own team and outside of team across all shifts
• Work across the team and effective handovers to understand common challenges and opportunities seeking to identify where investigations may help most.

Sounds interesting, what do I need?

Essential

• Good team working skills
• Able to undertake manual tasks
• Attention to Detail
• Effective Communication

Desirable

• Basic food hygiene
• Knowledge of HACCP
• Relevant work experience as a machine Operator in a production environment

Why should I join the family?

We're independent, British and proud to be making the highest quality yogurts, desserts and ice cream under the Yeo Valley brand and for many of the UK's major retailers. Operating from four dairies and two logistics centres in Somerset and Devon, we employ over 1700 staff and produce more than 25% of the UK's packaged yogurt.

We're sure you don't need convincing, but there's a whole host of benefits that we offer including:

• competitive holiday allowance
• non-contributory pension scheme
• life cover
• healthcare cash back plan
• cycle to work scheme
• subsidised Yeo Valley products and services
• preferential rates with our partners
• learning and development opportunities; we're committed to ensuring all of our employees have the chance to grow

Our closing dates are a guide for when the application window should close, although we may close the advert sooner if we can.

Unfortunately, we're not able to provide employment sponsorship to candidates at this moment in time.

Please note that Yeo Valley do not accept speculative agency applications; we will only accept applications from preferred suppliers that have been submitted to us via our recruitment portal at the point of instruction.