General Manager

ABC Worldwide; Johannesburg; On-site; ZAR 1,200,000 - 1,500,000; Full time

Job summary

A workspace solutions company based in Johannesburg seeks a General Manager to lead operations in South Africa. The role emphasizes sales and marketing while ensuring operational excellence and providing a premium experience to tenants. Candidates should have relevant leadership experience, a strong business acumen, and a passion for nurturing teams. This position includes oversight of financial management, tenant relations, and strategic growth initiatives.

Qualifications

• 5+ years’ leadership experience with strong business acumen.
• 3+ years multi-site operational management experience required.
• Experience in flexible workspace or adjacent sectors is preferred.

Responsibilities

• Lead operations to deliver a premium workspace experience.
• Ensure ethical and compliant management of all centers.
• Drive sales governance, occupancy, and financial management.

Skills

Strong business acumen

Team leadership

Stakeholder management

Data-driven decision making

Education

Bachelor’s degree in finance/business/commerce

Post-graduate degree

Tools

Google Workspace

Microsoft Office

CRM platforms

Job description

Overview

Job Purpose

The General Manager (GM) leads operations in South Africa to deliver a premium, scalable, and profitable workspace offering. The GM holds end-to-end accountability for operational excellence and control, sales, marketing, profitability, people (culture), and brand/tenant experience across all centres. The role is weighted toward sales and marketing, ensuring that sales execution is well-governed, outcomes-focused, and geared toward capacitating all centres and growing into new markets. The GM is a firm, kind leader who builds capable teams and systems, sets clear standards, and ensures that all tenants receive a premium, world-class experience.

Job Description Key Responsibilities

Responsibilities

1. Business Management

2. Overall, the GM is responsible for the smooth, efficient, and accountable management of all centres.

3. Ensuring that all centres, functions, relationships, and outputs are managed in a highly ethical, transparent, and strongly compliant manner at all times.

4. The GM is required to be abreast of all business metrics, numbers, departmental and individual targets, performance, and objectives at all times. A deep immersion in and functional knowledge of all business activities is critical.

5. Ensuring that the core business focus of providing a premium tenant experience remains well-communicated, actively driven, and highly enforced at all times.

6. Creating and maintaining an honest culture of collaboration, service delivery, and professionalism within both management and staff spheres. The core cultural drivers of accountability and premium service delivery to tenants must actively be embedded.

7. Ensuring that tenant communication is professional, frequent (to a set rhythm), appropriate, and informative.

8. Operations and Service Excellence

9. Own national centre operations standards and performance; ensure each site meets the premium standard for aesthetics, cleanliness, facilities, technology, and hospitality.

10. Implement and maintain operating procedures, checklists, and audit cycles; drive visible centre walkthroughs and remedial action plans.

11. Ensure centre teams execute move-in/move-out processes, maintenance, security, access control, and health & safety, with timely escalations.

12. Chair a weekly national operations review, track occupancy, service incidents, SLA breaches, and corrective actions per site.

13. Oversee vendor and supplier performance; negotiate contracts, ensure value for money, and manage warranties/penalties.

14. Govern stock, asset registers, and capex projects; sign-off specifications, budgets, and handovers to “business as usual.”

15. Finance, Commercial and Governance

16. The GM is responsible for oversight of the finance function through the Finance Manager and supporting teams.

17. Ensuring that annual budgets, quarterly reforecasts, and monthly management accounts with clear variance commentary and actions are produced, actively reviewed, and understood by the GM and collated for the CEO and board.

18. Ensuring that robust financial management is adhered to with a clear enforcement of limits of authority and internal controls. Immediately and urgently reporting any and all financial discrepancies, concerns, and issues to the CEO.

19. Ensuring that at all times the operations practice clear, ethical, and transparent financial activities and practices.

20. Sales and Marketing

21. Set sales governance, cadence (pipeline reviews, conversion/velocity KPIs, pricing discipline) and remove operational blockers.

22. Ensuring that sales governance is actively reported on, interrogated, and consistently improved on. The GM is responsible to drive and maintain required occupancy levels in all centres while actively growing the business’ reach and footprint.

23. Align Sales, Operations, and Finance on occupancy, pricing, promotions, and lease terms, safeguarding profitability per deal.

24. Hold Sales leadership accountable for targets and client relations management; intervene selectively on strategic/blue-chip deals when required.

25. Actively build and maintain positive relationships with brokers both locally and internationally (and ensure that the sales teams actively follow and report on the same strategy).

26. Ensuring that at all times the tenant onboarding processes and flow from sales to operations is a seamless, premium experience.

27. Manage weekly sales meetings and ensure CRM system data is accurate and up to date.

28. People, Culture and Capability

29. Build a high-trust, high-accountability, high-performance culture that is firm and kind: clear standards, direct feedback, and supportive coaching.

30. Ensuring the organisational HR narrative of “we nurture the individual, but protect the whole” is actively lived and managed.

31. Structure the organisation for scale; clarify roles, spans of control, and succession plans across centres and head office functions.

32. Set performance objectives and run quarterly reviews (ISP 3+1 process); recognise excellence and address underperformance quickly and fairly.

33. Drive recruitment quality; insist on values alignment and strong competency alignment for all leaders and centre staff.

34. Ensure at all times an HR landscape that is fair, procedurally driven, high-performance enabled, and that accountabilities are governed in a swift and consequenced manner.

35. Board Reporting

36. Define the reporting pack and metrics for the Board under the instruction of the CEO: occupancy, retention/churn, revenue/margin, arrears, site audit score, NPS/complaints, capex delivery, and people metrics.

37. Ensure accurate, timely dashboarding and narrative insight; escalate risks and present data-driven action plans.

38. Coordinate agendas and ensure decisions, tasks, projects, and targets are tracked to closure.

39. Ensure at all times that qualitative and quantitative data is available for effective, non-biased decision making.

40. Strategy, Growth and Partnerships

41. Maintain a rolling 12–24 month plan for capacity, pricing, product mix, and centre upgrades based on demand, competitor, and cost trends.

42. Evaluate new sites/expansions in close collaboration with the CEO; run business cases and due diligence (commercial, operational, and capital impact) with finance and operational considerations.

43. Manage landlord and strategic partner relationships to protect the brand and economics.

44. Technology and Information Management

45. Champion reliable centre technology (internet, telephony, CCTV, access control); ensure change control and uptime SLAs.

46. Drive data discipline: lease registers, CRM, billing/pre-billing, arrears notes, and tenant records are complete and current.

47. Promote automation and BI for operational and financial reporting.

48. Risk, Compliance and Safety

49. Ensure compliance with leases, health & safety, POPIA, consumer protection, and company policies.

50. Ensuring at all times a clear and tight alignment to group protocols, standards, and best practices.

51. Ensuring teams and individuals, per site, are correctly trained on all health and safety, compliance standards, lease deliverables etc.

52. Lead crisis management and incident response; run post-incident reviews and preventative improvements.

53. 10) Network Expansion – Site Identification and Build-Out

54. Strategic alignment & CEO approval: Pursue opportunities strictly within the CEO-approved growth thesis and selection criteria. The GM must not progress beyond initial screening (e.g., broker engagement, site tours) without CEO approval. The GM cannot authorise commitments (contracting, design fees, vendor engagement, deposits) without CEO/Board approval in writing to proceed.

55. Market scanning and shortlisting: Maintain a structured funnel of options aligned to the strategy; use a scorecard (location, catchment/demand, competitor set, access/transport, amenities, utilities/power/fibre resilience, risk, forecast unit economics) to rank sites.

56. Due diligence & business case: Lead commercial, technical, and legal due diligence covering zoning/land use, services capacity (power/HVAC/backup), floor-plate efficiency and yield, parking ratios, landlord covenant/track record, title restrictions, and key lease terms. Build a bottom-up business case with sensitivities (capex, ramp-up, pricing, occupancy) and clear payback/ROI. Present to CEO for gate decision.

57. Deal structuring & approvals: Negotiate heads of terms/lease within risk thresholds; secure legal review and signatures per limits of authority. Ensure key protections (delivery specs, penalties, handover conditions, options) are documented.

58. Design, fit-out & procurement ("builds"): Run the cross-functional programme (Architecture/ID, QS, contractors, IT, security, access control, furniture). Use three-quote discipline; manage capex, contingency, and change control. Conduct weekly site reviews; enforce H&S compliance.

59. Pre-opening readiness & marketing: Coordinate brand standards, wayfinding/signage, and IT readiness. Align with Marketing on pre-leasing plan (digital, broker channels, PR, launch events) and ensure inventory and pricing are live in CRM. Recruit and train centre staff; load SOPs and checklists; complete operational drills.

60. Handover to steady-state operations: Complete snags; file as-builts/O&M manuals; update the asset register; activate warranties and SLAs. Conduct post-occupancy reviews at 30/90 days against the business case and implement improvements.

61. Clear focus balance: Expansion activities must not compromise core operational performance; the GM remains primarily accountable for day-to-day results and only advances new-site work in line with the CEO’s vision, brief, and approved plan.

11) External Representation

• Act as brand ambassador with key tenants, landlords, suppliers, and community partners; uphold professional, sophisticated, and service-oriented conduct at all times.

Qualifications and Experience

• Bachelor’s degree in finance / business / commerce required with a post-graduate degree advantageous.

• 5+ years’ leadership experience with strong business acumen non-negotiable

• 3+ years multi-site operational management experience required.

• Previous experience running own business highly advantageous (demonstrated entrepreneurial experience and attributes required).

• Proven track record in sales, marketing, operations, people, and finance functioning.

• Demonstrable experience starting and running a business or leading a full P&L unit (preference for services/real-estate/flexible workspace or adjacent sectors).

• Property/leasing/tenanting sector exposure is advantageous, provided operational depth is strong.

• Advanced computer literacy: spreadsheets and reporting; strong proficiency in Google Workspace and Microsoft Office.

• Familiarity with property/lease and billing systems (e.g., GMA/MRI Property Central), CRM platforms, and basic networking/IT concepts.

• Data-driven decision making; financial acumen; structured and logical problem solving.

• Process design and continuous improvement; vendor negotiation and contract management.

• Strong stakeholder management (Board/landlords/tenants/suppliers); clear written and verbal communication.

• Valid driver’s licence and reliable vehicle; national travel to all centres as required.

• Valid passport with the ability to travel locally and internationally (into Africa expansion).

• Availability for after-hours escalation and emergency response.

Behavioural Competencies

• Logical, stable, and fast decision maker.

• Firm and kind leadership.

• Sets clear standards, holds people accountable, and coaches constructively.

• Service-obsessed, calm under pressure, and resilient.

• High integrity and ownership.

• Organised, deadline-driven and attentive to detail; can manage competing priorities.

• Team builder who creates clarity and alignment.

• Low ego.

• High commitment to results.

• The ability to take feedback and correct behaviour / actions.