Head of Operations

Job title: Head of Operations

Location: Kings Hill, Kent with some travel to London, occasional remote working

Reporting To: Managing Director, Charities Aid Foundation UK

Contract: Full time, Permanent

Salary: Up to £95,000

Date Closes: Monday 23rd September 2024

Careers4Change is delighted to be supporting CAF (Charities Aid Foundation) in their search for a new Head of Operations. 

Role Purpose:

This is an exciting opportunity to lead the integration and management of a new Operations function ensuring the best possible outcomes for CAF’s donor clients and charity partners by creating a highly efficient operating model that delivers excellent support for frontline teams. 

The department delivers various functions including due diligence on our donors (customer due diligence) and charities that we fund (charity verification), payments to charities, operational and administrative support and contact centre.

About CAF

CAF is one of the UK’s largest charities by income, providing market leading giving products and services to charities and donors.

We are in the midst of a key digital transformation programme that will help us to deliver a step change in growth and efficiency and are about to embark on our next three-year strategy.

We’re looking for a talented Head of Operations to join our senior leadership team and help to guide the organisation through this critical juncture. 

Responsible for:

• Corporate Client Experience & Engagement Manager
• Senior Management Team Assistant
• Business Architect, Customer Operations
• Charity Verification & Client Operations Manager
• Contact Centre and Support Team Operations Manager
• Head of Customer Due Diligence

Key Responsibilities:

Strategy and leadership

• Integrate and lead a newly formed Operations team that brings together the contact centre, customer due diligence, charity verification and payments teams, forming an integral part of Giving and Impact Services 
• Lead the team in its work to deliver excellent operational support to frontline teams constantly improving service standards and operational efficiency
• Take the lead role in the operations stream of CAF’s strategy with responsibility for day-to-day management of the strategy
• Work closely with colleagues in product to leverage customer insight, make continual improvements to CAF’s products and ensure full integration with the strategy
• Ensure that the size, skills and structure of the new Operations team is commensurate with providing excellent client service and creating a financially sustainable organisation
• Actively foster a customer-centric culture dedicated to finding new and innovative ways to serve all stakeholder groups, maximising impact and effectiveness
• Work closely with HR to ensure effective training and development needs are identified and appropriate programmes are delivered across the division to support succession planning and provide development opportunities
• Play a leading role in CAF’s Leadership Group enlisting support of peers and sharing expertise with other areas of CAF
• Play a key role in the Giving and Impact Services leadership team working closely with the other heads of department to maximise collaboration between teams 
• Take a data-driven approach to improving customer services and operations including the key cause of client complaints, transaction processing times and bottlenecks, and the end-to-end transaction journey

Governance

• Work with relevant colleagues to ensure that CAF maximises the value of its data and implements effective data governance
• Take overall responsibility for the delivery of quality management information ensuring this is shared in a manner that drives continual improvement 
• Set and help deliver targets/KPIs across operations to keep the team focussed on the most important activities
• Working with the Managing Director, Giving and Impact and other colleagues to ensure that robust governance is in place especially risk management, financial crime, compliance with charity regulation and governance of BAU activity
• Ensure compliance with all risk management practices and policies across the team
• Ensure timely reporting to regulators including the annual Give As You Earn submission to HMRC

 Policy and Process

• Own all Policies and Standards related to: Non-cash donations, Verification and Donor-Led Loans, including their regular review and improvement for better customer outcomes
• Challenge existing processes where they cause inefficiency or result in a poor customer experience, leading on the implementation of alternatives
• Work with the Transformation team to design and develop new systems and processes that improve the customer experience and are easy to manage

 Payment processing

• Lead the creation of a new, centralised distribution (payments) unit to create savings in processing time, workflow, cost and resource and deliver better customer outcomes

Due Diligence responsibilities

• Work with the General Counsel and Executive Director for Governance to strengthen the ‘First Line of Defence’ capability within Charities Aid Foundation (UK) 
• Accountable for the design and implementation of appropriate controls and processes to ensure they are compliant with internal policies and external regulation, in particular FCA for AML\KYC, HMRC and Charity Commission for gift aid and charity verification
• Accountable for the development and implementation of the Charity Verification policy, ensuring it meets internal policy requirements and those of external regulators such as HMRC and FCA

Skills and Experience:

 Experience:

• Proven track record of managing large and complex operations Teams
• Leading teams that manage complex manual processes
• Managing internal and external stakeholders of all levels
• Proven track record of designing and implementing large process and systems changes
• Track record of achieving excellent customer service results as measured by third parties such as Institute of Customer Service
• Successfully managing multi-channel service operations including email, phone, webchat and social
• Managing large change projects (desirable)

Qualifications

Appropriate professional qualification or degree/post-graduate Qualification

Training

Management

Financial services

Specialist Skills/ Ability/Knowledge

• Understanding of project management methodologies 
• Change management
• Ability to direct and lead large teams in meeting business targets
• Ability to analyse reports and identify opportunities and trends
• Demonstrate ability to successfully negotiate and influence at a senior level
• Ability to influence a diverse range of internal stakeholders (executive and non-executive)
• Ability to create a sense of community and agreed purpose across a large team
• Ability to display working understanding of financial industry and regulatory requirements including Charity Commission guidance; Charities Act; Trustee Act
• Ability to display a good understanding of corporate governance and risk management
• Computer literacy