Soft Services Manager - Rushden Lakes

A leading service provider is looking to appoint a Soft Services Manager at

Rushden Lakes , working in partnership with one of the UK’s largest property management businesses.

This is a highly visible, customer-facing leadership role where attitude, operational standards and people management are just as important as traditional facilities-management experience.

We are particularly keen to speak with strong operational leaders from retail, as well as experienced Soft Services / Facilities professionals.

Rushden Lakes is a major retail and leisure destination with around 80 stores, significant visitor numbers and a strong mix of retail, leisure and food & beverage operators.

The successful person will take ownership of the onsite cleaning and security operation, lead a sizeable frontline team and work closely with the wider management team to maintain exceptionally high standards across the destination.

The role will include

• Leading the onsite cleaning and security teams through dedicated supervisors.
• Driving standards, performance, engagement and retention across the operation.
• Acting as a highly visible presence across Rushden Lakes.
• Building strong relationships with retailers, leisure operators and other onsite businesses.
• Managing SLAs, KPIs, audits, reporting and continuous improvement.
• Taking ownership of health & safety, risk assessments and safe systems of work.
• Managing staffing levels, rotas, training and team performance.
• Supporting incident management and wider operational requirements.
• Working closely with the onsite property-management and service-provider teams.
• Supporting Duty Management on a rotational basis, including approximately one weekend in four.
• Who we’re looking for

We are deliberately taking a broad approach to background.

You could already be working as a Soft Services Manager, Contract Manager, Facilities Manager or Operations Manager, but we are equally interested in speaking with experienced Store Managers, Deputy Store Managers, Retail Operations Managers or similar leaders from large-format retail environments.

For candidates coming from retail, we are particularly interested in those who have had exposure to areas such as:

• Managing outsourced cleaning or security teams.
• Facilities and contractor management.
• Health & safety and compliance.
• Loss prevention / security.
• Large-team rotas and workforce management.
• Operational audits and store standards.
• Incident management.
• Customer complaints and service recovery.

The biggest priority is finding someone who is visible, positive, organised and comfortable taking ownership.

You will need to be confident managing sizeable frontline teams, working with demanding stakeholders and maintaining high standards in a busy customer-facing environment.

The successful person will be expected to know what is happening across the site, engage with frontline teams and businesses, identify issues early and bring solutions rather than waiting to be asked.

40 hours per week, five days out of seven, including approximately one weekend in four.

For more information or a confidential discussion, please apply or contact