Operations Manager in Leeds

We’re BDO, an accountancy and business advisory firm, providing the advice and solutions entrepreneurial organisations need to navigate today’s changing world. We work with ambitious, entrepreneurially-spirited and high growth businesses that fuel the economy, directly advising the owners and management teams that lead them.

You will be part of National Business Support and its leadership team, a vibrant and collaborative community of business support professionals that extends across every Hub, Stream, and Central Ops within the firm. Launched in October 2021, the NBS Stream is a dynamic team consisting of around 330 business support professionals.

Leading organisations trust us because of the quality of our advice, which grows from a thorough understanding of their business. This understanding comes from working closely with them and building long-lasting relationships.

You’ll be someone who is both comfortable working pro-actively and managing your own tasks, as well as confident collaborating with others and communicating regularly with senior managers, directors, and BDO’s partners to help businesses effectively. You’ll be encouraged to identify and draw attention to opportunities for enhancing our delivery and providing additional services to organisations we work with.

In this role you will lead the local Business Support team and office/facilities management across two offices (Manchester and Leeds), which will include creation of efficient processes and resource planning to achieve operational excellence. You will work closely with the Regional Lead Partners on both local and firm wide initiatives. In addition, you’ll be responsible for enabling the delivery of exceptional service to both internal and external clients.

You’ll also:

• People manage for the local business support team (who are part of National Business Support).
• Work with the local HR Manager to ensure effective and efficient delivery of key HR processes in line with the local team.
• Lead on local and national initiatives, driving communications and recognition across the local office.
• Work closely with all Partners to understand what support is required in their Streams and how the local Business Support team can contribute further and add value.
• Provide an exceptional client experience and support client initiatives both internally and externally, as well as being responsive and helping to create a positive impression at all touch points.
• Develop a collaborative culture and embed the National Business Support Career Development Framework.
• Provide leadership and direction to the Business Support Team, to ensure people are engaged, focused, and delivering to their potential.
• Develop, implement, and review operational support strategies and key processes to ensure operations are continually evolving to meet the demands of the business and the office.
• Align staff resources to business needs, ensuring staff are sufficiently cross trained to enable support to be provided during periods of annual leave/sickness across the offices.
• Provide support to national initiatives related to the support of fee earning staff.
• Review key processes, identify any weaknesses/gaps and implement improvements to support business delivery.
• Assist with local budget, forecast and expenditure.
• Liaise with local landlord and tenants, local facilities support, local safety and compliance support and local design and change support.
• Manage one-off projects as identified or as requested.
• Initiate and sustain process improvement activities.
• Ensure all regulatory and compliance related activities, such as facilities and health and safety, are sufficiently covered.
• Oversee distribution of departmental/stream documentation.
• Liaise with various third-party suppliers.

You’ll be someone with:

• Exceptional leadership and people management skills.
• Proven project management skills.
• Proven change management skills.
• Solid experience and proven competence of having worked at Operations Manager or equivalent level.
• Cost negotiation skills and commercial awareness.
• The capability to manage reasonably complex projects to a deadline without impacting on quality of day-to-day service.
• Skill to develop and lead teams with the ability to challenge and coach individuals.
• The ability to work independently.
• Diplomacy and discretion with the ability to handle highly sensitive matters.

At BDO, we’ll help you achieve your personal goals and career ambitions, and we have programmes, resources, and frameworks that provide clarity and structure around career development.

Mutual support and respect is one of BDO’s core values and we’re proud of our distinctive, people-centred culture. From informal success conversations to formal mentoring and coaching, we’ll support you at every stage in your career, whatever your personal and professional needs.

Our agile working framework helps us stay connected, bringing teams together where and when it counts so they can share ideas and help one another. At BDO, you’ll always have access to the people and resources you need to do your best work.

We know that collaboration is the key to creating value for the companies we work with and satisfying experiences for our colleagues, so we’ve invested in state-of-the-art collaboration spaces in our offices. BDO’s people represent a wealth of knowledge and expertise, and we’ll encourage you to build your network, work alongside others, and share your skills and experiences. With a range of multidisciplinary events and dedicated resources, you’ll never stop learning at BDO.

At BDO, we help entrepreneurial businesses to succeed, fuelling the UK economy. Our success is powered by our people, which is why we’re always finding new ways to invest in you. Across the UK, thousands of unique minds continue to come together to help companies we work with to achieve their ambitions.

We’ve got a clear purpose, and we’re confident in our future, because we’re adapting and evolving to build on our strengths, ensuring we continue to find the right combination of global reach, integrity and expertise. We shape the future together with openness and clarity, because we believe in empowering people to think creatively about how we can do things better.