Operations & Service Delivery Manager in Penrith

In a growing employee benefits business, the Operations & Service Delivery Manager plays a pivotal role in building a stable, scalable, and client‑centric operation. This is a highly hands‑on role with a strong emphasis on people management, problem resolution, and continuous process improvement. You will lead a small but busy team to resolve complex operational issues, strengthen processes, and foster a culture where accuracy, accountability, and exceptional service are the norm. You will also play a key role in the implementation of a new system that will be used internally and externally by clients. This role requires office attendance on Tuesdays and Wednesdays to support a balance of flexibility and collaboration.

KEY DUTIES

• People Leadership & Team Culture
  • Act as the senior escalation point for operational and service delivery issues, ensuring timely, calm, and effective resolution.
  • Conduct regular 1:1s and performance check‑ins, ensuring each team member has clear goals, development priorities, and support to succeed.
  • Manage team workload planning and resource allocation, ensuring balanced workloads, resilience, and effective prioritisation.
  • Recognise and reward strong performance, celebrating success and reinforcing positive behaviours.
  • Support employee wellbeing, spotting early signs of burnout or disengagement and taking appropriate action.
  • Lead root cause analysis for recurring problems and implement long term fixes rather than short term patches.
  • Work closely with insurers, brokers, and partners to resolve complex benefit related queries.
  • Improve communication loops so issues are spotted earlier and resolved faster.
• Process Improvement & Operational Maturity
  • Map, document, and refine core processes across benefits administration, onboarding, renewals, and customer support.
  • Identify bottlenecks, inefficiencies, and error prone steps, and redesign workflows to improve accuracy and speed.
  • Introduce simple, scalable processes suitable for a small but growing business.
  • Implement quality checks, audit trails, and clear handoff points to reduce rework and client escalations.
  • Champion a continuous improvement mindset across the team.
• Service Delivery & Client Experience
  • Ensure clients receive a consistent, reliable, and friendly service across all benefit programmes.
  • Oversee onboarding of new clients, ensuring smooth transitions and clear communication.
  • Monitor service performance, SLAs, and client feedback to identify improvement opportunities.
  • Support client facing teams with operational insight and problem solving.
• Operational Oversight, Compliance & Risk Management
  • Ensure compliance with relevant regulations including Anti-Money Laundering (AML) legislation.
  • Maintain accurate records, audit readiness, and strong data integrity.
  • Support operational planning for peak periods such as renewals and legislative changes.
  • Design and deliver a robust operational risk framework.
  • Provide regular reporting and insight to senior leadership.

About You

Skills, Knowledge & Experience

• Essential
  • Strong people leadership experience, ideally in a small or growing business.
  • Proven ability to resolve complex operational issues and lead root‑cause analysis.
  • Experience improving processes and building operational structure from the ground up.
  • Excellent communication skills and the ability to bring clarity to ambiguous situations.
• Desirable
  • Hands‑on operational experience in employee benefits, insurance, pensions, or financial services.
  • Experience of system implementation project delivery.
  • Highly numerate with proven experience of data analysis.

Personal Attributes

• Calm, steady, and solutions focused — especially when issues arise.
• A natural coach who enjoys developing people and building confidence.
• Pragmatic and hands on, willing to roll up your sleeves when needed.
• Detail oriented with a strong sense of ownership and follow through.
• Passionate about improving processes and creating a better experience for clients and colleagues.
• Comfortable leading teams through change and helping others adapt.

Behaviours

• Customer Empathy – We anticipate and address customer challenges to foster connection and meaningful experiences with them.
• Accountability – We keep our word and deliver the results we promise, holding others to account to do the same. We actively manage potential consequences and take ownership to address them.
• Continuous Improvement – We are deeply curious to understand how things work for our customers, industry and organisation. We challenge the status quo and look to enhance and evolve everything we do.
• Agility – We respond and adapt swiftly to changing circumstances.
• Commerciality – We make informed decisions that enable profitable and/or sustainable growth.
• Care – We create an environment where people feel valued and heard, providing a sense of belonging.

Additional Information

All candidates must be able to demonstrate a pre-existing right to work and travel within the UK. Documentary evidence will be required.