Quality Assurance Operations Lead

Reporting to: Lara Harkins, Head of Outsource Partnerships and Oversight

This role in 3 words: Business Partnering, Operational Excellence, Change Management

Where you’ll work: At OVO, we understand that a one size fits all approach doesn’t work for everyone. That’s why we created the OVO Way of Flexibility. All our roles are hub based (Bristol, Glasgow or London), providing a dedicated space for collaboration, connection and teamwork. You’ll also have the flexibility to work from home.

Everyone belongs at OVO. At OVO, we are on a mission to solve one of humanity's biggest challenges, the climate crisis. And we know it takes all of us to change the world. That’s why we need diverse people from all abilities, gender identities, ethnicities, ages, sexual orientations, life experiences and backgrounds to join us.

The Quality Assurance team exists at OVO to help provide a great understanding of how we show up for the customer, improve our conversation and stitch together the end to end experience. We are on a huge transformation journey, leveraging new processes & technology whilst also changing the way we create insight and provide assurance to the business.

This role will lead Operational 1st and 2nd line teams across the UK and India acting as a central point for all things Quality across the operation.

This role in a nutshell:

• As Quality Assurance Operations Lead you will work closely alongside our operation to shape and build our centralised Quality Assurance function.
• Building robust 1st line processes and capability.
• Develop, lead and manage our 2nd line assurance function.
• Develop meaningful insight from disparate data sets to identify themes, emerging risks and opportunities.
• Track and measure impacts of improvement initiatives and business change.
• Leverage tech solutions to streamline for improved efficiency and insight.
• Own the thought leadership behind the quality framework, scorecards and ensure they are fit for purpose.

You will partner the operation across our Customer Care, Customer Operations, Customer Resolutions (Complaints), Commercial and Metering/Fulfilment functions, working to improve customer outcomes and improve employee experience by ensuring a fair, robust and timely closed loop feedback process. You will also build strong relationships with our Coaching function ensuring that feedback is used to drive continuous improvement.

World-class stakeholder engagement is a must, and this role will demand brilliant brokering skills. You’ll be a person with a natural growth mindset and have a keen eye on delivering significant value through process improvement, innovation, automation, cost reduction and delivering brilliant outcomes for our customers.

You will be a great people leader able to unite teams behind a vision and purpose and develop highly engaged teams who are laser focused on how they contribute to OVO’s mission. You will be highly organised ensuring that there are robust change management mechanisms in place to ensure that quality checks and audits are relevant, consistent and meaningful at all times.

Internally you’ll work with colleagues at all levels with most of your time spent with the Operational Head of Departments & Directors, alongside Risk & Compliance and Customer Experience. This role suits someone who is expert at building trust with business owners and senior leadership teams across functional areas.

You will have a team of c.40 on-salary people with a further c.150 via outsourced partnership, based in India. You will have strong experience of managing offshore teams and working with outsourced partners.

Your key outcomes will be:

• Assure quality across our operation.
• You will manage an outsourced 1st line quality assurance team based out of India working to support c. 5k FTE across multiple geographies and types of work.
• You will also directly manage an in house second line quality assurance team of c. 40 people.
• Work closely with our coaching, training and operations teams to provide useful and actionable feedback/insight helping drive positive outcomes for our customers.
• Own the quality and performance contractual measure across all of our outsourced partners embedding this MSAs & SLAs and governance forums.
• Ultimately accountable for our QA methodology, standardising where appropriate to increase audit volume and coverage across the operation.
• Work alongside our 3rd line risk teams to surface and mitigate risk through QA insight.
• Develop and lead a highly engaged, efficient team.
• Create a learning environment developing expertise within our people.
• Review and refine the operating model to deliver optimally.
• Leverage technology to drive efficiencies - work closely with Product and Tech to leverage AI and automated quality management systems and tooling.
• Provide actionable insight and surface risks.
• Lead deep dive, thematic analysis of emerging trends honing in on root causes.
• Support the operation to determine and develop effective business controls.
• Provide end to end lifecycle checks and assurance for high risk areas e.g. pre-warrant, complaint processes.
• Work with CX and MI teams to develop insight from customer and operational data.
• Work with Forecasting and Planning and Ops teams to identify failure demand e.g. repeat contact and measure effectiveness of action plans.

You’ll be a successful Quality Assurance Operations Lead here at OVO if you…

• Are passionate about working in a dynamic environment, responding to different demands each day and if you are a change agent; constantly looking to find a better way.
• A positive mindset and a win/win attitude is a must.
• Experience of managing teams via an outsourced partnership.
• Exceptional people leadership skills.
• Skills as a great communicator, a natural collaborator and robust quality management experience.
• Can make the complex simple seeing patterns in disparate sets of data.
• Experience of stakeholder management at executive leadership level.
• Experience in monitoring & improving Quality & Performance Metrics and setting up contractual KPIs.
• A people-oriented mindset and energised by a fast-paced environment.
• Experience with CCaaS platforms, quality management systems and automated speech/quality systems.

Let’s talk about what’s in it for you:

We’ll pay you between £56,870 - £75,000, depending on your specific skills and experience. If your expectations are a little different, have a chat with us! We keep our pay ranges broad on purpose to give us, and you, flexibility to match your experience to our zero carbon mission. You’ll be eligible for an on-target bonus of 15%. We have one OVO bonus plan that focuses on the collective performance of our people to deliver our Plan Zero goal.

We also offer plenty of green benefits and progressive policies to help you feel like you belong at OVO…and there’s flex pay. It’s an extra 9% of your salary on top of your core pay to use as you like. You can take it as cash, add to your pension, or choose to spend it on a huge range of flex benefits.

For your health: With benefits like a healthcare cash plan or private medical insurance depending on your career level, critical illness cover, life assurance, health assessments, and more.

For your wellbeing: With gym membership, gadget, travel and cyber insurance, workplace ISA, will writing services, DNA testing, dental insurance, and more.

For your lifestyle: With extra holiday buying, discount dining, culture cards, tech loans, and supporting your favourite charities with give-as-you-earn donations.

For your home: Get up to £300 off any OVO Energy plan (when you pay by Direct Debit), plus personal carbon offsetting and great discounts on smart thermostats and EV chargers.

For your commute: Nab a great deal on ultra-low emission car leasing, plus our cycle to work scheme and public transport season ticket loans.

For your Belonging: To find better ways to support our people, we need to listen to each other’s experiences and find ways to build a truly inclusive and diverse workplace. As part of this, we have 8 Belonging Networks at OVO. Led by our people, for our people - so when you join OVO, you can play a part - big or small - with any of the Networks. It's up to you.

Oh, and one last thing... We’d be thrilled if you tick off all our boxes yet we also believe it’s just as important we tick off all of yours. And if you think you have most of what we’re looking for but not every single thing, go ahead and hit apply. We’d still love to hear from you! If you have any additional requirements, there’s a space to let us know on the application form; we want to make the process as easy and comfortable for you as possible.