Head of Operations - Cardiff Airport

The Head of Airport Operations is a key senior operational management position within Swissport Western Europe reporting to the Regional Station General Manager, deputising for the Station General Manager and will be responsible for Swissport Operations at station level.

In this role you will be responsible for the day to day operational excellence of the station, and will be benchmarked against the Swissport Senior Leadership Competencies of Driving Transformation, Applying Commercial Acumen, Owning Business Opportunities, Coaching and Developing Others, Establishing Direction and Executing and getting Sustainable Results. You will hold full financial and operational responsibility for your station and ensure safe, profitable, high quality performance in accordance with customer expectations, corporate objectives, strategy and plans. You will be responsible for providing leadership and guidance to staff across a diverse (multi-site if applicable) workforce.

Responsibilities

• Safety Leader
  • To implement, oversee and monitor all safety and security measures and KPI’s related to people, equipment, facilities and aircraft involved in the operation, driving a positive safety culture.
  • To ensure that all people management practices, procedures and processes are implemented consistently across the station.
  • To drive the achievement of the highest health, safety and security standards across all aspects of service delivery.
• P&L Management
  • Own and deliver against P&L targets with full financial responsibility for the station, delivering financial targets as agreed and analyse financial and operational performance and forecast data to identify trends and to determine progress toward targets.
  • Proactively identify and capture improvement potential where possible, and carefully manage all overtime being allocated on a daily basis.
• Leadership and Stakeholder Management
  • To lead, guide, evaluate, and develop a team with operational responsibilities to ensure that the organisation achieves its business objectives and complies with all relevant legislation and regulations.
  • To develop and maintain effective business relationships with all key stakeholders (customer airlines’ management, airport management, customs, various control authorities, immigration etc) to meet business targets.
  • Deliver and support people engagement. Ensure recognition and performance management is intrinsic at all levels.
• Quality Focus, Service Delivery and Operational Efficiency
  • To monitor and track quality standards of the ground handling operation and ensure continuous improvements in workflows and services to maintain competences.
  • To manage/co-ordinate operations all leadership teams to ensure required resources are available in order to deliver consistently high standards.
  • To ensure all corporate processes and KPI’s are implemented across the business unit in order to deliver quality services consistently.
  • To drive the achievement and continuous improvement of our customer and company safety and quality standards, ensuring that all working practices are fully compliant with these standards and that appropriate corrective actions are taken to ensure the requirements are consistently met or exceeded.
• Relationship Builder
  • Successfully build relationships and trust within the business, with particular emphasis on the Station Manager peer group and Business unit Heads, plus relevant central support functions (eg, Finance, HR and QHSE).
  • Manage external relationships, particularly with existing and prospective key customer stakeholders to drive high levels of operational performance.
  • Drive a customer centric culture through your teams, creating an environment that focuses on understanding our customers' needs and their changing business priorities to continually seek to create value and become a true partner of choice.

Qualifications

ESSENTIAL SKILLS

• You will have the ability to accept and embrace change as a constant and unpredictable feature of your working environment.
• Can communicate clearly with customers and your people to help them understand Swissport United Kingdom & Ireland direction.
• Be able to build positive and trusting relationships.
• Be open to different opinions and seek a collaborative approach.
• Embrace an ideas culture to enable teams to create an agile edge.
• Promote flexibility, adaptability and agility in order to enable contingency time.
• Demonstrate a sense of urgency and the desire to improve the delivery of services and a commitment to continuous improvement.
• Personal and professional integrity of the highest order.
• Excellent organisational abilities, attention to detail, able to prioritise workloads and work effectively to deadlines in a fast-paced complex environment.

Qualifications and Competencies

• Excellent working knowledge of business management principles and practices, financial concepts, and key drivers of profitability and operational performance delivery.
• Fluent spoken and written English.

Swissport and its employees have a strict duty under the Equality Act 2010, not to be discriminatory in their treatment of colleagues and customers, on the basis of age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, and sexual orientation.