Skanda Vale Hospice garden

Volunteer role description

  • Location: Two days a week – one day on-site and the equivalent of one day of remote availability for meetings and calls etc.
  • Time offering: Ideally, we would like you to commit to volunteering with us for a period of 12 months or longer.
  • This role is supported by: The Hospice Manager.
  • This role provides leadership to: The Operations Team.
  • Expenses: We cover volunteer expenses and personal articles required for the role, offer great food and refreshments on-site, and host fun team days.
What will this role involve day-to-day?
  • You are someone who has managed teams of people before and is looking for an opportunity to put a lifetime of skills to good use.
  • Like most roles at Skanda Vale Hospice, we invest an unusual amount of trust and responsibility in our volunteers. However, this role is structured in such a way to offer an absorbing challenge, without stress. You will be well supported.
  • You will use a mix of data, keen observation, strong personal relationships and intuition to maintain a clear overview, but must be able to move quickly and decisively when a detail needs your attention.
  • As a key member of the Operational Delivery Committee, you will have direct access to senior decision-makers, to ensure simple and efficient resolutions to issues, as they arise.

The Head of Operations will be a highly capable person who is able to bring strong strategic leadership to the day-to-day running of Skanda ValeHospice. You will be responsible for overseeing the development and delivery of the following:

Administrative services:
  • You will provide strategic leadership for the People Team, finance, clinical, reception and general administrative teams.
  • You will be responsible for overseeing the redesign of many of our administrative processes, as we rapidly transition from paper to cloud-based systems.
  • There’s an exciting creative challenge here to make big efficiency gains in the way we manage and use our data.
Support services
  • Good palliative care is all about the expression of care and love through the tiny details of everyday life.
  • You will provide oversight to help keep the work of our catering, laundry, transport and housekeeping teams in harmony with this ideal.
  • You will present the outcomes of the work of these departments to the OCD and the Board of Trustees and translate their feedback into action for members of your team.
  • You will identify new opportunities to help more people, through initiating upgrades to services, equipment and working processes.
Remote sites
  • You will oversee the provision of operational support for two shops, a café and a holiday accommodation business.
  • You will continually refine the way we express person-centred care through the work of these remote site teams.
  • You will ensure they are run efficiently to help maximise income and outreach for the hospice.
Maintenance
  • You will guide the work of the hospice buildings, equipment, plant and machinery management teams.
  • You will present requests for expenditure and investment in equipment and buildings, together with ongoing opportunities for more efficient working processes, to the ODC and Board of Trustees.
  • You will proactively look for opportunities to further the hospice mission through our investment in buildings and equipment.
Corporate Governance & Compliance
  • As a highly-regulated organisation, you will interpret and useappropriate legal guidelines as the benchmark for the safe operation ofour services.
  • You will provide up-to-date information on how our services operate within relevant legal frameworks in the form of formal reports to the Board of Trustees.
  • You will translate feedback from the Board of Trustees into plans of action for your team.

Specific tasks & responsibilities

Team Leadership
  • Provide leadership to the operations team to help deliver our overall Five Year Strategic Plan.
  • Lead the day-to-day activities of your team, ensuring that our mission and values are being expressed in the details of your team’s daily work.
  • Identify and report staffing needs and shortfalls to the Operational Delivery Committee.
  • Appoint people to roles within your team.
  • Supervise and conduct quarterly appraisals for senior members of your team.
  • Ensure that appropriate training is provided for everyone in your team.
  • Represent the Hospice to external organisations; develop partnerships where possible and seek opportunities to raise the profile of SkandaVale Hospice.
  • Become an expert at inspiring people to be a part of our mission.
Governance Leadership
  • Define and manage the implementation and reporting of appropriate Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for the operations team.
  • Review and monitor KPIs annually as part of our overall Annual Business Plan.
  • Make proposals to the Operational Delivery Committee and Board of Trustees for the development of the operations component of our five-year Strategic Plan and Annual Business Plan.
Compliance Leadership

You will understand our legal requirements as a charity, and manage a team to meet these obligations. Our governing documents include:

  • Skanda Vale Hospice Charity Governing Documents.
  • Charity Commission’s Codes of Practice.
  • Health Care Standards.
  • Health and Safety Policy and Procedures.
  • GDPR.
  • Confidentiality Policy and Procedures.
  • Skanda Vale Hospice Code of Conduct.
Organisational Leadership
  • Development of the necessary policies and procedures to ensure people are experiencing safe, effective and efficient care.
  • Identify your team’s monthly priorities and manage the operations team’s spending budget accordingly.
  • Conduct regular objective analysis of your team’s performance against our Key Performance Indicators.
  • Report your evidence and ideas to the Board of Trustees for development.
  • Ensure an excellent care experience, in a high-quality environment.
  • Ensure the workforce, patients and their families have access to the equipment, tools and activities required to experience a full and life-enhancing service.

Personal qualities & skills

We’re looking for the following experience, qualifications, skills and abilities:

Experience
  • Proven experience in motivating, empowering and developing people, particularly with volunteers.
  • Demonstrable experience in building partnerships and maintaining effective relationships.
  • Substantial experience in creating and establishing systems and processes to ensure organisational excellence.
  • Significant experience in change management to drive a culture of continuous improvement.
  • Proven experience operating at a senior level in a highly regulated public-facing organisation.
  • Proven experience in managing risk.
  • Experience in measuring outcomes and evaluating impact.
  • Experience in leading a number of operational projects at the same time.
Knowledge
  • A good understanding of how to manage Health & Safety at work, including how to manage ‘near misses’ and incidents.
  • A sound understanding of the business planning process and change-management tools.
  • A sound understanding of volunteering; its specific challenges, opportunities and potential to create social change in palliative care delivery.
  • A good understanding of how Charities can trade and the frameworks under which they work.
Skills & Abilities
  • The ability to work independently whilst recognising that they are part of a wider team.
  • Fully IT competent and able to work onsite or remotely.
  • A strong and effective communicator both in written and oral form.
  • Capable of communicating complex data to a wide audience effectively.
  • The ability to remain calm under pressure and to be able to make decisions and take action where necessary to reduce risk and/or maintain service delivery.
  • Sound negotiating skills, demonstrating tenacity and assertiveness when required to achieve the goals set out in the 5-year Plan and Annual Business Plan.
  • The ability to understand the Independent Health Care (Wales)regulations (2011), communicate them effectively and follow their guidance fully.
  • The ability to think critically, identify blockages in the system, design solutions and implement action to address problems successfully.
  • The ability to create risk management solutions, monitor outcomes and report incidents and concerns to the board promptly.
  • The ability to analyse data and to report at the Board level.
  • The ability to promote the roles on offer in the operations team, working in partnership with the Head of People and Head of Communications to attract the right people.
  • A compassionate and empathetic leadership style that empowers others to deliver truly person-centred care.
Attitude
  • A can-do attitude, able to motivate people and find solutions when challenges present themselves.
  • Empathy with the spiritual aims of Skanda Vale and the desire to embrace the culture of care at Skanda Vale Hospice.
  • A friendly, warm nature that produces a culture of togetherness whilst having the ambition to achieve the goals required to meet the overall vision for the Charity.

This Role Description is not exhaustive. It is an outline of the key expectations and will be reviewed periodically with amendments made following consultation with the role holder(s).

Confidentiality – Please be aware of the confidential nature of our organisation. Information about patients and their carers, friends and relatives must not be disclosed to any unauthorised persons. This essential duty of confidentiality also extends to the use of social media.

Apply now