Nursery Job Descriptions
      Back to home
      1. Hatching Dragons Knowledge Base
      2. HR & Staffing
      3. Nursery Job Descriptions

      Job Description: Area Manager / Ops Director

      In this article we're going to review who the Area Manager is, what they're responsible for and how they oversee to help them do it...

      Key Information:

      • Post Title: Area Manager / Operations Director
      • Reports to: CEO
      • Works with: Central Business Administration
      • Line Manages: Nursery Managers / Principals

      Purpose of role: 


      To oversee the nurseries in the businesses portfolio and ensure that the school principal / Nursery Directors are adhering to:
        • the Company’s policies and procedures
        • The business' educational mission and ethos
        • The management culture and protocols established to build accountability and excellence in what we say / do; and
        • to provide contingency buffer for management should / if staff attrition occurs

           

      Ultimately this role is about monitoring, guiding, training and inspecting the managers ability to deliver on their brief - it is not a role in which you should be directly involved in day to day operations, rather that you're attending to hold managers, and the teams they oversee, to account for the actions and expectations set in regular monitoring visits, spending your time reviewing policies relevant to the school, securing feedback from customers and teachers as to their efficacy in delivering values, and instituting improvements and (re)raining programmes where necessary to optimise our education and customer / teacher experience at Hatching Dragons

      Who You Are

      • School Policy & Operational Lead You will know our operating procedures completely, and help managers develop knowledge of our systems and procedural approach to ensure that we have effectively handover to people who are capable of delivering, and then hold them accountable for it
      • Brand - To be the ambassador for and principal agent in ensuring the brand identity of the business - from customer service, facilities & infrastructure, communications, education and welfare is felt in all steps of our customers’ experience, as per our brand guidelines and policy framework, ensuring our schools look / feel and operate in the way our brand expects. With regards to social media, this will include a weekly Friday review of all scheduled content to replace any default imagery / photos with curated content that you and the school managers are generating each week in your day to day.
      • HR & Staffing - Overseeing all deployment and recruitment between the schools, ensuring our staffing model is maintained, forecasting is delivered and recruitment is proactive. Ultimately, you will need to monitor and oversee the nursery managers in delivering all aspects of HR & Staffing administration and policy / procedure through regular assessments of policy and outputs on BambooHR and ensure that, in terms of performance management, we have the right teams and talent in place to deliver on what we say we do to parents
      • Induction & Training: To develop and deliver training for all management level personnel (including room leaders) on all aspects of our management systems, procedural approach and expectations set out within their job descriptions to ensure that we have the right people in our organisational mix who are capable of doing the job. This will require the maintenance and upgrading of policy schedules on the Drive, Hubspot Knowledge base and BambooHR for the dissemination of updated training guidance for your teams to learn and execute in their day to day
      • Performance Management - to hold accountable the nursery managers and staff that work within the schools for the roles they hold and to offer promotions and recognise recommendations from managers for those who have (demonstrably / objectively) excelled in assessments and to exit those who do not fit our culture / expectations in favour of those who do (proactively recruiting to ensure that we have sufficient buffer of personnel on an ongoing basis)
      • Quality Assurance - To undertake monthly school inspections to provide evaluation reports on progress, actions for managers to take into effect and to liaise with and work between quality assurance consultants and managers to ensure key actions are achieved within a set timeframe, using task management systems on Slack (lists) as the means to monitor and track these actions through to completion each month. Ultimately responsible for ensuring schools deliver Good to Outstanding gradings upon inspection
      • Budget Oversight - Ensuring that the school managers are delivering on our expected financial model, including cost of sales (teachers, learning materials) as a % of revenue and their annualised capex budgets for school maintenance and facilities upgrades are deployed in line with budget. 
      • Sales & Enquiries - Ensuring nursery managers / management teams execute sales and conversions in line with targets (50%<) and to undertake work programmes to improve results and revenue generating activities on an ongoing basis (training managers on show arounds, improving the internal environment)
      • Policy Adherence: Working with managers to assess their schools adherence to policy in all areas, as defined and set by the board of directors, including pedagogy / language tracking and all welfare reporting. Maintaining policy evaluation matrixes for each school and the staff within it to present to board / CEO on termly basis.
      • Customer Relations - To ensure the customer service team delivers on our SLAs for customer response / satisfaction as to how we have managed their issue and to periodically (termly) review feedback assessments on both school delivery to create actions for schools / administrative teams to improve - objective is to secure 85%< positive approvals from parents / clients and staff from internal assessments (Hubspot) 
      • Personal Feedback: Receiving 80% positive feedback from customers & staff on service / attitude and responsiveness during anonymised feedback surveys. Monthly reviews from anonymised feedback surveys
      • Stakeholder Relationships: To be the public face of the schools and school business in PR opportunities and events

      Required Qualifications & Certificates

      • Essential: Relevant childcare qualification to level 3 or above; Up to date paediatric first aid; safeguarding training (Level 3); Food Hygiene; SEND
      • Preferred: Certified Trainer Credentials to take forward internal training requirements; HR & Management certificates in leadership and personnel development; business administration and management certificates 

      Required Skills

      • People skills - this is a people management role. You need to be able to deliver clear, concise and constructive communications / instructions to your delegates and empower them with the time and space to deliver on the requirements of their brief. 
      • Organisational discipline and diligence - this role is about staying on top of who needs to do what, when, how, learning to communicate proactively with them to ensure they're clear and then following up on the output at structured intervals to ensure that they're measured objectively and effectively about what they've achieved with the time and space afforded them
      • Financial and budget management capability 
      • Educational knowledge and expertise
      • Desired - Chinese
      • Indesign graphic design knowledge beneficial

      Experience

      • At least 3 years experience working and managing UK childcare settings as a nursery manager

      • Strong track record in (EYFS) high quality early years provision for Ofsted Good rating and above

      • Managerial experience in nursery industry in settings of over 40 places (children) aged 6 months to 5

      • Training experience required

      • Conflict resolution experience - being able to deliver a tough message in a fair way

      Person Speification

      • Adaptable, energetic and solutions oriented / problem solver

      • Process driven to be in line with reporting lines and corporate compliance

      • High emotional intelligence and empathetic

      • Commercial awareness / business development 

      • Excellent written and verbal skills in English and Chinese

      • Motivated to work and progress 

      • Committed to personal development - we want examples of people who have invested in themselves in their spare time to further their career

      • Business savvy and interested in understanding how the businesses work - we want our people to be able to run their own nurseries in time

      • Managerial - we are looking for people who want to become managers, inspire others and become leaders

      Safeguarding

      Hatching Dragons is committed to employing the most rigorous vetting procedures to ensure that its staff are the most qualified to care for its children. For full guidance, see our application form online. Please see our safeguarding policy for more information