General Manager - London

General Manager - Atherton Leisure Centre

Job Title: General Manager

Hours: 40 hours per week on a rota of night working

Contract Type: Permanent

Salary: Competitive

Direct Reports: Heads of Departments

Purpose of the Role:

As a General Manager with activeNewham you will be looking after a complex business with a 2m turnover per annum.  Working with your team, volunteers and stakeholders in the community your relationships will be key to successfully driving your business forward.  You will be responsible for the strategic plan to deliver our vision of getting Newham active.  People are at the heart of this role.  Working with your team to develop three key areas: commercial development, community engagement and client management.  You’ll need to manage a diverse group of people across a wide portfolio of services.  Generating a surplus is key to future investment at your site.

As a General Manager you’ll need to be able to articulate your vision for your business across your team, volunteers, community stakeholders and our client.  Your ability to relate to people with great ease, through your teams will be the most crucial part of your role. 

 You will be a senior leader within the contract, you will be a leader of change, taking the whole team in the right direction with our strategic aims.  You’ll be commercially aware and able to understand what opportunities there are within your business, and how to maximize these to support on-going business development.

You’ll need to be credible in your leadership role. We want to see where you can demonstrate working in a similarly complex and diverse organization.  Your need to being the following skills:

• Leadership of diverse and multi-disciplined teams and volunteers.
• Stakeholder management skills and ability to network as an ambassador for the Trust
• Strong affinity to our vision and values, especially around ensuring everyone has the chance to be active in Newham.
• The ability to motivate and inspire your team to want to achieve ours and your ambitions.
• Commercial awareness and the ability to recognise commercial opportunities.
• Experience of managing project and working with business development teams to deliver complex projects.
• Experience with, or understanding managing client relationships.

Main tasks and responsibilities:

Financial and Performance Accountability – strong commercial skills with good financial acumen

• Responsible for the delivery of activeNewham’s vision and strategy and the overall process of management and corporate decision making to ensure the centre maximises its short, medium and long term profitability
• Delivery of the overall provision of services, policies and programmes to ensure the centre achieves its targets, objectives and potential
• Development, implementation, reviewing and reporting on the Centre’s Annual Development Plan and ensuring it is properly understood by the centre’s management team and employees and wider stakeholders
• Accountable for achieving the centre’s annual financial targets 
• Accountable for ensuring the centre operating objectives and standards of performance are owned by management team and employees
• Responsible for implementing, maintaining and managing a highly effective system of controls throughout the centre covering both financial and non-financialaspects of the business
• Management, compliance, monitoring, reporting and communication of financial and physical resources and all administrative functions

Partnership Working

• To develop, maintain and promote partnership working and represent activeNewham at meetings with relevant external stakeholders as required.

People Management - provide leadership to staff to enable those people to perform to the best of their ability

• Leading and inspiring an engaged team to ensure the centre is properly resourced so that it is able to effectively and efficiently deliver overall business objectives, the development plan and contractual terms and conditions
• Ensure that appropriate standards of conduct are established and complied with at all times in order to deliver high quality services and standards within the centre
• Lead and develop an effective, cohesive centre management team to deliver on their individual and centre objectives
• In conjunction with the HR team, implement effective recruitment, people management, development, retention and succession planning strategies for the centre

Operational Standards -

• Ensure the centre fully complies with all relevant legislation and best practice
• Ensure Customer and Client Relationship Management processes and procedures are fully implemented in the centre

Qualifications, experience, knowledge, skills and behaviours:

• Significant management experience in the leisure, hospitality or similar sectors
• Clear understanding of all aspects of financial planning and proven track record of achievement of financial targets
• Demonstrable experience of consistently and successfully managing sales and service performance for achievement of KPIs
• Experience of recruiting, developing and performance managing staff
• Effective leadership skills, including the ability to inspire, develop and performance manage the team
• Role models consistently high standards and exceptional customer service, inspiring and demanding the same of the team
• Problem solving and analytical skills
• A solutions-focused team player with a “can-do” attitude
• First Aid at Work qualification or commitment to achieving within 3 months of start date
• CIMSPA Health and safety qualification or commitment to achieving within 3 months of start date and knowledge of health and safety and employment legislation and best practice
• CIMSPA General Management Qualification (GMQ) (LEVEL 5) (Would be desirable)
• Pool Plant Operator qualification or commitment to achieving within 3 months of start date
• Excellent IT skills, including Microsoft Office and preferably MRM
• Active affiliation with appropriate networks and organisations, ongoing community involvement
• Ownership of own development and m

The job description is intended to include the broad range of responsibilities and requirements of the post. It is neither exhaustive nor exclusive and while some variations will be expected, these will be at an appropriate level for the role.

Safeguarding Statement

activeNewham is committed to safeguarding and protecting the children and young people that we work with.

As such, all posts are subject to a safer recruitment process including the disclosure of criminal records and vetting checks.

We ensure that we have a range of policies and procedures in place which promotes safeguarding and safer working practices across our services.