Operations Manager

Our client, World's leading health and safety organization is looking to engage with an Associate Head - Shared Services. The role is responsible for providing strong, visible, and hands-on leadership across multiple operational and customer-facing teams, while ensuring consistent service delivery aligned to agreed service levels and business priorities.
Key Responsibilities:
Operational Leadership & Service Delivery:
Lead day-to-day Shared Services operations across customer service, operations, and other teams within the Shared Services portfolio, ensuring consistent, high quality delivery. Ensure SLA adherence through effective capacity planning, workload balancing, and proactive operational management.
Act as the primary escalation point for complex operational, customer, or stakeholder issues, ensuring timely resolution and appropriate senior engagement.
Step in hands-on during peak periods, transitions, or resourcing gaps to ensure service continuity and stability.
Own operational risk management and business continuity planning across the Shared Services function.
People Leadership & Culture:
Lead, coach, and develop managers and team leads, building leadership capability and accountability at all levels.
Drive a professional, inclusive, and performance-oriented culture, setting clear standards for behaviour, delivery, and ownership.
Support workforce planning, succession management, onboarding, and performance management in line with current and future scale.
Act as a visible role model for leadership presence, discipline, and professionalism across the floor.
Cross-Functional, Stakeholder & Executive Engagement:
Act as a senior operational interface and primary point of ownership for key internal stakeholders across Sales, Technical, Marketing, HR, Finance, and other relevant functions, ensuring alignment of priorities, expectations, and delivery outcomes.
Own and proactively manage stakeholder relationships, expectations, and escalations, addressing concerns and resolving conflicts through clear communication, data-led insight, and pragmatic problem-solving.
Partner effectively with Sales, Technical, Marketing, HR, and other relevant teams to deliver seamless, end-to-end services while balancing service delivery, capacity, and organisational priorities.
Prepare and present executive-ready operational updates, insights, risks, and recommendations to senior leaders and C-suite stakeholders, confidently influencing and challenging where required.
Governance, Controls & Quality:
Ensure operational processes are documented, compliant, and well governed in line with organisational standards.
Support quality assurance frameworks, risk management, and data integrity across Shared Services.
Promote a strong control environment with clear ownership, accountability, and audit readiness.
Integration & Change Management:
Work closely with the Head of Shared Services to support the smooth integration of additional services into Shared Services, as directed, ensuring operational readiness and stakeholder alignment.
Lead operational change initiatives, including standardisation, transition management, and post-transition stabilisation.
Drive continuous improvement initiatives to enhance service quality, efficiency, and scalability of operations.
Skills Required
Experience:
Mandatory 12–15 years of leadership experience within a Global Capability Centre (GCC) or equivalent multinational shared services environment, operating at Senior Manager, Associate Director, or Deputy Head level.
Demonstrated experience leading multi-layered organisations (managers of managers), with direct accountability for 30-50+ headcount and evidence of scaling teams and leadership layers.
Proven ownership of end-to-end shared services operations, spanning multiple service lines with accountability for outcomes rather than task execution.
Track record of driving operational excellence through SLA governance, capacity modelling, demand forecasting, and performance recovery in high-volume or timesensitive environments.
Demonstrable experience of leading through complexity and ambiguity, including periods of rapid growth, service integration, restructuring, or operational stress. Regular, credible engagement with C-suite and ExCo-level stakeholders, including preparation of executive reporting, operational risk briefings, and decision-support insights.
Strong people leadership capability, including: Managing managers and team leads o Handling underperformance at leadership level o Driving cultural standards, discipline, and professionalism at scale o Experience working across multiple geographies and time zones, with operational accountability for services delivered to the UK, Middle East, and India.
Desirable: Exposure to health & safety, training, or regulated environments. Experience with process transitions or service migration
Behaviour Competence: Behaviours detailed in the corporate behavioural framework, Team work, Communication, Creativity and change Enhancing performance, Leadership, Personal effectiveness.

Work arrangement
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