Operations Manager (International Trade Operations)

Job summary

Can you lead large operational teams, drive performance and deliver high-quality services in a complex and fast-paced environment?
Are you passionate about developing high-performing teams, managing change and delivering excellent outcomes for customers and stakeholders?

If so, we would love to hear from you!

APHA is a brilliant place to work where our people feel valued, have a voice and can be their authentic selves. We value difference and diversity, because it helps us be more innovative and make better decisions.

We are dedicated to being an inclusive employer, offering equitable opportunities for all individuals. Our goal is to build a diverse workforce, and we hope to attract applications from all backgrounds and underrepresented groups.

Job description

As Operations Manager, you will lead the operational delivery of EU Transition requirements, providing strategic leadership and effective change management for a large, geographically dispersed workforce of over 100 colleagues. Ensure teams are prepared for and able to adapt to significant policy, process, and operational changes, maintaining service delivery through periods of uncertainty, responding at pace to evolving priorities and high-profile policy decisions, and supporting colleagues through change with clear communication, resilience, and strong people leadership.

You will be accountable for effective resource planning, performance management, and the deployment of people and resources to meet organisational objectives and customer needs. Working collaboratively across the Agency and with Operational Delivery networks, you will drive continuous improvement, share best practice, and contribute to the development of consistent, nationally aligned approaches that reflect policy requirements. You will play a key role in building strong, high-performing teams, fostering effective stakeholder relationships, and ensuring the service remains resilient and responsive in the face of business continuity challenges or disease outbreak incidents. Through strong leadership and a focus on customer outcomes, you will ensure teams consistently deliver against performance targets while supporting the Agency’s wider strategic goals.

Key Duties

• Drive the development and delivery of business area strategy, ensuring operational teams deliver high quality services, providing clear direction, communicating priorities, and ensuring teams are supported, have understanding, and aligned with organisational objectives and change initiatives, communicating impacts, in line with policy standards and performance targets, contributing to wider agency
• Lead operational teams with visible, proactive leadership, ensuring strong connections between team and senior management, and embedding a positive, high performance, unified team culture across all areas

• Demonstrate a comprehensive understanding of HR policies and procedures, ensuring their consistent and effective application across the team and supporting complex people management matters

• Build leadership resilience and capability by maintaining succession plans, developing and coaching staff, and applying strategic forecasting and modelling to anticipate and meet future resource requirements, while effectively managing performance, attendance, and holding meaningful performance improvement conversations

• Oversee workforce planning, and resource management to ensure business resilience, mange onboarding, skills maintenance, professional development, and training coordination, monitor work outputs through routine management checks to maintain consistent processes, and oversee the production and quality assurance of management information to ensure accurate reporting; and ensure business continuity and outbreak response plans are in place, maintained, and understood by all staff

• Lead the production and use of management information and data analysis to monitor performance, support planning, and inform decision making, ensuring internal procedures and guidelines are consistently follow, reviewed and updated to enable effective delivery while driving continuous improvement initiatives to enhance service quality and operational efficiency

• Build strong, productive relationships with delivery partners, policy colleagues, industry stakeholders, and internal team, horizon scanning and identifying risks, issues and trends and propose or escalate solutions; manage customer and stakeholder expectations, including handling difficult conversations, and ensure clear, timely and effective communication with all partners, particularly during organisational change or incident response

• Identify opportunities to improve working practices using data, lessons learned, stakeholder and organisation feedback, and lead discussions to develop evidence-based proposal that support agency wide consistency

• Demonstrate leadership in promoting safe working practices and wellbeing, ensuring team members understand and fulfil their health and safety responsibilities, and undertaking essential training while acting as a role model for high standards

• Undertake additional duties as required to meet operational priorities, including reasonable task assigned by line management supporting critical functions such as disease outbreak responses

Person specification

You will be able to demonstrate:

• Strong knowledge of international trade operations, including import and export processes, regulatory requirements and policy impacts, with the ability to translate complex requirements into effective operational delivery and compliance

• Significant experience leading large operational teams, with a strong track record of motivating, developing and engaging managers and colleagues to achieve high performance and excellent customer outcomes

• Proven experience leading teams through organisational change, successfully implementing new policies, processes or operating models while maintaining service delivery and employee engagement

• Strong strategic leadership skills, with the ability to translate organisational objectives into clear operational plans and deliver measurable results

• Experience of workforce planning, resource management and business resilience, including deploying resources effectively to respond to changing demand and operational priorities

• Excellent stakeholder management and influencing skills, with the ability to build effective relationships and collaborate across organisational boundaries to achieve shared goals

• Experience leading customer-facing operational services, with an understanding of delivering high-quality services in a complex, high-profile and politically sensitive environment

Behaviours

We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:

• Leadership
• Seeing the Big Picture
• Communicating and Influencing
• Making Effective Decisions

We only ask for evidence of these behaviours on your application form:

• Leadership

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £42,665, Animal and Plant Health Agency contributes £12,360 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides (opens in a new window).

Learning and Development

At APHA, we are committed to supporting you to