Assistant Manager - Onsite Services

Description

Contract:  Permanent, full time 37.5 hours per week Salary £26,042 - 30,281 per annum Location: Burford, OX18 4PF Closing date: Monday 16th November 2026 Interview date: W/C 23rd November 2026  We’re recruiting an Assistant Manager - Onsite Services to join our Burford rehoming centre, to ensure that the right pet is placed in the right service for both the client and the pet.

More about the role At Blue Cross we are ambitious, and the work carried out by our Centre's is key in achieving our strategy and ensuring that ultimately, we help more pets. This is a wonderful opportunity to join Blue Cross to lead a team in ensuring a high level of client care, efficient and connected decisions relating to pet welfare, and the delivery of high-quality rehoming services. On a day-to-day basis you’ll be leading your team and ensuring the smooth running of the refill and adoption stages of our rehoming services. You’ll work closely with operational colleagues to ensure we have a pipeline of new pets and pool of adopters ready for a pet. The refill and adoption stages of our rehoming services is critical, so this role will see you working closely with your team and colleagues with a strong focus on finding the right homes for pets as efficiently as possible and refilling to optimise caseloads for our Pet Welfare Assistants.  While delivering robust rehoming services are important to us, so is the client experience and it will be up to you to ensure that we monitor and continually look for ways to uphold and improve our client journey. For many, the Centre will be the ‘public face’ of Blue Cross so you will need to ensure that your team put client service is at the heart of every interaction, this includes making sure public areas and facilities are welcoming and engaging and that administration of the admission and adoption process complies with internal processes and compliance legislation such as GDPR. This is a full-time role working 37.5 hours per week on a rota which includes weekends and bank holidays. At Burford rehoming centre, we provide onsite accommodation for pets in our care 24/7.  Overnight shifts are usually undertaken by team members who live on site. Occasionally, you will be expected to carry out night checks or stay in on site accommodation overnight when the resident team members are either not working or away for a period of time. These duties are organised on a local rota and shared between all members of the team.

About you

You will be an excellent manager of people, having skills which are finely honed by working in a similar, animal related environment with expert knowledge and application of pet welfare and care.  As an accomplished, positive, and innovative manager, you will know how to inspire, motivate, and drive continuous improvement. You will be able to lead a team of Pet Welfare Assistants, developing and empowering them through effective management and coaching.  With excellent communication skills, you will have the ability to adapt your approach to suit different audiences. As there are always many ‘plates spinning’ you will be naturally calm and organised, and be prepared to make decisions in a high-pressure environment.  You will have strong analytical skills and the ability to rigorously monitor, assess, and evaluate in order to deliver improvements. You will have an appetite to continually improve onsite facilities and services, ensuring your team and others involved are engaged.  You will know what it is like to work in an emotionally charged environment and have excellent ‘bounce back ability’ and resilience. In addition, you will be emotionally intelligent, showing empathy and knowing how to support your team and members of the public. Knowledge, skills, and experience

Experience of working in a rescue welfare environment.

Significant experience of managing a team.

Significant experience in delivering high level client service in a fast-paced environment.

Experience of developing, mentoring, and coaching operational teams.

High standard of verbal and written communication.

Proven decision-making ability.

Understanding of and ‘hands on’ experience of pet care.

Current full driving licence.

Ability to demonstrate, understand and apply our Blue Cross Values.

It would be great (but not essential) if you also had:

Client relationship management experience.

Performance management and improvement experience.

Change management experience.

Delivering training and presenting to large groups.

Experience working with volunteers.

Qualifications in management, leadership, or coaching

Understanding of safeguarding issues.

Want to know more detail? Great! We have attached the job description which hopefully gives you everything you need.

Using AI in your application We’re happy for you to use AI tools to help you prepare your application, for example to organise your thoughts, improve clarity or check spelling and grammar. However, your application must be an honest reflection of your own skills, experience and achievements, and AI should not be used to write your application for you or create examples that aren’t your own.

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