Area Manager (East Midlands)

Job Description

The RSPB works to protect habitats, save species, and help to end the nature and climate emergency. We have an exciting opportunity for a self-motivated and passionate individual to join our team as Area Manager for the RSPB’s East Midlands Area.

This role will have oversight of, and overall responsibility for, the RSPB's operations in the East Midlands Area, including our work on our nature reserves, our wider countryside nature conservation work and our people and community work programmes in the area.

What's the role about?

Stretching from Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire in the south to Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire in the north, the East Midlands holds seven significant nature reserves and two Priority Landscapes: The Dark Peak in the Peak District National Park and the world-famous Sherwood.

The Area Manager position is primarily a strategic leadership role, setting direction by translating RSPB strategy into an East Midlands work programme including budgetary and resource planning, delivery planning and priority landscape plans. The successful candidate will need to inspire their team to achieve these goals with enthusiasm and energy, supporting and encouraging development in others, leading and motivating a dispersed multi-disciplinary team to build capability across the East Midlands.

The East Midlands contain different habitats across varied landscapes. The Dark Peak comprises upland habitats, Sherwood a patchwork of woodlands and heathland, with the RSPB’s wetland nature reserves amongst the finest in this part of England.

Engagement with people is extremely important in the East Midlands, with Sherwood Forest alone welcoming over 300,000 visitors each year. This and other initiatives present opportunities to engage with a range of audiences in a new way - a principle being applied to development of a new reserve operation to bring people and nature closer than ever before.

The East Midlands holds significant commercial operations, fundamental to supporting the RSPB’s mission, with development of further commercially beneficial approaches for new and existing reserves an important focus for this role.

The role is endlessly varied and you will be joining an experienced and motivated team who are doing great things for nature conservation. Through considered decision making, risk management and effective working with internal and external stakeholders, the Area Manager will effect change at a significant scale.

Essential skills, knowledge and experience

Our priority is to find an Area Manager who can work effectively with people, as the leader of their team, with colleagues across the organisation and with the diverse range of partners and stakeholders in the East Midlands. The Area Manager role is broad, and whilst we are looking for a candidate with rounded skills, knowledge and experience, we are not expecting the successful candidate to meet all criteria shown below:

• Proven ability to translate strategy into action, developing programmes, prioritising, and leading change.
• Proven leadership and people management skills, able to develop team members for high performance and build a positive culture across geographically dispersed, multi-disciplinary teams.
• Visible, inspiring, and effective leadership skills of own operational team, engaging and motivating staff and volunteers at all levels, including scenarios when direct line management is not applicable.
• Experience of leading and developing large, multi-disciplinary teams.
• Collaboration skills to build relationships and partnerships, navigate politics and manage conflicts.
• Business management skills to understand strategy, business functions and decision-making.
• Financial acumen to manage budgets, forecasting, understand financial statements and understand and use business metrics and management information.
• Proven project management skills to plan and manage complex and high-risk programmes and projects, manage risks, costs, time and project teams.
• Proven ability to influence others, communicate effectively, build partnerships, negotiate at a senior level and represent the organisation.
• Experience of leadership and management of commercial operations.
• Experience of compliance and risk management.
• Knowledge of relevant matters associated with the East Midlands, including ecological, political, socio-geographical, in a nature reserve and/or landscape context.

Further Information

This is a permanent full-time role for 37.5 hours per week. We are looking to conduct interviews for this position from 17th March 2023.

During the application phase, we will be holding several open sessions to explain more about what the role entails and the RSPB’s work in the East Midlands. If you would like to attend, please contact Sharon Carver (Sharon.Carver@rspb.org.uk). Alternatively, individual discussion can be arranged on request. For further information or if you have any queries, please email Sharon.

This role will be homebased, with location flexible within the East Midlands Area. The East Midlands Area is large and a key part of the role is visiting sites, projects and partners; approximately 2-3 days travel will be required per week, with overnight stays dependant on location.

As part of this application process you will be asked to provide a copy of your CV and complete an application form including evidence on how you meet the skills, knowledge, and experience listed above.

This role will require completion of a DBS in addition to the standard pre-employment checks. The RSPB is an equal opportunities employer. This role is covered by the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974.

Before applying for this role, we recommend reading through the candidate guidance notes attached to the top of this advert.