Visitor Operations Manager (Fixed-Term) - RSPB The Lodge & Fowlmere

Job Description

Would you like to lead our visitor operations at our UK Headquarters (The Lodge, Sandy) & nearby Fowlmere?

We are looking for an enthusiastic, motivated individual with excellent people and organisational skills to lead our visitor team (cafe, shop, visitor experience) at The Lodge and Fowlmere. Your job will be to lead the development, integration and delivery of all the visitor-facing elements on our two reserves, with the aim of creating an exemplar visitor experience that maximises support for nature. This important role, based at RSPB The Lodge, Sandy but also covering Fowlmere, is key to delivering a great welcome to around 100k visitors across two reserves.

The Lodge is a unique reserve, also the RSPB's UK headquarters. There are trails exploring heathland, woodland, exemplar wildlife gardens, and ancient heritage; it is home to Nightjar, Hobby, Natterjack Toad and Dartmoor Ponies. It attracts over 60k visitors, about 50% of whom are families.

Fowlmere, near Cambridge, is a jewel of a wetland where around 25k visitors enjoy exploring reedbeds and wet woodlands, and seeing Water Vole, Marsh Harrier, Brown Trout and fenland flowers.

Experience essential for this role includes: managing a team and building strong working relationships; developing income streams, monitoring finances and visitor data; developing successful events; overseeing publicity and interpretation; managing volunteers. The role involves working to targets and will involve some weekend working and bank holidays.

This is a great opportunity for someone to have a big positive impact on RSPB income and support, building a cohesive visitor team, and engaging and inspiring both new and traditional audiences at The Lodge & Fowlmere nature reserves. There will be opportunities for wider working in collaboration with other RSPB reserves in the area.

Essential skills, knowledge and experience:

• Excellent verbal and written communications skills.
• A natural leader who can build and maintain strong working relationships, and motivate and inspire people at all levels.
• Sound understanding of systems and procedures necessary to run a commercial visitor operation.
• Sound knowledge of how to deliver the highest standard of customer care resulting in exemplar visits.
• Experience of successfully recruiting, leading and developing a team of volunteers and staff to deliver a joined up, coherent and high-quality visitor offer for all visitors to the reserve.
• Experience of pro-actively promoting the visitor offer to target audiences.
• Proven track record of setting and achieving agreed targets and KPI’s for income generation, quality of visit and footfall targets for the reserve.
• Experience of maximising opportunities for visitor engagement, delivering brand and converting visits into support (e.g. support for RSPB’s Saving Nature Strategy).
• Experience of organising events and activities with supporting documentation to ensure relevant RSPB procedures and legal compliance requirements are met.
• Basic computer literacy.

This is a Fixed-Term, Full-Time role for 2 years. The RSPB reserves the right to extend or make this role permanent without further advertising dependent on business needs at the end of the contract term.

We are looking to conduct interviews for this position from 30th June 2023. Should you have any enquiries about this vacancy, please contact Peter.Bradley@rspb.org.uk

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.

We are committed to developing an inclusive and diverse RSPB, in which everyone feels supported, valued, and able to be their full selves. To achieve our vision of creating a world richer in nature, we need more people, and more diverse people, on nature’s side. People of colour and disabled people are currently underrepresented across the environment, climate, sustainability, and conservation sector. If you identify as a person of colour and/or disabled, we are particularly interested in receiving your application. Contact us to discuss any additional support you may need to complete your application.

The RSPB is an equal opportunities employer. This role is covered by/exempt from the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974.

This role is not eligible for UK Visa Sponsorship - the successful applicant will need to have a pre-existing Right to Work in the UK in order to be offered an employment contract.

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