Retail Area Manager

Job title: Retail Area Manager

Contract: Permanent, full time – 35 hours

Salary: £32,000 – £36,000

Location: Home based – covering London, Oxfordshire, and the Southeast

Closing date: Wednesday 12 April 2023

Interview date: Wednesday 19 April 2023

About Blue Cross

Blue Cross is a UK leading animal welfare organisation. We are a charity that supports sick, injured, and homeless pets and care for more than 40,000 animals every year through our rehoming, pet food banks, veterinary and education programmes.

We have over 50 charity shops throughout England and Wales, where our generous supporters donate a mixture of clothes, books, toys, household goods and soft furnishings that we sell in our shops and online.

Our shops they play a vital role in not only raising money to help pets but also by promoting the charity and raising awareness of the work we do.

About the role

We are recruiting an Area Manager to oversee the ongoing day-to-day running up to 15 existing shops in the area around London, Oxfordshire, and the Southeast.

You will be responsible for:

• Line management of shop teams including recruitment, training and development of shop managers, assistant shop managers and stock collectors
• Supporting shop managers in the recruitment of volunteers
• Visiting shops regularly to ensure that standards are being met; that shops are performing to their best ability and that income opportunities are always maximised
• Organising regular shop manager meetings
• Promoting a customer care approach within shops, resolving complaints or issues effectively
• Collating and analysing trading information in a format appropriate to senior management needs
• Setting and agreeing annual income and expenditure budgets and targets with Retail Manager and Shop Managers
• Establishing the efficient running of the Gift Aid system in each shop
• Organising planned, routine and emergency maintenance needs of shops

If you excel in an environment where you can see the difference you make every day, then this is the role for you. Interested? Then apply and let’s work together to see if this is the role for you.

About you

Due to the geographical reach of the role and the travel required, ideally you will be living in either Oxfordshire Gloucestershire, South London, North London, or West London.

With strong commercial awareness and the ambition to succeed you will be an inspiring leader and motivator who recognises potential in people and is adept in gaining results through people.

Working closely with the Shop Managers in your region, you will demonstrate creativity and innovation to identify income opportunities ensuring the highest standards of shop floor presentation and customer service are always delivered.

You will have:

• Full driving licence
• Retail management within a commercial company and/ or a UK registered charity
• Experience of achieving success against financial targets
• Experience of developing and monitoring budgets and operating plans
• Experience of managing, training and developing people

It would also be great if you had:

• Experience of direct management and on-going development of staff in a multi-site situation
• UK charity sector retail management

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

Why Blue Cross?

Our people are the most important part of delivering our purpose. If it were not for their amazing efforts and commitment, we would not be able to make a difference that we do today. We offer a generous benefits package that includes:

• 30 days annual leave plus bank holidays
• Employee Assistance Programme
• Holiday exchange & enhanced parental leave
• Annual volunteer days
• Long service awards, starting from 5 years
• Vast range of discounts across high street stores, insurance services & more

To read more about the benefits Blue Cross has to offer, please visit the ‘why work for us’ page on our website.

How to apply

Click the apply button below and complete the online application process before the closing date on Wednesday 12 April 2023.

Interview and assessment details

Part of the assessment process will be a psychometric assessment to understand your working preferences and we will arrange a call after you have completed the assessment to talk the results through with you.

The interview will be competency based and we will be asking you to prepare a presentation to deliver at an interview onsite in Burford, OX18 4PF on Wednesday 19 April 2023.

We reserve the right to close this vacancy early should we receive an overwhelming response.

At Blue Cross we are passionate about our commitment to diversity, inclusion and removing barriers, should you like to discuss any reasonable adjustments or changes to our recruitment process to support you to be your best then please get in touch. You can contact us either via email at [email protected], via telephone on 01993 825515 or if you would prefer a video call then we can arrange this using Microsoft Teams.

Blue Cross holds inclusion as a core organisational value. We positively encourage applications from suitably qualified, experienced, and eligible candidates regardless of sex, race, disability, age, sexual orientation, transgender status, religion or belief, marital status or pregnancy and maternity. We actively embrace our differences and know that it is our differences that make us unique. You are very welcome at Blue Cross, without the need to hide any part of who you are.