Role Description

Job Description

Job Title: Chief Operating Officer

Reporting to: Chief Executive

Direct Reports: Four people, covering the remits of Data, Digital & Tech, Finance, Risk & Governance and People & Culture

Location: Hybrid (a minimum of 4 days per month in the London office)

Hours: Full-time, 35hrs a week, with some flexibility around working pattern

Salary: £100-£110K

Role Purpose

To provide strategic vision and leadership that enables Teenage Cancer Trust to maximise sustainable growth and impact. The Chief Operating Officer provides the essential financial strategy and operational resilience to enable organisational delivery through the leadership of finance, performance, people, culture, data & technology.

What You’ll Be Doing

Strategic Business Planning:

Drive a forward-looking, agile and responsive approach to business planning that enables the delivery of our strategy and keeps us responsive to the constantly changing external environment.
Support the leadership team to evolve our operating model, develop and manage systems and processes to ensure successful delivery of priorities, programmes and projects.
Make sure organisational plans have effective ways to iterate and reprioritise activity in teams as needed, building in space and flexibility to take on high-priority opportunities that arise whilst keeping delivery manageable.

Financial Leadership:

Provide overall leadership for the charity’s financial matters, including budgeting, financial planning, statutory accounting, and control systems to ensure financial health and sustainability.
Ensure the charity delivers accurate monthly and annual accounts that give stakeholders appropriate financial information for decision-making.
Ensure Teenage Cancer Trust complies with statutory, legal, audit and taxation requirements in relation to its financial affairs.
Set an investment strategy with stewardship of cash assets to drive an appropriate return for the charity.
Ensure the business planning and budgeting support our financial sustainability.

People and Culture:

Drive forward a collaborative, insight driven and values-led culture and workforce strategy that ensures we make the most of digital technologies, data and modern ways of working to grow our impact.
Embed a ‘test and learn’ ethos across our work, underpinned by the psychological safety needed to learn and grow from failures.
Oversee a strategic approach to equity, diversity and inclusion, ensuring we set ambitious goals and understand our progress and impact.

Data and Technology:

Set a clear approach and strategy for data, technology, and digital product transformation that helps realise our strategy.
Ensure that the charity’s technological infrastructure is modern, fit for purpose, constantly evolving, represents excellent value for money and enables staff to do their jobs easily and effectively.
Drive organisational data maturity and make sure we have sufficient skills and resources to use, manage, protect and benefit from the data that we hold.

Organisational Performance:

Lead development and use of insightful metrics and performance dashboards across the organisation to drive how we understand performance, test and learn and deliver continuous improvement.
Work in partnership with teams to ensure evidence-informed decisions are made when planning and forecasting activity.
Seek to continually improve our processes and ways of working, including evaluating their effectiveness and ensuring we have a value-for-money procurement approach.

Governance & Risk:

Lead on governance management, fulfilling the role of Company Secretary for the Charity and the Trading Company and maintaining best practice governance structures, processes and relationships that support effective strategic and operational delivery in the charity.
Lead the charity’s risk management approach, ensuring the agility needed to be resilient and ambitious when faced with risks and opportunities. As part of this, develop and implement a robust risk management system across the charity, including processes for strategic, operational, project, and event risks.
Support the Board to govern effectively by working with Chairs and Committee members of all relevant groups by providing assurance and reporting relevant to committee remits.
Support trustees and committee members to feel confident governing within an iterative and agile approach to planning and budgeting. Keep our planning processes transparent, so it is easy for trustees to remain in the loop with what is happening.

Leadership & Management:

Sharing collectively – with the Chief Executive and Executive Team – overall accountability for management and decision making within the charity in the best interests of the young people we serve.
Empower colleagues across the charity to take responsibility and make decisions that drive progress towards our goals.
Provide outstanding leadership to a diverse team of staff, supporters, partners and volunteers and work individually and with others in a way that embraces, embeds and reflects our organisational values and behaviours.
Be an active ally and champion for our equality, diversity and inclusion work, driving and diversifying our reach and relevance, and taking an active role in making Teenage Cancer Trust an inclusive workplace.
Promote and proactively embed collaborative cross-organisational working across Teenage Cancer Trust to support achieving the organisation’s aims.
Develop and manage your teams’ performance and talent (including succession planning).

What You’ll Bring to the Team

An understanding of and demonstrable commitment to the cause, objectives and culture of Teenage Cancer Trust.
Senior level experience of setting clear financial driven organisational strategy, through insight, reporting and interpretation focusing on strategic management that inspires confidence and drives performance.
Experience in overseeing statutory accounts production and audit; corporate budget setting, forecasting, reporting & monitoring, strategic risk management, board management and reporting and management of third-party suppliers, procurement and contract management.
An ability to drive improvements to business planning processes, ongoing performance management, governance and long-term growth.
Ability to make tough decisions in the best interests of young people with cancer and Teenage Cancer Trust – while remaining proactive and mindful of personal wellbeing.
Demonstrable experience in strategic financial management and leadership – including analysing and interpreting complex financial information and using this insight to provide narratives that give confidence and clarity to senior stakeholders and the wider organisation.
Able to lead and role model a culture and inclusive leadership style that encourages initiative and individual and team responsibility, with open communication which both motivates and empowers staff.
Excellent interpersonal skills with the ability to establish trust and respect with people from diverse backgrounds and professions.
A recognised professional qualification in finance (e.g., ACA, ACCA, CIMA) is essential.

Equity, Diversity & Inclusion is central to the work of the Teenage Cancer Trust. Cancer does not discriminate, but the access communities and individuals have to the support they need – based on ethno-cultural, geographic, socio-economic, or other forms of exclusion – varies widely. In order to address these disparities, and accurately represent the communities they serve, the Teenage Cancer Trust welcomes applications from diverse backgrounds. Find out more about their commitment to Equity, Diversity & Inclusion here.