Job summary
- Main area
- Operational Management
- Grade
- NHS AfC: Band 7
- Contract
- Permanent
- Hours
- Part time - 30 hours per week
- Job ref
- 150-KB1828-CC
- Employer
- Sussex Community NHS Foundation Trust
- Employer type
- NHS
- Site
- Midhurst Community Hospital
- Town
- Midhurst
- Salary
- £46,148 - £52,809 per annum pro rata
- Salary period
- Yearly
- Closing
- 07/07/2025 23:59
Employer heading

Operational Team Lead
NHS AfC: Band 7
Job overview
Are you a dynamic and compassionate leader looking to make a real difference in the lives of people affected by serious illness? The Midhurst Macmillan Service, part of Sussex Community NHS Foundation Trust, is seeking an Operational Team Lead to support the ongoing development and delivery of our highly respected community-based palliative care service.
This is a unique opportunity open to both clinicians and non-clinicians with strong operational leadership experience. We are looking for someone who shares our values of compassionate care, collaborative working, and continuous improvement. As Operational Team Lead, you will:
- Ensure the delivery of high-quality, person-centred care across all pathways through effective service coordination and staff engagement.
- Provide day-to-day operational leadership, ensuring service performance, responsiveness, and excellence.
- Motivate and support a skilled and dedicated workforce, fostering a culture of accountability, learning, and innovation.
This role offers a chance to lead a well-established, multidisciplinary team known for its excellence in community-based palliative and end-of-life care. If you are a proactive leader with a passion for high-quality service delivery and team development, we would love to hear from you.
Main duties of the job
As the Operational Team Lead for the Midhurst Macmillan Service, you will play a pivotal role in leading a committed team to deliver high-quality, person-centred care across the local community. Your responsibilities will include:
- Providing day-to-day operational management and leadership to ensure the safe, effective, and high-quality delivery of care.
- Overseeing the service with autonomy and confidence, drawing on support from the Operational Head of Service as needed.
- Developing and supporting a coordinated, multidisciplinary team, fostering a culture of communication, collaboration, and continuous service improvement.
- Building and maintaining strong, productive relationships with General Practice, secondary care, and local authority partners to ensure integrated, seamless care pathways.
- Driving proactive, innovative service development by identifying gaps in provision, addressing health inequalities, and striving for service excellence.
This is a leadership role that demands both operational expertise and a forward-thinking approach to community healthcare. If you are committed to delivering outstanding care and making a tangible impact within the community, this could be your next career step.
Working for our organisation
We are the main provider of NHS community services across East and West Sussex, with 6,000 staff serving 1.3 million people. We deliver essential care to adults and children, helping them manage their health, avoid hospital admissions, and reduce hospital stays.
Our Trust vision is to provide excellent care at the heart of the community. We offer opportunities across medical, clinical, support, and corporate services.
Why work for us?
- Positive 2024 NHS Staff Survey results, highlighting compassionate leadership and wellbeing
- Varied environments: community hospitals, patients’ homes, and bases across Sussex
- Flexible working options: part-time, flexi-time, annualised hours, and flexi-retirement
- Excellent training, development, and research opportunities
- Cost-effective workplace nurseries in Crawley, Hove, and Brighton
- Active EMBRACE, Disability & Wellbeing, LGBTQIA+, and Religion & Belief networks
- Level 3 Disability Confident Leader and Veteran Aware Trust
- Beautiful Sussex location near the South Downs and coast
Our values - Compassionate Care, Working Together, Achieving Ambitions, Delivering Excellence - guide everything we do.
We embrace diversity and encourage applications from all backgrounds, particularly from ethnically diverse, disabled, and LGBTQIA+ individuals. We aim to create an inclusive environment and support reasonable adjustments during recruitment.
This post may close early if sufficient applications are received.
Detailed job description and main responsibilities
As Operational Team Lead, you will oversee the day-to-day management of the Midhurst Macmillan Service team, ensuring safe, efficient, and high-quality service delivery. Your responsibilities will include:
- Team Leadership & Workforce Management: Oversee recruitment, induction, appraisals, performance, and staff wellbeing. Manage rotas, annual leave, sickness absence, and ensure supervision structures are in place. Promote a supportive, accountable, and engaged team culture.
- Service Operations: Ensure the team is appropriately resourced to meet daily patient demand, manage stock levels, and contribute to effective business continuity planning. Lead team meetings, maintain key documentation, and deputise for senior managers when required.
- Clinical Governance & Risk Management: Promote a culture of learning, safety, and continuous improvement. Manage incidents and complaints at the frontline, ensure appropriate escalation, and support risk assessment and mitigation in line with Trust policies.
- Finance & Resource Management: Work within delegated budgets, approve invoices, and oversee local procurement. Identify cost improvements, support business planning, and align resource use with Trust priorities and commissioning requirements.
- Service Development & Quality Improvement: Contribute to innovation and quality improvement initiatives, including those under the Trust’s "Our Community Way" programme. Implement new systems and processes to support service modernisation.
- Data, Information & Reporting: Maintain accurate records and oversee service data collection, reporting, and compliance with contractual and governance requirements. Use data insights to support operational planning and performance improvement.
This role requires a confident, proactive leader who thrives in a dynamic environment, can manage complexity, and is committed to delivering compassionate, patient-centred care.
Person specification
Qualifications and/or professional registration
Essential criteria
- Degree level qualification and/or relevant management experience
- Evidence of continued professional development
- Evidence of leadership education/development or a willingness to undertake this
Desirable criteria
- Management qualification or willingness to undertake
Experience
Essential criteria
- Experience of managing a team or other relevant management experience
- Knowledge and experience in using various IT systems
Desirable criteria
- Experience of managing a multi-professional team/collaborative working
- Demonstrable success in delivering change and performance with and through your teams, by engaging them in development & delivery plans, establishing clear work priorities with them, delegating effectively, ensuring a capability to deliver, monitoring performance and giving feedback.
Other requirements
Essential criteria
- Car driver with current driving licence and access to a car for work – unless qualify for reasonable adjustments under the Equality Act (2010)
Skills and knowledge
Essential criteria
- Ability to work as an Autonomous individual
- Good numeracy and literacy skills
- IT literate with the ability to use all Microsoft office applications
- Demonstrates excellence in communication skills with an ability to negotiate and manage conflict
- Current knowledge of local and national policies informing health and social care
- Knowledge of Clinical governance, clinical audit and clinical supervision
- Demonstrate ability to reflect and learning from situations
- Identifies difficulties as challenges and works with others to identify solutions
- Demonstrate self-awareness, able to identify personal limitation and shows openness to address them
- Awareness of professional responsibilities and boundaries.
- Sound knowledge of safeguarding vulnerable adults and children
- Well developed leadership and influencing skills with the ability to enthuse, motivate and involve individuals and teams, and have them understand the Trust’s and your performance expectations.
- A strong sense of personal and team accountability coupled to a clear understanding of the boundaries around delegated authority.
- Ability to manage and deliver to deadlines and within resources.
- Ability to think and plan tactically and creatively, and to prioritise work programs in the face of competing demands
- Ability to analyse complex problems and to develop practical and workable solutions to address them.
Desirable criteria
- Knowledge of local and national policies relevant to clinical area.
Application numbers
Documents to download
Further details / informal visits contact
- Name
- Joanna Stuttaford
- Job title
- Macmillan Head of Service
- Email address
- [email protected]
- Telephone number
- 07920715989
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