Constructive, a leading social impact design firm with a remote staff and NYC core that helps advance social, environmental, and economic justice, is looking to hire a new Operations Manager to work closely with our company founder and Leadership Team to help us continue to build a smooth-running business with a great culture that keeps our people engaged and fulfilled. While this position can be remote, it must be filled by a person in the United States.
Our Operations Manager is a strategic role with a lot of responsibilities at the epicenter of our people, process, and productivity. They need to bring energy, provide leadership, and keep their eyes on nearly everything. We’re looking for someone with great interpersonal and communication skills who is proactive, organized, and has a systems mindset—a person who maintains a big picture focus and pays close attention to the little things that impact our people, productivity, and finances.
If you have agency experience, are looking to build a career in social impact, and are a rare blend of a person with a passion for creating culture and for standardizing and documenting processes, then please read on. And if the core responsibilities below have you excited to help Constructive thrive as we work to make the world a more just, equitable, and sustainable place, then please get in touch!
Note, we expect some of the tasks below will be delegated to a virtual executive assistant so that you can focus on more important things! It will be your responsibility to think through how we’ll do that, create the process, and then manage the assistant. Similarly, several core HR and finance functions will be the responsibility of our consultants, who the Operations Manager is the liaison for.
People &Culture Responsibilities
- Lead culture-building, proactively engaging staff contributions, ensuring our people are happy, engaged, and connected—and continuing to build our company on equity, respect, appreciation, and teamwork.
- Lead the hiring process in collaboration with Directors and owner—standardizing, posting jobs, executing offer letters and hiring agreements, and onboarding new staff. Also lead offboarding, ensuring employees transition from Constructive in a smooth, productive way, capturing any valuable insights.
- Own our employee handbook, documenting everything they need to know about company culture, benefits, and policies in an accessible and helpful way.
- Manage all company-sponsored employee benefits, annually reviewing, recommending, and following through on implementing improvements.
- Cultivate employee satisfaction through “stay interviews” and other techniques that can help us learn how we can continue to support, advance, and retain our best people.
- Manage company HR system, keeping each employee’s information up-to-date in Kin HR, and ensuring staff are properly utilizing to request PTO, etc.
- Manage company compensation policies and practices, collaborating with Leadership Team and perhaps an outsources HR consultant to formalize salary bands and expectations.
- Be the point person for outsourced HR consultant, starting with evaluating options to transition appropriate responsibilities from above to them.
Operations Responsibilities
- Own business policies and practices, making sure that they are standardized, documented, understood, implemented, and followed—working with leadership to evaluate and improve.
- Proactively manage up to Constructive’s Executive Director, elevating important issues and opportunities within the context of our business goals and initiatives.
- Manage procurement, purchasing, and inventory, ensuring everyone has the things we need, getting the highest value for money, and documenting status and location of all hardware and software licenses.
- Manage the contracts process, reviewing and executing new business agreements that do not require professional legal input and managing up to leadership as needed.
- Oversee project/staff resourcing, working with Directors to plan and assign staff workloads;monitor staff utilization and proactively “manage up” to help team effectively performance and workload.
- Ensure compliance with all legal and regulatory needs, filing all necessary documents, and maintaining company compliance.
- Manage virtual assistant and outsourced operations process, identifying ideal areas for them to contribute to, developing documented process, and monitoring performance.
- Manage our digital office, ensuring that all documents are stored in the appropriately accessible places for our team and that all staff are properly saving files where they are needed on a daily basis.
- Manage our physical office, starting with finding a new space for fall/winter 2021, managing set-up, and keeping it humming once it is.
Finance Responsibilities
- Own accounts payable and receivables, creating, sending, and following up on all client invoices and ensuring that Constructive’s invoices are paid and employee expenses are approved and reimbursed.
- Be the primary point person for financial consultants, working with and coordinating across outsourced CFO, accountant, and bookkeeper—making sure all financial responsibilities and information are accounted for and understood.
- Lead ongoing finance/ops reviews with leadership, distilling important information and making it actionable for Leadership Team and company Founder.
- Inform and manage company budget in collaboration with necessary stakeholders, updating and informing others of potential improvements, unusual variances, and forecasted financial issues.
- Produce quarterly company performance presentations, creating a story from the numbers that helps everyone understand how we are doing and that highlights key metrics.
Necessary Skills
- Strong operations management and coordinating experience
- Strong understanding of HR principles and best practices
- Expertise developing and documenting business processes
- Great interpersonal and communication skills
- Exceptional organizational skills
- A solid understanding of financial and budgeting principles
- Strong-to-exceptional spreadsheet skills
- An action-oriented, problem-solving mindset
- Knowledge of standard business technology systems
- Excellent delegation and management skills
- A knack for negotiating
- A mind like a vice when it comes to remembering details
Formal Requirements
- A bachelor’s degree or higher, ideally in operations management or a related field—or a comparable professional certification in operations management
- 5+ years of experience overseeing operations for a design firm or services consultancy (such as a law firm or architecture studio), ideally small-to-mid sized
- Fluency with Google Suite
What We Offer
Constructive is built on a strong, values-driven culture. While our expectations and standards are very high, we also prize work-life balance. Our compensation is a combination of a competitive salary and robust benefits and perks. Here are the primary benefits that come along with base salary:
- Company-Sponsored Health, Dental &Vision Insurance
- 401K plan with 4% company match
- Company profit-sharing plan
- Discretionary performance-based bonuses
- 2 weeks paid vacation (+1 additional day per year)
- Paid vacation from Christmas Eve through New Years
- 1/2-day Summer Fridays (Approx 16)
- 1 week paid personal/sick days
- Annual professional development stipend
- New client bonus (2.5% of the largest contract in year 1 for any non-inbound client)
- The feeling of satisfaction knowing that your work is helping make the world a better place
Our Commitment to Diversity &Inclusion
We believe strongly that diversity is one of our greatest strengths—that the more perspectives we bring to the mix, the better we are as people and the better partner we are for our clients. So, in considering if Constructive is a good fit for you, know that all we care about is that you’re qualified to do the job, share most or all of our values, and want to be here. These are the things we’ll be evaluating for every applicant—and if you meet those and add to our diversity, all the better.
Interested? Great!
Then please send an email titled “Operations Manager” to jobs@constructive.co with the following:
- A resume
- A cover letter telling us a bit about you and what excites you about joining our team
- Answers to the following questions:
- What values guide you and your work?
- What are the three most important things to running a successful company and why?
- What do you like to do when you are not working?
- Desired salary