Head of Region South East

We are seeking a dynamic and driven leader for this pivotal, hands-on role. As a key force behind improving pet care and enhancing the client & Associate experience across your region’s business units, you will be instrumental in driving service excellence and operational efficiency.

In this senior role, you’ll inspire and elevate the practice leadership, honing their strategic thinking, people management, and commercial acumen. You’ll foster collaboration across your sites and the broader group. Your guidance will ensure consistent operational excellence and help deliver the region’s annual business plan. You will have full accountability for the P&L and key performance metrics for your group of practices, working closely with the Primary Care Regional Veterinary & Nursing Leads to align and achieve shared goals. You will drive the region to deliver our overarching purpose of making A BETTER WORLD FOR PETS.

Key Responsibilities

• Support the Regional Operations Director in delivering the annual business plan.

• Deliver valuable insights to the Regional Operations Director to enrich discussion and enhance understanding in key forums and regular business reviews. Monitor KPIs and work with the business unit’s leadership teams to identify and action priority areas of focus.

• Be accountable for ensuring each business unit has a clearly defined and aligned annual business plan, which is reviewed periodically.

• Support & work closely with the leadership team in your business units, to deliver operational excellence through coaching & role modelling, with a focus on maximising productivity, capacity & capability at site level.

• Support the local leadership to align their working practices (schedules, rotas) to best meet the pets needs, client demand and Associate well-being.

• Drive a culture of best practice & knowledge/resource sharing & promote the broader One Linnaeus mindset.

• Ensure best practice is trained and embedded so that each business unit operates in the most efficient way, with a quality first mindset.

• Ensure that communications are effectively cascaded throughout the region to help teams connect with the One Linnaeus culture and understand the broader strategy.

• Be present on site in practices at least 80% of your working time, providing visible, demonstrable, in person leadership and support.

• Work closely with Regional Veterinary & Nursing Leads to align & deliver on shared objectives.

• Support pilots and new initiatives through provision of quality feedback.

• Ensure the client service proposition is delivered in line with Linnaeus brand values.

• Work proactively with the P&O Business Partners to deliver a robust people plan for your practices which continues to address Associate engagement, retention and attrition.

• Work with the P&O Business Partners & practice leadership teams to identify & develop future talent to support Associate retention, career pathways & succession planning.

• Role model motivational leadership that promotes a positive attitude to maintain health and mental wellbeing in your teams.

• Ensure compliance on health & safety, property, and maintenance policy across the region.

• Be consistently cost conscious, challenging teams to adopt the same mindset.

• Partner with the leadership from the referral practices in the region to build strong relationships & foster an environment of knowledge sharing, to improve outcomes for our patients.

• Lead the integration of new Primary Care businesses into the region.

• Drive and support our wider sustainability goals.

Experience

Essential experience/attributes:

• Evidence of effectively leading a team, demonstrating excellent people management and the ability to drive engagement.

• Awareness of the influence and importance of wellbeing in the veterinary profession.

• Experience and knowledge of what operational excellence looks like.

• A proven record of business leadership in either a clinical or non-clinical sector.

• Evidence of successfully managing and delivering business KPIs, as well as developing and implementing strategies to drive growth within a complex business.

• Strong commercial acumen with previous demonstrable experience of successfully driving commercial initiatives to improve business performance.

• Experience of leading teams in a service delivery environment.

• Excellent relationship building skills and ability to lead complex change management.

• Ability to coach leadership teams in practice.

• Ability to see beyond the obvious and to think broadly, to have a positive group wide impact.

• Educated to degree level or equivalent work experience (5+ years).

• A full UK Driving Licence and the ability to travel regionally and nationally.

• A positive attitude and approach to problem solving, with the skill set to inspire and motivate teams.

• To be organised, energetic, pragmatic and empathetic, with high emotional intelligence, to quickly establish credibility and build rapport and trust amongst key stakeholders.

• A demonstrable record of effective decision making.

• Ability to communicate vertically and horizontally in an engaging & inspiring way, working independently and collaboratively when required.

Desirable experience/attributes:

• Experience within a veterinary or healthcare setting.

• Experience of leading a multisite business.

• Understanding of veterinary business operations, knowledgeable in current and possible future polices, practices, and trends that could affect veterinary businesses.

• Clinical governance and quality improvement including auditing, practice standards and other accreditation bodies.

• Knowledge of RCVS Code of Professional Conduct, disciplinary processes, and processes for complaint handling.

About Us

Linnaeus is a forward-thinking partnership of highly respected primary care and referral veterinary practices across the UK and Ireland, comprising some of the best clinicians in the profession.

We are all individual but two important things bring us together; a commitment to excellence in everything we do and our passion to make A BETTER WORLD FOR PETS.

At Linnaeus we carefully select the practices we partner with to ensure the highest levels of patient care across our group. Together we provide a growing community of like-minded veterinary professionals who are passionate about what they do. We work with different types of practices, in every field of veterinary medicine, including small animal, farm and equine.

We also have our Five Principles which form the foundation of how we do business today and every day and we put these at the centre of every decision we make. This means:

• We are committed to Quality of work and contributions to society.

• We embrace our Responsibility (as individuals and a company) to act now.

• We base decisions on Mutuality of benefit to our stakeholders.

• We harness the power of Efficiency to use our resources to maximum effect.

• We have the financial Freedom to make our own decisions, unrestricted by motivations of others.