General Manager / Location Director - Coworking Innovation Hub

LOCATION DIRECTOR / GENERAL MANAGER

Coworking Innovation Hub - Brighton

About the Business

Our clients excellent Innovation Hub launched mid-2020 in a beautiful building created by highly accredited designers at a historic development. The hub comprises of 7 floors of flexible space catering for solo-preneurs, start ups and scale ups and larger corporates. Once full the operation will be supporting approximately 550-600 members with a café and roof terrace F&B operation. The hub is on track to achieve WELL building standard Platinum accreditation and is WIREDScore Platinum certified. In addition to coworking, dedicated desks and studios, the hub offers specialist rapid prototyping facilities, media suites, 150 pax events space and Deep Dive rooms as well as two leased floors (6600 sq ft each).

Mission and Values

Through our clients workspace and business support programmes, the innovation hub helps ambitious entrepreneurs and companies to grow - which in turn makes the local areas in which they are based, more vibrant and productive whilst creating plentiful new local jobs. Over the next few years, our client will expand to do this at scale, creating an impactful, positive social impact which also drives the commercial growth of the business.

To fulfill this mission our client are looking to attract people to join the business from a wide variety backgrounds who can add their unique experience and perspective to help them deliver on their ambitious goals.

The Role

The Location Director / General Manager is responsible for the overall success of the Innovation Hub; this includes delivering financial success by ensuring the space is full of innovative companies and that the hub has high retention of members by creating a strong sense of community and delivering an exceptional customer experience. It also includes connection with the local community, ensuring that the innovation hub is accessible and beneficial to a diverse range of stakeholders serving its locality.

You will be responsible for managing the P&L, executing the management agreement, maintaining the WELL standards and overseeing a talented and dedicated team. You will be responsible for nurturing their development and empowering them to perform at a high level.

Exceptional Customer Experience. You will:

• Lead and inspire the team to deliver an outstanding experience to all of their resident businesses
• Curate the membership to ensure the hub has a strong community of innovative start-ups and scaleups
• Build strong relationships with the founders and staff of companies based at the hub
• Be the face of the innovation hub, building high level relationships with stakeholders and businesses at a local, regional and nationallevel

Sales and Finance. You will be:

• Experienced in delivering sales targets and managing a variety of sales and marketing activity to generate high occupancy rates
• Comfortable with proactively leading sales, negotiating deals and managing the legal process of leasing space
• Experienced in generating partnerships and sponsorship opportunities
• Comfortable managing P&L, producing reports and providing oversight on all billing and payment activities
• Experienced in dealing with lease agreements and service charge
• Comfortable executing management agreement

Operations. You will:

• Oversee of all of the hub's operations including Health and Safety and Fire Safety
• Manage fit out contractors and maintenance teams when required
• Be comfortable with using CRM systems
• Be responsible for maintaining the WELL building standard Platinum and the WIREDScore certification

People Management. You will:

• Manage a high performing team with a strong focus on culture
• Be passionate about developing and growing people
• Be comfortable managing specialist staff such as the workshop manager

Experience Requirements. You will have:

• Experience running flexible workspace or similar
• Passionate about business to business customer service
• A proven track record of managing high performing teams
• Excellent communication skills and ability to build rapport quickly

Experience Desirables. Ideally you will have:

• Some knowledge of physical making or prototyping
• Previous exposure to accelerators and other innovation and business support programmes
• Construction or fit out project management experience
• Experience in Food and Beverage or Hospitality
• Knowledge of XERO, Stripe, KISI, Sharpspring and OfficeRnD would be advantageous
• Experience in liaising with legal teams

Reporting to: Co-CEO

Location: Brighton, East Sussex

Hours: Full time

Role level: 7+ years' relevant experience

Salary: £50,000 - £60,000

Start date: ASAP