As an Operations Manager – Operational Excellence, you’ll play a pivotal role in how we consistently deliver brilliant customer experiences across Business Banking. Leading a team of Operational Excellence Coaches, you’ll focus on embedding “The Standard” through strong leadership rhythm and routines, high‑quality coaching, and continuous performance improvement.
This role is about setting clear expectations for what great looks like, supporting leaders and Relationship Managers to build the right habits, and ensuring customer experience sits at the heart of how we run the business. If you’re passionate about coaching, operational excellence, and enabling leaders to perform at their best, this is a role where you can make a real and lasting impact.
This role sits within Business Banking, supporting teams across Business Direct to deliver consistently strong customer outcomes. The Operational Excellence function exists to raise capability, improve performance, and embed a shared standard of excellence across leaders and teams.
As the Operations Manager – Operational Excellence, you’ll be responsible for leading a specialist coaching team and working closely with senior leaders, team managers, Business Managers, and Relationship Managers to embed effective leadership rhythm and routines, strengthen coaching capability, and ensure The Standard is lived every day. The impact of this role is seen directly through clearer expectations, simpler ways of working, and more consistent customer experiences.
We are happy to consider flexible working approaches to help you perform at your best.
At Nationwide, we offer hybrid working wherever possible. More rewarding relationships are supported through our hybrid approach, bringing colleagues together across our UK-wide estate, whilst also supporting generous access to home working. We value our time in the office to solve problems, to learn, and to feel connected.
For this job, you'll spend at least two days per week, or if part-time, you'll spend 40% of your working time, based at either our Northampton or London offices, or our hubs in Edinburgh or Glasgow. If your application is successful, your hiring manager will provide further details on how this works. You can also find out more about our approach to hybrid working here.
You’ll be employed by Nationwide from day one, delivering real impact and benefitting from a highly competitive range of benefits. We’re a workplace where you’re rewarded, recognised and celebrated.
What you’ll be doing
You’ll lead and coach a team of Operational Excellence Coaches, setting clear direction and supporting them to raise performance and capability across Business Banking. Working closely with senior leaders and team managers, you’ll help embed effective leadership rhythm and routines that drive clarity, accountability, and pace.
You’ll spend time observing how teams operate, coaching leaders and Relationship Managers, and using insight from performance, quality and customer experience to turn observation into meaningful improvement actions. A core part of the role is ensuring ‘The Standard’ is consistently understood, coached, and applied so customers experience the same high level of service every time.
About you
* A professional certification or qualification in coaching, training and/or learning and development
* Proven experience leading a team focused on performance improvement, coaching or operational excellence
* Demonstrable experience coaching leaders or managers to improve performance and capability
* Strong understanding of how leadership rhythm and routines drive performance and customer outcomes
* Experience working in a customer‑focused operational environment
* The ability to use performance data, insight, or trend analysis to identify improvement opportunities and measure impact
* Strong stakeholder management and influencing skills across teams and senior stakeholders
Our customer first behaviours put customers and members at the heart of how we work together. They are the set of behaviors that every colleague needs to display, in every role:
* Feel what customers feel – We step into our customers’ shoes, using their feedback and insights to empathise with them and to understand their needs, so that every decision we make starts and finishes with our customers in mind
* Say it straight – We are brave in speaking out and saying what we think – we’re honest and direct with good intent, openly sharing diverse perspectives to reach the best conclusions and using language everyone can understand
* Push for better – We don’t settle for mediocrity, we challenge the status quo, taking responsibility for continuous improvement and personal development
* Get it done – We prioritise what will have the greatest impact, we are decisive, and we take accountability for delivering brilliant customer outcomes
The extras you’ll get
* Access to private medical insurance
* A highly competitive pension to help you build a strong foundation for retirement
* Access to an annual performance-related bonus
* Training and development to help you progress your career
* A great selection of additional benefits through our salary sacrifice scheme
* Life assurance to provide peace of mind for you and your loved ones in the event of your death
* Wellhub – access to a range of free and paid options for health and wellness
* Up to 2 days of paid volunteering a year
Please note that should you be successful in securing this role the job title on our internal systems will be Ops Manager Small Business Relationships.
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