Head of Operations/Operations Manager

Salary: INR 9 - 15 Lakhs

Contract: full time, fixed 1-year contract
Location: Preferably in Jaipur or Delhi

Application: Please apply here by the 15th of September 2024

Travel: Less than 5%

Be a core part of operations as we go from startup to scaleup.

About Ansh

Ansh, a Charity Entrepreneurship incubated charity, is dedicated to saving newborn lives by building healthcare capacity in government district hospitals in India. Our mission is to create a scalable and cost-effective model that implements Kangaroo care and other impact focused newborn care practices such as breastfeeding counselling, monitoring of danger signs, IPC (Infection Prevention and Control) measures, counselling in best newborn care practices and closely working with the hospital on making these services long-term and sustainable.

Our main intervention is Kangaroo Care, a highly cost-effective and scientifically proven intervention for saving newborn lives. Kangaroo Care has three components:

Skin-to-Skin Contact: Skin-to-skin contact with the mother regulates the infant’s body temperature, reducing hypothermia
Close Monitoring: Monitoring mothers and newborns for danger signs
Exclusive Breastfeeding: Exclusive breastfeeding provides benefits to the infant's immune system and help in weight gain

Currently, we have 27 on-ground full-time staff delivering our programs in two hospitals—Pali District Hospital and Baran District Hospital of Rajasthan—with the aim to replicate and adapt this model for broader implementation in public health systems.

We run two KMC programs in both of our hospitals:

KMC in PostNatal Care (PNC) Ward Program for Stable Low Birth Weight and Preterm Newborns
Early Initiation of KMC in Special Newborn Care Unit (SNCU) Program for Unstable Low Birth Weight and Preterm Newborns

Main model components are:

Repurpose some space in the health facilities and create dedicated space for Kangaroo Car
Recruit health workers to act as dedicated Kangaroo Care counsellors for mothers
Provide training to clinicians and nurses on supporting and managing kangaroo care and other components of the program
Follow up with mothers after discharge to ensure continued behavioural change and monitor the newborn for any danger signs

Please go here to know more about our values, advisors, and partners.

Position Overview

Do you have a keen eye for detail? Do you love integrating all the small details into a smooth-running whole system? Do you thrive on making systems more efficient?

We’re seeking an Operations Manager who will lead on delivering and strengthening Ansh’s organisational operations, covering domains such as HR (onboarding & offboarding, contracts, policies), compliance, finance, accounting, funder reporting, and programme operational improvement. You will handle workstreams involving multiple entities in different countries, and will frequently coordinate with our partner entities. You will be responsible for identifying opportunities to innovate and improve our operational systems. You will encounter many novel tasks or problems for which we don’t yet have an established protocol, so you must be comfortable with independently seeking information, investigating different potential solutions and coordinating with other team members to decide on the best approach to take, often with a reasonable degree of uncertainty.

This role requires a person who is highly organised, a multi-tasker, is conscientious and proactive, who has excellent problem-solving skills, high attention to detail and the ability to quickly and effectively seek, absorb and process information for decision-making.

Key Responsibilities

1. Finance and Legal

Annual financial and legal compliance for our entities including annual returns and audits.
Monthly accounts and management reports preparation.
Management of partner contracts and subscriptions.
Management of purchases, payments, and bookings.
GDPR/ data privacy-related compliance steps.
Research, and drafting of financial and legal policies such as expense reimbursement, equipment, travel policy, reserves policy, etc.

2. Organizational Operations

Organize board meetings (coordinate with trustees and the leadership team to set the board meeting times and agenda, write notes and action points during the board meetings, and follow up as needed).
Coordinate with senior team members on updating organisational risks.
As needed, support the research and set up a project management system for internal communication and coordination among team members, implementation partners and on ground teams.
Overall, understand the current state of systems and then critically think if the systems are needed and how they can be run with minimum friction.

3. Implementation Partner Compliance

Oversee proper Due Diligence is conducted for all new implementation partners.
Manage their budgets, monitor their grant utilisation and ensure they are complying with Ansh’s conditions.
Manage contract renewal and milestones.

4. Support Recruiting of New Team Members

Explore relevant avenues to network/ post job advertisements.
Support the development and evaluation of job tests.
Curate the journey for candidates going through the job application process.
Assist with onboarding new team members.
Update organisational lessons on hiring.
Explore setting up experiments at each stage of hiring to make the process more robust and efficient.

5. Support existing team members

Maintain records of team members.
Assist with contract renewals.
Process expense reimbursements.
Process travel bookings and provide travel support.
Bi-annually conduct a 1-1 check-in with all staff members.
Assist with offboarding of team members.
Organise ad hoc and regular team meetings including team retreats.

6. Support the building and improvement of systems and policies:

Assist with building/researching/reviewing/iterating/improving and executing internal tools, systems and policies to help the team perform to their best at Ansh, such as leave tracking, expense reimbursement, travel policy, performance monitoring and career progression, learning and development, system to track team mood and motivation, grievance and anti-harassment policy, goal setting and tracking system, employee handbook, terms of Reference for each team member.

Where might the role go?

The scope of the role will grow alongside Ansh’s scale, e.g. over time you will likely be working with a growing team; managing more entities; holding more external partnerships and administering increasing quantities of funds. This means that there’s a good chance the role will be updated to Director of Operations/ Chief Operating Officer (COO) and include managing other operations team members.

Why should you apply?

Your work will save lives.
You’ll have lots of autonomy, contributing to decisions about which areas of investigation we should prioritise, with high flexibility about how/when/where you work.
You’ll be part of a mission-driven, impact-focused organisation with strong values, delivering programmes grounded in evidence.
It’s a high-leverage role in a young organisation. We are aiming for huge growth of our programmes and impact in the coming years, so there are plenty of opportunities for outsized personal impact.
Salary will be competitive with other nonprofit salaries, and in line with the experience and responsibilities of the selected candidate.
Benefits include 30 days’ paid holiday leave per year at full pay.

Who we're looking for?

We are looking for a team player who gets a thrill out of helping the whole team to increase its impact, who shares Ansh's values and have the following skills and attitude:

Excellent planning skills: You often anticipate potential hurdles or bottlenecks that others might miss when planning a task.
Systems mindset: You can step back and look at the big picture. You make adjustments today to accommodate changes coming tomorrow. You put in place processes that can work autonomously. You can spot opportunities to optimise processes.
Dependable & conscientious: When you say something will be done, it will be done. You are able to work independently with minimal supervision.
Detail-oriented, highly organised and meticulous planner: You make sure all the minor details are taken care of to have a smooth running system.
Flexible, enjoy a high task volume: You can juggle multiple items and know how to prioritise and switch between tasks.
Quick learner: You are able to quickly and effectively seek, absorb and process information for decision-making.
Obsess over continuous improvement: You constantly think about measuring and improving the quality of processes.
You have excellent problem-solving skills and quantitative skills.
High agency: You can find a way to get done what needs to be done, without waiting for conditions to be perfect or otherwise blaming the circumstances.

Data-driven decision maker: You are able to run data-driven experiments / take data-driven decisions, and quickly and effectively seek, absorb and process information for decision-making.
Relationship builder: You are curious and kind, and enjoy deep conversations with a diverse range of people. You are perceptive and are able to build trusting relationships.
Online tools: You are comfortable with gsuite tools - gsheets, docs, forms.

Bonus Qualities

These qualities are not a requirement for the role and the best candidate may have none of them, but they are nice to have:

Experience handling legal documents like work contracts, grant agreements, MoUs
Experience establishing/running HR systems
Background in Tech

Hiring Process

If this all sounds exciting, please fill out this form to confirm your interest in the role. We will be reviewing applications on a rolling basis and progressing candidates to the next stage. The final cut-off dates for each stage beyond which we won't assess any candidates for that stage are below:

Application Deadline: 15th September

Screening Call: Till 20th September

Test Task Deadline: Till 25th September

Interviews: Till 30th September

Expected start date: 1st October