Role Description - Director of Musicians’ Services

Purpose of the Role

The Director of Musicians’ Services is in a pivotal position to help musicians thrive – by ensuring the delivery of exceptional support, and by improving the charity’s understanding of the ever-changing challenges and opportunities faced by musicians. Leading a team of passionate experts, your vision and strategic planning, and your clear-sighted and well-informed decision-making, will enable the charity to support and engage with an ever-growing number of the diverse professional musician community across all genres and locations in the UK.

Through your team you will transform how musicians make the most of opportunity, avoid wherever possible the crises that can knock them off course, and find safe harbour when sadly their challenges are overwhelming. Your motivation will be your infectious love of music, whatever your musical tastes.

Key Role Objectives

  1. Oversee the delivery of a consistently high-quality array of services to support musicians in crisis and in opportunity, embedding and promoting a “musician-first” mode of thinking within the charity.
  2. Strategically evolve the range of support offered to musicians in order to meet changing need, ensuring the charity’s work is relevant for the broadest possible range of professional musicians and, wherever practicable, is proactive in nature (rather than reactive).
  3. Lead the charity’s research and insight-gathering, ensuring it builds up the organisation’s understanding of the needs of musicians, in order to inform the development of our support programme and influence wider change in the music sector.
  4. Provide effective, visible and authentic leadership to your direct reports and the full team, in order to motivate, focus and empower every employee to achieve their goals in line with the charity’s strategic plan.
  5. With the whole Executive Team and charity Board, play an active role in the wider leadership of the organization, to ensure the charity is an attractive employer to a diverse, representative workforce, with a strong positive culture and excellence in governance.
  6. Develop strong sector-wide relationships to the benefit of the charity, through which opportunities can be found for collaboration, influence, funding and public speaking/writing.

Main Responsibilities/Objectives

  1. Working with the whole Executive Team, formulate the strategic vision and multi-year operational plans for the charity.
  2. Develop an annual plan which sets out the strategic goals in relation to musicians services, ensuring staff have clarity on which to build operational plans.
  3. Ensure the team is well-managed and equipped to consistently deliver a high-quality array of services to support musicians in crisis and in opportunity, making consistent, fair and well informed decision-making across all grant-giving and other support services.
  4. Lead the team in making the most of the charity’s IT systems and other technology developments in order to make the most significant difference to musicians’ lives, in a targeted and efficient manner, and with the best possible understanding of their situation and needs.
  5. Establish and implement an approach to measuring the quality & impact of the services that Help Musicians provides, to enable continuous improvement.
  6. Take responsibility for the ongoing improvement in accessibility to the charity’s support from all groups of musicians from minority backgrounds or whose characteristics (or genres) are currently under-represented.
  7. Ensure every member of the team is clear on their annual objectives (and how these relate to the organisation’s strategy), receives regular feedback /support/coaching on how to improve performance and flourish in their careers, and is highly motivated to deliver on behalf of the charity.
  8. Keeping abreast of major trends and issues relevant to professional musicians, lead the charity’s research and insight-gathering team, to build up the organisation’s understanding of the needs of musicians, in order to respond in an agile fashion to short-term needs, and to develop our support programme over the longer-term.
  9. Set and deliver the strategy to enhance and widen the support offered to musicians in line with (and indeed in anticipation of) their changing needs, ensuring the charity’s work is relevant for the broadest possible range of professional musicians and, wherever practicable, is proactive in nature (rather than reactive).
  10. Lead projects (to agreed time, budget and quality targets) as required to implement new technologies, working practices, service offers, staffing structures etc that improve the support we offer to musicians.
  11. Take ownership, as part of the Executive Team, for maintaining and enhancing the working culture of the charity, to further improve our Investors in People score and create an attractive working environment.
  12. Work collaboratively, across the entire organisation, to ensure all staff are informed and equipped to support your team’s objectives, and that your team work harmoniously with others in the same way.
  13. Engage positively with all Trustee bodies (Board, Advisory Boards, etc) in order to ensure there is positive engagement between the Trustees (and other advisors to the charity) and the Executive team, providing all the information and support the Trustees require to govern the charity appropriately, and gaining support and approval for the work of the Executive.
  14. Represent the charity externally, building strong relationships across the music ecosystem, to the benefit of the charity, through which opportunities can be found for collaboration, influence, funding and public speaking/writing.
  15. Ensure appropriate processes and procedures are in place in relation to GDPR and record keeping, so that the charity follows best practice in relation to the administration of records in this area.

What we offer

Salary: £80-90k per annum depending upon experience.

Working Hours: 35 hours per week (full-time)

Working Location: London based. We are currently trialling hybrid working, requiring a minimum of 2 days per week in the London office (Britannia Street, WC1X 9JS) and 3 days working from home – although you will be expected to work in London whenever the role requires.

Pension: Enrolment into our Aviva pension scheme where Help Musicians contribute 10% of your salary. You can choose to make additional contributions should you wish to.

Annual Leave:

  • 25 days annual leave per annum, plus 8 days bank holidays, and 3 additional days leave at Christmas when the office is closed.
  • 1 day extra holiday per year up to a maximum of 30 days (after 5 years service).

Healthshield Cash Plan: Our Health Shield Cash Plan covers your everyday health needs by providing cashback for dental, optical and physiotherapy costs, alongside offering wellness services such as a Virtual GP Surgery and Employee Assistance Programme (EAP).

Family friendly

  • Flexible working
  • Enhanced maternity, paternity and shared parental leave pay (after 12 months service).

Additional Benefits

  • Cycle to work scheme
  • Season ticket loan
  • Perks including gym discounts, restaurant and dining discounts, and online/in-store voucher codes
  • Royal Albert Hall tickets
  • Income Protection and Death in Service benefit
  • Flexible/remote working

Equal Opportunities

We want to represent the breadth and diversity of musicians across the UK and therefore very much welcome expressions of interest from a diverse range of professional and personal backgrounds.