Performance Manager

Job Title: Performance Manager

Location: Remote 
Salary: £40,000 - £46,000

Our client is seeking a Performance Manager to take accountability for the operational performance of apprenticeship programmes, ensuring strong learner progress, retention, achievement readiness, and a high-quality learner and employer experience. The successful candidate will provide direct performance oversight through disciplined governance, data-led intervention, and consistent delivery standards.

The Performance Manager will directly line manage tutors, driving performance against operational, quality, compliance, and funding KPIs. Working closely with the Service Operations Manager, our client requires the successful candidate to ensure service levels, communication standards, and service recovery activity remain consistent and support positive learner outcomes.

Key Performance Indicators:

• Learner and employer experience within organisational thresholds
• QAR / achievement within organisational thresholds
• Retention within organisational thresholds
• Breaks in Learning (BIL) within organisational thresholds
• Out of Funding (OOF) within organisational thresholds
• Clawback exposure minimised through timely interventions and compliant execution
• Learner risk (RAG) routinely reviewed, evidenced, and improving over time

Key Responsibilities:

Tutor Leadership and Performance Management

• Directly line manage tutors, setting clear expectations and holding accountability for delivery quality, learner progress, and timely achievement readiness.
• Lead a consistent weekly and monthly performance cadence, ensuring priorities, risks, and actions are clearly visible, owned, and delivered.
• Coach and develop tutors to deliver a consistent learner journey, including progress reviews, OTJ planning, evidence requirements, and professional employer communication.

Programme Performance and Learner Outcomes

• Take ownership of programme performance across key KPIs, using data to identify risks early and implement timely interventions to protect retention, progress, and achievement.
• Maintain robust oversight of learner risk and interventions, ensuring actions are timely, evidenced, and effective.
• Drive achievement planning and execution, ensuring learners are prepared early and operational bottlenecks are proactively addressed.

Capacity Planning and Operational Control

• Lead capacity and caseload planning, ensuring tutor occupancy, workload distribution, and caseloads remain within agreed tolerances and aligned to pipeline requirements.
• Forecast demand and resource requirements, escalating staffing needs with clear supporting evidence where necessary.
• Ensure operational controls, including caseload reviews, dashboards, trackers, and action logs, are embedded and consistently applied to minimise reliance on manual workarounds.

Service Levels and Employer Experience

• Work closely with the Service Delivery Manager to ensure service standards are consistently achieved, including responsiveness, communication quality, effective handovers, and service recovery SLAs.
• Ensure learner and employer issues are managed through to resolution within agreed timescales, with clear ownership and consistent communication throughout.
• Use learner and employer feedback to identify trends and drive targeted improvements across delivery teams.

Cross-Functional Delivery and Compliance

• Collaborate closely with Quality, Compliance, MIS/Data, and Curriculum teams to ensure delivery remains audit-ready and inspection-ready, with strong evidence management and adherence to funding regulations.
• Escalate compliance, funding, and data risks promptly, providing evidence-based recommendations and ensuring agreed actions are implemented.
• Ensure tutors consistently follow agreed SOPs and operational processes, reducing variation and maintaining learner journey compliance.

Continuous Improvement and Project Delivery

• Lead operational improvement initiatives and small-scale projects within the area of responsibility, ensuring clear plans, ownership, milestones, and successful implementation.
• Support the mobilisation of new or changing provision by embedding consistent operating rhythms, standards, and reporting.
• Monitor and evaluate the impact of improvements to ensure benefits are sustained.

Decision-Making Authority

Within agreed policies, budgets, and operational tolerances, our client expects the successful candidate to:

• Set expectations for tutor performance and take day-to-day performance management action in line with company policy.
• Direct operational priorities and workloads to protect learner progress, retention, and achievement.
• Make caseload allocation and capacity decisions, escalating resourcing requirements where appropriate.
• Require timely updates and evidence from tutors to support risk management, compliance, and audit readiness.
• Initiate and lead operational improvement activities and small projects, ensuring successful adoption and sustained outcomes.
• Escalate operational, compliance, funding, or data assurance risks to the Head of Service Operations with clear recommendations.

Key Relationships

Head of Service Operations, Quality, Tutors, Compliance, MIS/Data, Curriculum, Sales/Account Managers (where relevant), and employer stakeholders.

Person Specification

Essential

• Minimum of two years' experience leading and managing delivery teams, driving performance through effective leadership, coaching, and performance management.
• Demonstrable success in improving programme performance across key apprenticeship KPIs, including progress, retention, achievement readiness, BIL, and OOF.
• Strong understanding of apprenticeship funding rules and compliance requirements, with experience maintaining audit-ready delivery.
• Experience using data and management information to identify risks, prioritise activity, forecast capacity, and measure impact.
• Excellent stakeholder management and communication skills, with the ability to work collaboratively across Operations, Quality, Compliance, MIS/Data, and Service Operations.
• Experience delivering operational improvements and embedding sustainable change.

Desirable

• Experience within a regulated education or training environment, ideally within the health or science sector.
• Experience supporting inspection and audit readiness and responding to inspection findings.
• Experience managing employer escalations and service recovery activity within agreed service level agreements.

Paul Feldman is the National Skills Agency Data Protection Officer. Your data will be stored until notice is given by you for it to be removed. Our Data Protection Policy will be forwarded to you on request. As we get a high number of applications we may be unable to give feedback to unsuccessful candidates. We will retain your details to  keep you informed of other opportunities. National Skills Agency Ltd is acting as an Employment Agency in relation to this vacancy and is an Equal Opportunities employer we welcome applicants from all backgrounds.