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About The Brick
The Brick is an anti-poverty and homelessness charity working alongside people and communities across Wigan. We believe every person has worth, strengths and potential, whatever they have been through. Our work is rooted in dignity, trust, relationships, practical support and hope.
We provide housing, support, food, reuse, volunteering and community-based services for people experiencing poverty, homelessness, crisis and exclusion. We do not define people by the hardest moment of their lives. We believe in second chances, in challenging social injustice, and in creating the conditions in which people can rebuild, belong and thrive.
This is an important time for The Brick. We are growing, the needs around us are changing, and our teams need strong foundations behind them. We are looking for a values-led leader who will help our people do their best work, keep the organisation safe and well run, and make sure systems support people rather than get in their way.
Purpose of the role
The Head of Resources will lead the people, systems and practical support that help every part of The Brick work well. This role sits behind our frontline work, making sure staff and volunteers feel supported, our buildings are safe, responsibilities are clear and the organisation has what it needs to serve people with care and confidence.
This role is much broader than HR. It brings together people support, volunteering, quality, health and safety, property and facilities, administration, communications and organisational systems. The aim is not to create more process. It is to make things clearer, simpler and more joined up so that colleagues can focus their energy on the people and communities we are here for.
The postholder will lead our central-services team, coordinate specialist support and work closely with the CEO, Head of Housing and Homelessness, Financial Controller, managers and trustees. They will make sure these functions work together, respond to what teams need and remain grounded in The Brick's mission and values.
This is a senior leadership role for someone who can hold care and accountability together. We need a person who is practical, thoughtful and brave; someone who will listen before acting, challenge kindly when needed, and make sound decisions without losing sight of the human impact.
What we need this role to bring
We are not looking for someone who sees people as problems to manage or rules as an end in themselves. We need a broad organisational leader who will understand how The Brick really works, build trust across teams and create straightforward ways of working that are safe, fair and useful.
The successful person will help us keep asking:
- Do our staff and volunteers feel welcomed, trusted, supported and able to grow?
- Do managers have the clarity, confidence and support they need to lead well?
- Do our systems recognise people's strengths and make space for second chances?
- Are our buildings, facilities and core systems safe, dependable and fit for purpose?
- Are quality, safeguarding, health and safety and legal responsibilities managed in a humane and practical way?
- Are our policies and communications clear, inclusive and understood by the people who use them?
- Where are processes, assumptions or ways of working creating unnecessary barriers?
- What do our people and communities need from The Brick as we grow?
Key responsibilities
1. Senior leadership and organisational development
- Take an active role in the Senior Leadership Team, sharing responsibility for The Brick's culture, direction and development.
- Work with the CEO and colleagues to turn The Brick's strategy and values into clear, practical priorities.
- Help build a culture where people are treated with dignity, strengths are recognised, second chances are real and accountability is fair.
- Build trusting relationships with managers and help them lead with clarity, compassion and consistency.
- Bring calm and practical structure where responsibilities or systems feel unclear, always considering how decisions affect people.
- Listen to staff and volunteers, identify barriers or duplication, and lead improvements with the people affected rather than doing change to them.
- Give the CEO, SLT and trustees honest, accessible advice and assurance, including when difficult issues need to be raised.
- Be a steady, hopeful and solutions-focused leader through pressure, growth and change.
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2. Central services, people and management support
- Lead a welcoming and responsive central-services function that helps managers, staff and volunteers get the support they need.
- Make sure managers can access fair and consistent support with recruitment, induction, supervision, wellbeing, performance, absence, conduct and development, using specialist HR advice where needed.
- Strengthen management practice in a way that combines clear expectations with compassion, reflection and learning.
- Create simple, accessible systems so people know where to go, understand what is expected and receive timely help.
- Lead workforce, succession and organisational-capacity planning alongside the CEO and SLT, linking people requirements to service growth, resources and risk.
- Maintain clear, accessible and proportionate employment frameworks, while ensuring day-to-day HR casework is appropriately supported by external specialists.
- Coordinate outsourced HR, IT and specialist support, making sure providers understand The Brick's values and give practical, respectful and good-value advice.
- Oversee effective administration and organisational coordination, including the work of the Admin Assistant, so information, meetings, records and routine processes are well managed.
- Notice where support is fragmented, duplicated or missing and work with colleagues to make it more joined up and useful.
3. Volunteer leadership and development
- Lead the development of a clear and consistent approach to volunteering across The Brick.
- Ensure volunteers are welcomed, inducted, trained, supported and valued.
- Work with managers to clarify volunteer roles, boundaries, supervision arrangements and safeguarding expectations.
- Strengthen volunteer recruitment, retention, recognition and communication.
- Ensure volunteering is safe, inclusive and meaningful, with opportunities for people to contribute their skills, rebuild confidence and feel that they belong.
- Remove avoidable barriers to volunteering while keeping appropriate safeguards and clear boundaries.
- Develop systems that help us understand the contribution, experience and impact of volunteers.
- Champion volunteering as part of our belief that everyone has strengths, gifts and something valuable to contribute.
4. Health, safety and wellbeing
- Lead The Brick’s approach to health and safety across workplaces, projects, community spaces and relevant operational activity.
- Ensure health and safety policies, procedures and risk assessments are up to date, proportionate and understood.
- Work with managers to ensure safe working practices, including lone working, manual handling, fire safety, incident reporting, first aid, food-related environments and premises safety.
- Build a practical health and safety culture in which people understand risk, speak up without fear and learn together when things go wrong.
- Ensure accidents, incidents, near misses and concerns are recorded, reviewed and used for learning.
- Oversee health and safety training requirements and ensure managers understand their responsibilities.
- Work with external advisers or competent persons where specialist health and safety advice is needed.
- Treat health and safety as part of caring for people, not as a tick-box exercise.
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5. Property, facilities and organisational resources
- Lead operational oversight of The Brick’s non-financial property, premises and facilities responsibilities.
- Ensure buildings, offices, hubs, warehouses, shops, food/community spaces and other premises are safe, well maintained and fit for purpose.
- Work with relevant managers and external contractors to ensure compliance with fire safety, servicing, maintenance, inspections, access, security and general facilities requirements.
- Maintain clear records of key compliance checks, contracts, certificates and follow-up actions.
- Support managers to resolve property and facilities issues in a timely and practical way.
- Ensure contractors and suppliers are appropriately managed, with clear expectations and value for money.
- Work closely with the Head of Housing where property compliance overlaps with housing or accommodation-related services.
- Develop simple systems for tracking property risks, repairs, responsibilities and deadlines.
6. Administration, policies and operational systems
- Lead a clear organisational framework for administration, policies, procedures, records and operational systems, ensuring they are current, useful, accessible and consistently maintained.
- Remove or simplify policies and processes that are duplicative, outdated or unnecessarily complicated.
- Ensure operational procedures help people make good decisions rather than create avoidable barriers.
- Support managers to implement policies consistently and confidently.
- Lead improvements to internal systems across the central functions, including people, administration, volunteering, facilities, quality, health and safety, communications and organisational compliance.
- Help build a culture of continuous improvement, where staff and volunteers are encouraged to suggest better ways of working.
- Ensure key operational information is easy to find, easy to understand and used in practice.
- Ensure internal communication, organisational calendars, records and routine coordination help staff and volunteers understand what is happening, what is changing and what is expected.
7. Quality, risk and organisational assurance
- Maintain oversight of key operational risks relating to people, volunteers, health and safety, property, facilities and internal systems.
- Support the CEO and trustees with assurance that key responsibilities are being managed properly.
- Contribute to the organisational risk register and ensure actions are followed through.
- Ensure relevant policies, procedures and records are ready for funder, trustee, audit or regulatory scrutiny.
- Support the organisation to learn from complaints, incidents, staff feedback, volunteer feedback and operational challenges.
- Work closely with the Financial Controller where operational compliance links to insurance, contracts, procurement or financial controls.
- Know when specialist advice is needed and ensure it is obtained at the right time.
- Balance compliance with judgement, proportionality and The Brick’s person-centred values.
8. Safeguarding, inclusion and boundaries
- Work alongside safeguarding leads to ensure operational systems support safe practice.
- Ensure safer recruitment, induction, volunteering and supervision arrangements are embedded across the organisation.
- Promote clear professional boundaries, especially in services working with people experiencing trauma, homelessness, poverty or crisis.
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