Head of Operations & Continuous Improvement

Head of Operations & Continuous Improvement – Ardonagh Italia

Location: Milano, Italia

Role Purpose

Drive operational effectiveness and consistency across Ardonagh Italia by mapping current processes, simplifying and standardising them into Standard Operation Procedures (SOPs), building a robust Quality Assurance (QA) model, ensuring SOP currency, embedding structured training for new joiners, fostering a continuous improvement culture, delivering process efficiencies and cost reductions, maintaining visibility of daily workload and allocation, and owning SLAs for internal and external customers.

Key Responsibilities

• Process Discovery & Standardisation (SOPs)
• Map all core processes across broking, policy administration, renewals, endorsements, claims handling, finance operations, customer contact, and compliance-linked workflows.
• Identify waste, simplify decision points, eliminate unnecessary handoffs, and standardise processes.
• Create detailed SOPs with purpose, scope, steps, templates, handoffs, controls, SLAs, RACI, and versioning.
• Establish and maintain a central SOP repository.
• Quality Assurance (QA) Model
• Design and implement a formal QA framework (sampling plan, control checklists, scoring).
• Conduct sampling across calls, endorsements, quotes, claims files, and critical tasks.
• Lead Root Cause Analysis on defects and drive corrective action plans.
• Produce monthly QA dashboards and trend reports.
• SOP Governance & Maintenance
• Implement SOP lifecycle governance, including review calendars and approval workflows.
• Maintain SOP change logs and ensure alignment with regulatory and carrier requirements.
• SOP Lifecycle Governance
• 4. Training & Onboarding
• Create a structured training curriculum aligned with SOPs.
• Build assessment tools, certification paths, and role-based learning plans.
• Ensure new joiners are fully trained and existing staff receive refreshers.
• Measure time-to-competence and training effectiveness.
• 5. Continuous Improvement Culture
• Introduce CI methodologies (Lean, Kaizen, RCA, visual management).
• Facilitate CI workshops and improvement sprints.
• Maintain CI pipeline and track benefits with Finance.
• Embed problem-solving capability in teams.
• 6. Cost, Streamlining & Automation
• Identify opportunities for cost reduction, process streamlining, and automation.
• Partner with Technology/Data to reduce rekeying, digitise forms, and eliminate bottlenecks.
• Build business cases and track financial benefits.
• 7. Workload Oversight & Allocation
• Maintain daily visibility of workloads, queues, SLAs, and resource utilisation.
• Create capacity models and ensure balanced allocation.
• Implement cross-training to enhance flexibility.
• 8. SLA Ownership
• Define SLAs for key services (call response, endorsement turnaround, claims FNOL, quote times).
• Monitor performance with dashboards.
• Lead SLA recovery plans and stakeholder communication.

Key Deliverables (12 Months)

• Full SOP library for all critical processes.
• QA framework and monthly dashboards.
• End-to-end training curriculum and onboarding path.
• CI pipeline with validated benefits.
• Workload management dashboards.
• SLA catalogue and service monitoring toolkit.
• SOP and QA governance playbook.

Skills, Experience & Behaviours

• 7–10+ years in Operational Excellence, ideally within insurance or insurance broking.
• Strong experience in process mapping, SOP design, QA frameworks, SLAs.
• Lean/Kaizen and RCA expertise.
• Data-driven decision making.
• Fluency in Italian and English.
• Lean Six Sigma Green/Black Belt is an advantage
• Team player
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills
• Excellent stakeholder management skills
• 5+ years as people manager
• Strong problem-solving capabilities
• Ability to influence without authority and work in a collaborative manner