The posting
Job description
Serpentine is seeking an ambitious, supportive and innovative leader to join the Audiences team as our Head of Visitor Engagement.
This is a key role at an important moment of transformation for visitor experience at Serpentine. We are evolving the team from a primarily operational front-of-house function into a more active, audience-focused Visitor Engagement team: one that combines excellent operations and welcome with meaningful opportunities for visitors to connect with our exhibitions, artists and ideas. As part of this work, we have established four experience standards — Safety, Welcome, Connection and Efficiency — which provide a clear framework for the experience we want to create and how we will measure and improve it.
The Head of Visitor Engagement will play a central role in turning our ambition into practice: embedding the experience standards, developing the team, building strong relationships across Serpentine and ensuring visitor insight and experience increasingly influence how we plan and deliver our work. Working closely with the Director of Audiences, you’ll develop our Visitor Experience strategy and implement it across the organisation, leading a step change in how we welcome audiences including how we develop new activities to engage a wider range of visitors.
You’ll combine a strong operational understanding of visitor-facing environments with demonstrable experience of leading or supporting visitor experience transformation. Bringing a coaching approach, you’ll support a team of managers to develop and lead the wider team whilst also influencing colleagues across the organisation to embed the visitor perspective into decision making. Most importantly, you’ll bring a passion for welcoming and engaging a wide and diverse range of audiences and a commitment to continuously improving our offer.
This is an opportunity to lead a significant cultural and operational shift, while establishing Visitor Engagement as a confident and influential voice within the organisation.
- Demonstrable experience of leading or supporting significant visitor experience, customer experience or front-of-house transformation, with evidence of turning strategic ambition into practical and sustained change.
- Strong operational understanding of visitor-facing environments, including the ability to balance excellent experience with safety, staffing, efficiency and day-to-day delivery.
- Experience of leading and developing managers and teams, with a coaching approach that enables teams to work at their best.
- Ability to work strategically across an organisation, influencing colleagues beyond direct areas of responsibility and embedding the visitor perspective into planning, decision-making and delivery.
- Strong understanding of inclusive and accessible visitor experience, with experience of identifying barriers and developing approaches that respond to different audience needs, motivations and levels of confidence.
- Confidence working with data, feedback and insight to understand performance, identify opportunities and support continuous improvement.
- Strong collaborative and communication skills, with the ability to build effective relationships across operational, creative and audience-focused teams and to bring people with you through change.
Strategy and Leadership
- Working with the Director of Audiences, develop and embed Serpentine's Visitor Experience strategy across the organisation, ensuring visitor needs and experiences inform planning and decision-making.
- Translate the Visitor Experience strategy and experience standards into clear objectives and deliverables for the Visitor Engagement team.
- Provide strategic leadership for the Visitor Engagement team, creating a high-performing, inclusive and visitor-focused culture of continuous learning and improvement.
- Lead, coach and develop the Visitor Engagement Managers, supporting consistent and effective operational leadership and developing their management capability.
- Work with the People team to develop a performance management approach linked to Serpentine's experience standards that encourages excellent visitor-focused practice.
- Oversee workforce planning and recruitment, building a team with the skills, perspectives and flexibility required to serve Serpentine's current and future audiences.
- Ensure effective induction, training and ongoing development equips staff with the knowledge, confidence and skills required to succeed.
Safety
- Provide senior leadership for safe and effective visitor-facing operations across exhibitions, public programmes, events and private hires, supporting the Visitor Engagement Managers to maintain high standards of operational readiness.
- Work closely with Facilities, Production, Security and other relevant teams to ensure appropriate visitor-facing procedures are in place.
- Ensure Visitor Engagement staff are trained and prepared to respond to incidents, emergencies and other operational challenges.
- Oversee the review of incidents, near misses and operational issues, ensuring learning is translated into improved training and processes.
Welcome
- Develop Serpentine's approach to welcome, creating a flexible experience that responds to different visitor needs, motivations and levels of confidence.
- Champion inclusive and accessible visitor experience, working closely with the Access and Groups Manager to identify and remove barriers to participation.
- Work with Enterprise, our Catering partners and other public-facing teams to create a consistent approach to welcome across the visitor journey.
- Support the Access and Groups Manager to develop Serpentine's approach to schools, community groups and other organised visits, increasing participation and impact.
- Ensure visitor needs are considered throughout exhibition and programme planning, including access, orientation, information and use of Serpentine's spaces.
Connection
- Develop the Visitor Engagement team's role in helping audiences actively engage with Serpentine's exhibitions, artists and ideas through conversation, interpretation and participation.
- Lead the development of a varied programme of informal and semi-formal visitor engagement, including exhibition introductions, tours, family activity and other appropriate formats.
- Work collaboratively with the Programmes team to understand the intentions of each exhibition and identify how Visitor Engagement can help audiences encounter, understand and respond to the work.
- Ensure staff have the knowledge, confidence and interpretative approaches needed to engage audiences with each exhibition.
- As part of the Audiences leadership team, contribute to a coherent end-to-end audience journey across physical and digital touchpoints.
- Develop, test and scale initiatives that deepen audience relationships with Serpentine, including Bloomberg Connects, audience data collection, repeat visitation and appropriate opportunities for visitor giving.
Efficiency
- Develop a performance and improvement framework for Visitor Experience, using KPIs, visitor feedback, staff insight, audience research, visitor figures, mystery visits and external benchmarks to understand performance and identify priorities.
- Ensure visitor and staff insight is translated into operational improvements and informs wider organisational decision-making.
- Oversee Serpentine's approach to visitor feedback and service recovery, ensuring appropriate responses while systematically using feedback to improve the experience.
- Identify opportunities to use technology, automation and improved processes to simplify the visitor journey and enable staff to spend more time supporting and engaging visitors.
- Manage the overall Visitor Engagement budget and workforce envelope, working with the Visitor Engagement Managers to balance excellent visitor experience with efficient use of resources.
- Use data and insight to evaluate new approaches, test improvements and build the evidence required to scale successful initiatives.
General duties:
- Follow and assist in the implementation of all Serpentine’s policies including Dignity at Work and Health and Safety policies.
- Any other activities as are necessary for the operation of the Visitor Engagement team and its strategic objectives.
Job benefits
Hours: Our normal office working hours are 10am to 6pm, Monday to Friday. As the Visitor Engagement team provides a 7-day operation, the jobholder will be expected to regularly work weekend and evening hours to support the team. We operate a hybrid working model. The jobholder will be expected to attend the office at least 3 days per week with the option to work from home when operations allow.
Duration of Appointment: Permanent
Annual Leave: 25 days per annum, plus bank holidays. Part-time / fixed-term roles receive the pro-rata equivalent of this.
Pension: Participation in Serpentine’s auto-enrolment pension scheme. You can opt out if you wish.
Other Benefits:
- discount on certain products such Limited Editions;
- access to our employee assistance programme;
- season travel ticket loans and a
- Cycle2Work scheme.
How to Apply: Please apply with your CV and Cover Letter. In your Cover Letter, please address:
- How your industry knowledge, skills and proven experience will bring benefit to the role;
- Examples of how you have applied skills and experience relevant to this role in your current or previous work;
- What specifically attracts you to this role and Serpentine.
Closing Date: Sunday 15 November at midnight.
First stage interviews will take place on Friday 20 November and Second stage interviews will take place on Wednesday 25 November.
Salary range
60,000 GBP Annual
