Regional Onboarding Manager – Iberia

Location: Remote/School-based

Reporting Line: Regional Managing Director, Iberia

About ISP

The International Schools Partnership (ISP) is a growing group of committed colleagues, in financially responsible schools around the world, all of which aim to be the school of choice in their local area. Learning is at the heart of everything we do for our students, colleagues, and parents. We are committed to getting better, all the time.

ISP was founded by an experienced team of committed educationalists and operators who have worked together over many years. Our growing group of private schools located in the UK, the USA, Canada, Spain, Italy, Switzerland Costa Rica, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Malaysia, Mexico, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru educate children and students from 2–18 years of age. We have now expanded to over 76 schools that employ over 10,000 staff and deliver multiple curricula to over 65,000 students located across the globe.

We believe that successful schools are the ones that put learning at the heart of everything they do, always aiming to create rounded individuals that can forge successful careers and lives, in a rapidly changing world. Our goal is to enable our schools to be the leading school of choice in their local area. At ISP we continue to engage with schools around the world that are interested in becoming part of our global group of schools and look forward to welcoming more students and staff to the group.

Role context

The Regional Onboarding Manager (“ROM”) position is responsible for all aspects of onboarding newly acquired schools in the region. The ROM will be the main point of contact with business-critical functional teams (HR and Finance) in the acquired schools and will help to embed new team members as applicable. Working with Functional Heads in the regional office, this will cover multiple areas including:

• Finance - analyse the business drivers, quality of earnings, quality of assets and future forecasts to identify possible concerns and potential opportunities. Help the school to adopt ISP calendar and processes such as budget, forecast, month end, payroll.
• HR - analyse and collate staffing documentation for payroll and Group HR systems. Ensure initial compliance with single central registers and overall safeguarding training required for onboarding.
• Systems Integration - bringing the school onto the Group’s designated MIS & ERP (in conjunction with IT), together with production of monthly reports as required for student and parent data and reporting purposes.
• Control Environment – implement the ISP Group Delegation of Authority (DoA) framework as soon as practicable post-closing.
• Onboarding reporting – take regional responsibility for the management and regular updating of the Group’s onboarding project management (via Monday.com).

This role is crucial to the onboarding of the school and ensuring a seamless transition to being part of the ISP group. Post onboarding, the ROM will continue to support the school to become the ‘school of choice’ in the region, and the effective delivery of the Amazing Learning message that is at the centre of the ISP vision.

In coordination with stakeholders:

• ISP Europe Regional Team (Finance and HR)
• School Leadership Team including the School Principal, and other relevant stakeholders in the acquired schools to make sure they fully understand the work we are doing and why
• Group Onboarding Manager
• Third-Party Vendors

 

Main responsibilities include:

General

• Understanding of new acquisition/greenfield
  • Review the investment paper to gain a thorough understanding of the school and the rationale for ISP’s investment
  • Review the due diligence reports (financial, legal, labour, property, tax etc), identifying any red flag items that need to be addressed immediately post-closing

• Management of Monday.com (project management tool)
  • Arrange training for staff new to the application
  • Creation of project boards for new acquisitions from agreed templates
  • Tailor the boards with the risks/tasks specific to the acquisition
  • Prioritise the list of tasks to ensure appropriate focus by functions on urgent/key items first and to help to establish an appropriate project plan for integration
  • Review, understand and distribute the data gathered during the data diligence process, to the relevant Heads of Function, to avoid duplication of effort in gathering necessary data for the onboarding tasks.
  • Keep abreast of changes within Monday.com to ensure any impact on board management is identified and planned appropriately.

• Support the Regional Managing Director to develop the Onboarding plan by Function, agreeing on the critical areas to be covered in the initial Discovery phase and then the

• Support on regional and divisional onboarding update meetings
  • Creating agenda
  • Highlighting risks
  • Recording minutes and actions
  • Updating Monday.com

• Support the functional heads to deliver to those timelines
  • Chase up tasks without agreed timelines in place
  • Lock timelines once agreed by stakeholders
  • Report on actions in danger of or exceeding agreed timelines
  • Arrange regular meetings to follow up on items, understand any roadblocks and help find solutions to ensure onboarding process continues

• Feedback to Onboarding management
  • Ensure consistent data is collected for improvement and reporting purposes
  • Propose improvements to process for consideration by management team
  • Collect, review, and consolidate feedback from stakeholders and report to onboarding management team

Finance and IT

Reporting, Compliance and Control

•          Onboarding of the School into the wider ISP network, ensuring policies and procedures are adopted and ISP practices are followed

•          Ensure the timely reporting of all monthly and annual financial information.

•          Ensure timely and accurate production of month-end numbers and reporting which include Profit and Loss account, Balance Sheet and Cashflow.

•          Ensure ISP Group Delegation of Authority framework is implemented as soon as possible. Design internal control systems for all functions in the school to ensure the safeguarding of regional assets and monitor and enforce internal controls.

•          Work with regional and group finance & IT functions to ensure school implements ISP core finance and accounting systems (ISAMs, NetSuite, PBCS) as a priority.

Financial Planning and Analysis

•          Support the preparation and submission of the first post-acquisition school budget/in-year reforecast

•          Review and reconcile initial budget/forecast to investment case model, identifying any differences and reasons behind variances

•          Support school to implement ISP standard KPI and performance monitoring reports

•          Undertake such other reasonable responsibilities and tasks that may, from time to time, be assigned by the Regional Managing Director and other key stakeholders.

HR Systems

• Set school up in Cezanne (ISP HR Management system): support school in data collection to be completed. Verify and upload staff data template to Cezanne
• Connect school with Single Sign-On (SSO)

Compliance

• Check payroll is compliant with local tax and employment legislation
• Ensure payroll signed off with appropriate segregation of duties (i.e. 2 people, separate from those involved in preparing the payroll)
• Review key staff contracts, validate main terms and conditions and identify any anomalies
• Review any current disputes, threatened / current litigation, inquiries or investigations, compensation claims. Cross-check with due diligence report

Safeguarding

• Facilitate introduction for School SLT to ISP Safeguarding
• Training: Safer recruitment & Designated Safeguard Lead
• Set up Safeguarding systems (including Single Central Register, “SCR”) in conjunction with Group Safeguarding team
•       Collate SCR and Criminal Background Check (CBC) data for new school staff Candidate Profile

•          The successful candidate will need to have a minimum of five years’ experience in financial and accounting management, together with demonstrable project management skills. They will be a self-starter who uses initiative, can manage a varied workload, is deadline driven and has the commitment to seeing a change process through from start to finish. An ability to travel and spend time in the newly acquired schools is an essential component of the role.

• Essential skills/experience:

1.       Fluent English is essential, other European languages desirable

2.       Qualified accountant (chartered or equivalent)

3.       Strong Project Management skills essential

4.       Systems integration experience desirable

5.       Advanced Excel skills

6.       Excellent communication and influencing skills

7.       International experience

8.       Flexibility, multi-tasking mindset and an ability to deal with shifting priorities

9.       Hands-on approach

10.    Comfortable managing a variety of financial and non-financial stakeholders

11.    Experience in the education industry is desirable but not required

 

Safeguarding & Safer Recruitment

ISP is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and young people and expects all staff and volunteers to share this commitment. All post holders are subject to appropriate vetting procedures and satisfactory Criminal Background Checks or equivalent covering the previous 10 years employment history.