Senior Visitor Experience Officer

Summary

We’re looking for a Senior Visitor Experience Officer to join the team. You'll support the House and Gardens Manager to ensure a smooth visitor operation across 2 complex properties Red House and Carlyle’s House. You'll contribute to creating a positive, inclusive, collaborative work environment passionate about delivering an excellent visitor experience. Being a Senior Visitor Experience Officer for the National Trust is all about people and we are looking for an enthusiastic and pro-active person to help us deliver exceptional experiences for every visitor and volunteer.     

This is a fixed term contract for 10 months, working for 4 days a week, 9-5:30pm. The working pattern is Wednesday to Saturday. Supervising the opening of Carlyle’s House on Wednesdays and the remaining days managing the opening of Red House.  

The advertised salary is inclusive of the Outer London Weighting allowance of £3,315 per annum (prorated if you are part-time). 

This role also involves being on an on-call rota, 1 week out of 4. There is an additional allowance of £30 a day for time spent covering on-call. Candidates need to live close enough to Red House or Carlyle’s to respond in the event of an on-call incident. If this is not possible for you, we still welcome your application and will consider applicants who cannot support the on-call rota.  

Please include a cover letter with your application. 

Interviews for this role will be held on Monday 27th January 2025.  

If you’d like an informal chat about the role before applying, please contact Elly Bagnall (.uk) 

What it's like to work here

You will be both part of a small but agile onsite team and part of a wider London team. Working with us will give you a valuable opportunity to build networks, consult and share practices with many regional colleagues. 

You’ll be reporting to the House and Gardens Manager, working in a team of 4 colleagues across Red House and Carlyle's House.

Red House is the Arts & Crafts dream of William Morris; designer, poet, artist, and writer. Although similar in time-period, Carlyle’s House strikes a different tone as the literary home of Thomas Carlyle; the nineteenth century essayist, historian, and philosopher. Both houses connect deeply with their communities and strive to address unequal access to heritage and green space.  

Find out more about Red House here 

Find out more about Carlyle’s House here 

What you'll be doing

As Senior Visitor Experience Officer, you’ll lead visitor operations during the open season for great service. Working alongside the rest of the team, you’ll support initiatives to engage our current and new audiences in the complex stories of our places. Delivering meaningful experiences that welcome and inspire all our visitors and volunteers. 

You’ll love what you do and enjoy sharing your knowledge and inspiring others. You may be encouraging visitors to take a closer look at a particular collection, checking presentation around the sites or helping write copy for web pages and social media. 

You’ll be a duty manager on a rota with colleagues, opening and closing Carlyle’s House and Red House and supporting volunteers as they welcome and guide visitors. 

You’ll manage the volunteer welcome team, and support volunteers to ensure their experience feels mutually beneficial. 

You will also be responsible for the health & safety of the sites while open to the public. Ensuring paperwork is up to date and sites are safe for our visitors.  

You can view the full role profile for this role in the document attached. You don't need to have all of the knowledge, skills and experience listed in the role profile; this is just to provide a full picture of what’s possible in this role. 

Who we're looking for

We'd love to hear from you if have :

•strong communication skills, able to establish positive relationships with both internal and external collaborators

•experience of working with and supervising volunteers

•an understanding of how to interpret significant collections to varied audiences

•excellent organisational and administrative skills, and the ability to time lead projects optimally

•ability to work independently as well as within a team, contributing to a positive, inclusive and productive place for staff and volunteers

•a flexible customer focused approach with experience in delivering high standards of customer service

•understanding an audience-led approach and the ability to evaluate and use feedback to further develop an offer or event

•practical working knowledge of Health and Safety procedures

The package

The National Trust has the motto ‘For everyone, for ever’ at its heart. We’re working hard to create an inclusive culture, where everyone feels they belong. It’s important that our people reflect and represent the diversity of the communities and audiences we serve. We welcome and value difference, so when we say we’re for everyone, we want everyone to be welcome in our teams too.

•Substantial pension scheme of up to 10% basic salary

•Free entry to National Trust places for you, a guest and your children (under 18)

•Rental deposit loan scheme

•Season ticket loan

•EV car lease scheme 

•Perks at work discounts such as gym memberships, shopping discount codes, cinema discounts

•Holiday allowance up to 32 days relating to length of service, plus holiday purchase scheme, subject to meeting minimum criteria.

•Flexible working whenever possible

•Employee assistance programme

•Free parking at most Trust places

Click here to find out more about the benefits we offer to support you.