Senior Funeral Director

Position: Senior Funeral Director

Location: West Sussex area. You’ll cover 4 branches across Horsham, Crawley, East Grinstead and Cookfield, with travel between sites.

Job Type: [Full-Time, 38.33 Hours per week]

Salary: £34,382.01 per annum (£17.23 per hour) + on-call payments

Lead by example, and be there when families need you most

As a Senior Funeral Director, you’ll guide families through one of the hardest times of their lives with empathy and professionalism and support your team to do the same.

You’ll spend around 70% of your time delivering and overseeing funerals, and the rest running the day-to-day operations of [NUMBER] branches across [MAIN TOWNS]. You’ll lead a team of Funeral Directors, Funeral Service Operatives and Funeral Service Specialists, creating a culture where everyone is proud of their work and every family feels informed, respected and looked after.

[OPTIONAL:
Our branches serve a diverse community, so you’ll help families arrange funerals that respect a wide range of faiths, cultures and traditions.]

• Lead and support funeral services, delivering complex arrangements, running pre-funeral briefings, and observing your team’s arrangements and funerals to keep care standards high
• Manage and develop your team, through recruitment, onboarding, 1:1s and performance reviews, and by managing rotas, holiday cover and training
• Care for the people who have died, making sure everyone in our care is looked after with timely, respectful, high-quality care, and that records and legal documents are always accurate
• Be on call, sharing the duty phone with your team so families can reach us whenever someone dies, day or night
• Lead local marketing and community engagement, building relationships with care homes, celebrants and local groups, and representing us at memorials and local events
• Go beyond funerals, making sure your team is trained to talk with families about funeral plans and the full range of our services

• Experience leading or managing a team, whether in the funeral sector or another service-led environment
• Funeral industry experience, including leading services and caring for people who have died, is a real advantage
• Experience managing people, including recruitment, performance management and resolving conflict
• Strong planning, documentation and compliance skills
• Resilience and calm under pressure, with the confidence to make decisions and delegate
• A full UK driving licence, as you’ll be driving for the role
• Flexibility to work evenings and weekends, and to take your turn on call with the duty phone

Experience covering more than one branch or deputising for a manager, a background in funeral plan sales, or a funeral qualification such as the Dip.

FD would be a bonus. [OPTIONAL:
An understanding of the faith and cultural funeral customs of the communities we serve, or speaking COMMUNITY LANGUAGES, would also be valuable.] You’ll find full details in the job description.

• 25 days’ annual leave plus bank holidays, combined into one allowance you can book flexibly across the year
• Pension with contributions matched up to 4%
• Funeral discounts for your family: 100% off for your partner or child, 50% for your parents and 20% for your wider family
• A free online will with Farewill, one of our group brands
• My Staff Shop discounts at high street and online retailers
• Employee Assistance Programme, with free, confidential support whenever you need it
• Training and development, with clear routes to progress to Business Manager or Cluster Manager
• Long Service Awards from 10 years

Death is part of life, and being there for families when it matters is what we do. Do work that means something, in a business…