Head of Service - Smokefree Island

Join us on our journey to empower over a million people to change their behaviours and thrive!

At Thrive Tribe we deliver award-winning healthy lifestyle and wellbeing programmes that make people happier and healthier! We’re looking for a Head of Service to join our Smokefree Island service. You will be responsible for ensuring Thrive Tribe’s Smokefree Island programme delivers measurable health outcomes for local communities. By leading high-performing teams, strengthening commissioner relationships, and driving operational excellence, you will play a critical part in improving population health and securing the long-term success of our regional services.

You will be supported by the specialist leaders on our neighbouring contract Smokefree Hampshire. Smokefree Island is a part of 4 public health contracts across the region which employs a wider multidisciplinary workforce delivering services in communities across the Isle of Wight and Hampshire. The contracts include services to help residents to stop smoking, lose weight and get active, covering a population of over 1.5 million people and a budget of over £4 million.

Role description

As a senior operational leader, you will be accountable for Smokefree Island’s performance, ensuring services deliver strong outcomes, meet contractual KPIs, and provide an outstanding experience for both service users and staff. You will play a key role in strengthening relationships with commissioners and partners, driving service innovation, and creating the conditions for sustainable contract growth and retention.

Like all roles at Thrive Tribe, you can expect your time at work to be fun, varied and challenging. We don’t like to stick to a firm JD as we know from experience that things change throughout the lifetime of a role and it gives our people the chance to play to their strengths. The core responsibilities for this position include:

• Leading Smokefree Island to maintain the ethos and success of Thrive Tribe, building strong relationships with teams, commissioners, stakeholders, and partners in line with our values.

• Creating a high-performing and positive employee experience for your teams, ensuring Thrive Tribe remains a supportive, engaging, and developmental place to work.

• Providing strategic leadership across the contract to ensure delivery of contractual KPIs while driving quality, innovation, and continuous improvement.

• Developing the capability of your leadership team to deliver outstanding operational leadership and building a strong succession pipeline to support future growth.

• Implementing Thrive Tribe’s full portfolio of digital, remote, and face-to-face services to ensure programmes remain responsive to client and community needs.

• Delivering service financial performance, including P&L (profit and loss) accountability and effective budget management across services.

• Supporting the mobilisation of new contracts within your region to ensure services launch successfully and at pace.

• Working with Business Development colleagues to shape service design, pricing, and the development of competitive national and regional tenders.

• Collaborating with other Service Leads to ensure a consistent, joined-up approach across regions and service areas.

• Representing Thrive Tribe at Public Health strategic groups and wider health system forums across the region.

• Working with colleagues across all of our Thrive Tribe services to contribute to new projects and service developments – we’re always looking to share knowledge and resources!

• Ensuring due consideration is given to our Safeguarding, Information Governance and Clinical Governance policies and procedures. To ensure safer recruitment and safeguarding for all we adopt pre-employment processes, including DBS checks.

• Helping us maintain the ethos of Thrive Tribe by driving our organisational culture forward across our services and using every opportunity to embed our values!

Reporting Structure

· Associate Director of Operations (Hampshire &Isle of Wight)

· Direct reports: 3

About you...

We are looking for someone with experience leading the delivery of public or private sector services, managing teams, and overseeing budgets. Building strong, lasting relationships with commissioners and stakeholders is also key to success in this role. We are seeking a natural leader who can develop people and drive performance. However, we hire based on attitude over traditional skills and experience so if you feel you are right for the job we would love to hear from you!

More than anything, we are looking for a team player who puts their heart in to their work. We’ve got some core values that run through everything we do, and we’d love it if they resonate with you too!

Be the change

You like helping people. Your work will impact on those who need help the most, empowering people to make positive changes to thrive. 

Be effective

You’re patient and can adapt under pressure. Always happy to make time for other people. And have a great attitude.

Be happy 

You recognise the power of a smile. You value a fun, supportive workplace and want to come to work raring to go (check out our rating on Glassdoor).

Be successful

You are motivated and driven. Happy working solo or as part of a team, you love meeting targets. And will be given opportunities to contribute and develop your career. 

Be big-hearted 

You want to make a difference. Working with a like-minded team of optimistic people, we want the same thing to do meaningful work and change lives.

Perks...

Every person makes Thrive Tribe the incredible place it is to work and play together, we’re unstoppable. Within our buzzing environment our talented people work hard but we ensure lots of fun is thrown in too! We offer you;

• Regular team events and activities, including ThriveFest and our annual Challenge Weekend (for those who want to put their fitness to the test!)

• Flexible working – we’re serious about life/work balance

• Tailored health and wellbeing support such as access to life coaching

• Rewards portal offering discounts on shops, restaurants, and days out

• Enhanced parental leave

• 23 days holiday, increasing every year up to a maximum of 29 days (plus Bank Holidays!)

• And last but not least, a day on us to live by our values!

Contract:  Permanent, 0.6FTE (22.5hours/week)

Salary: £25,200 per annum

Closing Date: Friday 31st July 2026 at 17.00pm.

Interviews are likely to be conducted during the week commencing 10th August 2026, but applicants will be contacted to confirm the next stage.

Location: Isle of Wight

Please note, the successful applicant will be required to have the right to work in the UK.

Learn more about Smokefree Island: https://smokefreeisland.co.uk/

Got a question? Contact Andrea Downham, Associate Director of Operations (Hampshire and Isle of Wight) on 07483 992 398 or [email protected]

We believe that every person has the right to thrive at work, which is why we are committed to equal employment opportunity and will not discriminate. Should you require any specific accommodations in the recruitment process please let us know in your application .