Associate Director for Operations

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Position Summary

The Associate Director of Healthcare Operations is responsible for leading multiple healthcare programs, clients, or lines of business within the Philippines. This role provides strategic and operational leadership to ensure strong performance, client satisfaction, financial results, workforce stability, regulatory compliance, and employee engagement.

The Associate Director will serve as a senior operational partner to clients and internal stakeholders, translating business objectives into clear execution plans. The role requires a hands-on leader who can manage complex operations, develop high-performing teams, identify risks early, and drive sustainable improvements across service, quality, cost, and customer experience.

The successful candidate must demonstrate strong healthcare operations knowledge, executive presence, financial discipline, and the ability to lead through growth, transformation, and operational challenges.

Key Responsibilities

Operational Leadership

• Provide overall leadership for assigned healthcare clients, programs, and lines of business.
• Lead Operations Managers, Senior Operations Managers, and other assigned leaders.
• Establish clear operating rhythms, performance expectations, and accountability across the organization.
• Ensure daily, weekly, and monthly performance is reviewed through structured governance.
• Translate client requirements and contractual commitments into executable operating plans.
• Maintain strong control over service levels, productivity, quality, attendance, utilization, and customer experience.
• Identify performance risks early and implement immediate recovery and stabilization plans.
• Ensure corrective actions address root causes and result in sustainable performance improvement.
• Maintain operational readiness for seasonal volume, enrollment periods, new product launches, and business growth.

Client Leadership and Relationship Management

• Serve as a senior point of contact for assigned healthcare clients.
• Build trusted, transparent, and consultative relationships with client stakeholders.
• Lead client governance meetings, operational reviews, business reviews, and executive discussions.
• Communicate performance, risks, recovery plans, and opportunities clearly and proactively.
• Ensure client commitments are documented, assigned, tracked, and completed within agreed timelines.
• Partner with clients to identify opportunities to improve member, patient, provider, and customer experiences.
• Support client retention, contract expansion, and growth opportunities.
• Maintain appropriate executive escalation protocols and ensure there are no surprises for clients or internal leadership.

Performance and Quality Management

• Ensure achievement of contractual and internal performance expectations, including:
  • Service level
  • Average handle time
  • Quality assurance
  • Customer satisfaction
  • First-contact resolution
  • Schedule adherence
  • Attendance
  • Occupancy and utilization
  • Productivity
  • Attrition
  • Training throughput
  • Billing-to-payroll performance
  • Financial and margin targets
• Lead structured performance reviews and require clear action plans for any metric below target.
• Partner with Quality, Training, Workforce Management, Analytics, and Continuous Improvement teams to close performance gaps.
• Establish call-listening, coaching, calibration, and frontline engagement routines.
• Use data and operational insights to identify trends, performance drivers, and improvement opportunities.
• Ensure action plans include defined owners, deadlines, success measures, and follow-up governance.

Financial Management

• Own the financial performance of assigned accounts or programs.
• Manage revenue, gross margin, labor cost, overtime, staffing efficiency, and other controllable expenses.
• Understand client contracts, pricing structures, billing rules, penalties, incentives, and service-level commitments.
• Partner with Finance to review monthly results, forecasts, budget variances, and financial risks.
• Ensure staffing decisions balance client performance, employee experience, and financial expectations.
• Identify revenue-at-risk and margin-at-risk items and establish mitigation plans.
• Drive operational efficiency without negatively affecting quality, compliance, or customer experience.

Workforce and Capacity Management

• Partner with Workforce Management to ensure accurate forecasting, staffing, scheduling, and capacity planning.
• Review required headcount, productive headcount, shrinkage, attrition, hiring needs, and training plans.
• Ensure staffing plans align with client forecasts and contractual requirements.
• Challenge assumptions and address gaps before they affect service or financial performance.
• Maintain visibility into hiring classes, training throughput, nesting performance, production readiness, and early attrition.
• Ensure staffing decisions are supported by data and documented business rationale.

People Leadership and Talent Development

• Build a high-performance culture centered on trust, accountability, collaboration, and continuous improvement.
• Develop Operations Managers and other leaders through coaching, feedback, mentoring, and structured development plans.
• Establish succession plans for critical operational roles.
• Identify high-potential leaders and create opportunities that prepare them for increased responsibility.
• Ensure leaders spend appropriate time engaging frontline employees and understanding operational barriers.
• Hold leaders accountable for employee engagement, retention, performance management, and development.
• Partner with Human Resources on employee relations, performance concerns, leadership development, and organizational planning.
• Promote a culture where employees feel respected, supported, and connected to the purpose of serving healthcare consumers.

Healthcare Compliance and Risk Management

• Ensure all operations follow applicable client requirements, company policies, and healthcare regulatory standards.
• Reinforce expectations related to HIPAA, protected health information, data privacy, information security, and client confidentiality.
• Partner with Compliance, Security, and Quality teams to address incidents, audit findings, and control gaps.
• Ensure operational teams are prepared for internal audits, client audits, and regulatory reviews.
• Maintain effective business continuity, emergency response, and disaster recovery plans.
• Escalate material compliance, security, operational, or client risks promptly.
• Ensure corrective and preventive actions are documented and completed.

Launch, Transition, and Growth Support

• Provide operational leadership for new client implementations, new lines of business, migrations, and expansions.
• Partner with Project Management, Solutions, Training, Workforce Management, Talent Acquisition, IT, Facilities, and Finance during launches.
• Ensure operational requirements, risks, dependencies, and readiness criteria are clearly documented.
• Participate in go-live readiness reviews and provide accurate status reporting to executive leadership.
• Stabilize new programs through structured launch governance and early-life performance management.
• Support business development activities, client visits, solution discussions, and operational due diligence when required.

Continuous Improvement and Innovation

• Promote disciplined problem-solving using root-cause analysis, A3, Lean, DMAIC, or similar methodologies.
• Identify opportunities to simplify processes, reduce waste, improve productivity, and strengthen the customer experience.
• Partner with Technology, Analytics, Automation, and Continuous Improvement teams to implement scalable solutions.
• Encourage leaders to challenge existing processes and recommend better ways of working.
• Track improvement initiatives through measurable business outcomes.
• Share best practices across healthcare accounts and sites.

Leadership Expectations

The Associate Director is expected to:

• Demonstrate ownership for results and avoid passing accountability to support functions.
• Lead with urgency while making thoughtful, data-driven decisions.
• Maintain high visibility within the operation.
• Communicate difficult messages clearly, respectfully, and directly.
• Anticipate challenges instead of reacting after performance is affected.
• Build strong partnerships across Operations, Workforce Management, Training, Quality, Finance, Human Resources, IT, and Client Services.
• Provide executive leadership with accurate, timely, and transparent updates.
• Create an environment where leaders understand priorities and employees understand how their work contributes to client and business success.
• Maintain a strong bias for action and follow-through.

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration, Healthcare Management, Operations Management, or a related field.
• At least eight years of experience in business process outsourcing, contact center operations, healthcare services, or a related industry.
• At least four years of experience leading large, complex operational teams through Operations Managers or equivalent leaders.
• Experience managing multiple programs, lines of business, or client relationships.
• Demonstrated experience managing operational and financial performance.
• Strong understanding of contact center metrics, workforce planning, quality management, and performance improvement.
• Experience leading client governance meetings and presenting to senior stakeholders.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills.
• Strong analytical, problem-solving, and decision-making capabilities.
• Ability to work in a fast-paced, matrixed, and rapidly changing environment.
• Willingness to work schedules that support clients and stakeholders across different time zones.
• Ability to travel domestically or internationally when business needs require.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience supporting U.S. healthcare payers, providers, pharmacy benefit managers, specialty pharmacies, or healthcare service organizations.
• Knowledge of healthcare member services, patient access, provider services, claims, benefits, enrollment, pharmacy, or clinical support operations.
• Working knowledge of HIPAA, protected health information, and healthcare compliance requirements.
• Experience managing operations across multiple Philippine sites or global delivery locations.
• Experience with new client implementations, transitions, migrations, or business expansions.
• Lean Six Sigma, COPC, Project Management, Scrum, or similar certification.
• Experience using business intelligence tools, workforce platforms, performance dashboards, and automated reporting.
• Experience managing large-scale operations with several hundred employees or more.

If you like wild growth and working with happy, enthusiastic over-achievers, you'll enjoy your career with us!