Our offer to you
We pride ourselves in being a great place to work, providing a supportive culture with opportunities to grow and develop your career, achieve a healthy work life balance and to be recognised for the great work you do. You will receive:
- Competitive salary and pension scheme
- 33 days holiday (inclusive of bank holidays) - increasing to 38 days over 5 years
- Hybrid, Flexible working
- Cycle to work scheme Electric Vehicle Scheme
- Health and Wellbeing portal – access to financial, health and wellbeing support and an Employee Assistance Programme
- Discounts – you will have access to Blue Light and NHS Discounts as well as discounts on mobile phones, gym membership, cinema tickets, restaurants, holidays and shopping
About Us
This is a fantastic opportunity to join a team of over 1,400 employees and over 28,000 volunteers, united by our goal of saving lives through essential first aid services, training and campaigning. As a charity with rich heritage and a long history of serving humanity, we are proud of our past and excited about creating a healthier, safer, more resilient future.
St John Ambulance works at the heart of communities, supporting and enabling them to access and receive physical and mental health first aid. We do this through developing and providing effective community response and outreach services (e.g. Ambulance response & Nighttime Economy) and using our longstanding expertise to empower people with vital clinical skills and the confidence to use them (e.g. our Volunteers and Community Advocates, NHS Cadets and Young Responders programmes). There is also a buoyant social enterprise network which delivers first aid training and supplies medical consumables to businesses and consumers.
Job Summary
The Volunteer Support Officer plays a key role in ensuring a smooth, efficient, and positive volunteer experience across the full end-to-end journey. From recruitment and onboarding through to training compliance, and youth safeguarding requirements.
This role provides direct operational support to local volunteer teams, ensuring accurate records, effective communication, and timely responses to queries. As the named lead for a number of counties within a designated service region, the Volunteer Support Officer works closely with Volunteer Projects Officers and Volunteers to deliver high-quality, consistent volunteer services.
They will oversee the day-to-day work of Volunteer Administrators, introduce service improvements such as a ticketing system and customer service training, and ensure that local volunteer services run efficiently and in line with organisational priorities, polices and standards.
About You
You will be educated to GCSE level or equivalent, Customer Service or Business Administration qualification (e.g., NVQ, apprenticeship, or equivalent), have strong organisational skills with the ability to prioritise and manage multiple tasks in a busy environment, have excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to adapt style for different audiences, have a high level of accuracy and attention to detail when managing records, data, and communications, have strong interpersonal skills with the ability to build effective working relationships with a wide range of stakeholders, have an understanding of customer service principles and the ability to deliver a professional, positive, and solutions-focused service, providing high-quality administrative and operational support in a customer-facing role, managing or coordinating end-to-end processes (e.g., recruitment, onboarding, compliance, training records), responding to a high volume of enquiries from diverse stakeholders through different channels (e.g., email, phone, ticketing) and have handling sensitive and confidential information in line with data protection regulations.
About the Role
Volunteer Journey Support
➢Oversee the full volunteer lifecycle for allocated counties, including recruitment, onboarding, youth compliance, and training record updates.
➢Act as the key administrative contact for volunteers and local teams in communities of practice, counties and networks, ensuring timely, clear, and supportive responses to all queries.
➢Maintain accurate records in MyData, Reach, and other systems, ensuring compliance with safeguarding, regulated activity, and data protection requirements.
➢Maintain and update compliance-related documentation to support audit, assurance, and reporting requirements.
➢Support adult and youth volunteer teams with onboarding processes, providing guidance and documentation to ensure all requirements are met before deployment.
➢Ensure volunteer services are delivered in an inclusive, accessible, and anti-racist way, setting standards and providing guidance to administrators and local teams to embed best practice.
Service Improvement
➢Implement and oversee a ticketing/helpdesk system to log, allocate, track, and resolve queries efficiently, ensuring clear ownership and accountability for every request.
➢Lead the development and delivery of excellent customer service standards for volunteer-facing services, including the introduction of customer service training for administrators and local volunteer teams.
➢Identify opportunities for process improvements using volunteer feedback, compliments, complaints, performance data, and service KPIs/SLA metrics, working closely with the Volunteer Services Partner.
➢Support the design, implementation, and maintenance of dashboards and reporting facilities (e.g., Power BI, Excel, SharePoint) to monitor service performance and trends.
➢Oversee the management, escalation, and resolution of volunteer complaints or concerns, working with People & Culture, Safeguarding, and local leaders to achieve fair and timely outcomes.
Leadership and Management
➢Line manage Volunteer Administrators, providing day-to-day support, supervision, and performance monitoring.
➢Set clear service standards and ensure high-quality, consistent delivery across all administrative activities.
➢Foster a culture of inclusion, collaboration, and responsiveness in line with St John values.
➢Champion and model a ‘One St John’ culture, actively bringing together staff and volunteers across functions and counties to build cohesion, consistency, and shared ownership of organisational priorities.
Collaboration and Partnership
➢Work in partnership with Volunteer Projects Officers and Volunteers to ensure seamless local service delivery.
➢Work closely with Communities of Practice, Youth, Clinical, Event, and Ambulance Operations teams to coordinate volunteer services, ensure training and compliance requirements are met, and support operational readiness across allocated counties.
➢Collaborate with the Digital and Data teams to improve the use of systems and reporting tools (including MyData, Reach, and Power BI).
➢Coordinate internal volunteer service communications across allocated counties, ensuring consistency and clarity.
Customer Service and Communication
➢Manage incoming enquiries from volunteers, prospective applicants, and staff via multiple channels (email, phone, ticketing system), ensuring prompt, accurate, and friendly responses.
➢Maintain accurate records of interactions, outcomes, and follow-up actions to support service improvement and reporting.
➢Draft and send clear, consistent, and accessible communications to volunteers, ensuring messages are aligned with organisational tone and values.
➢Liaise with county and network teams to ensure key information is cascaded effectively and volunteer feedback is heard, recorded, analysed, and acted upon.
➢Monitor trends in enquiries and communications to identify common issues, training needs, or opportunities for process improvements
Other Responsibilities
➢Actively promote St John values and behaviours in all work and relationships.
➢Work flexibly to meet the needs of volunteers, with a role that includes evenings and weekends work.
➢Perform any other duties commensurate with these responsibilities, the band of the post and skills and qualifications of the post-holder
Please see the job description for more detail (this can be viewed on our website or once you click apply)
We reserve the right to close this vacancy early if we receive high volume of applications for the role. Therefore, if you are interested, please submit your application as early as possible.
St John Ambulance are committed to increasing the diversity of our team and making sure we best reflect the diversity of the communities we serve. At St John, everyone is valued and supported to thrive, we have several networks including Multi Culture, Disability and Accessibility, Pride, Family and Carers and Women’s groups. We do not tolerate any form of discrimination and engender a sense of belonging for all, by creating an environment of mutual respect, where we value unique differences and demonstrate authentic allyship. We believe passionately in equality, diversity and inclusion.
'St John Ambulance is committed to safeguarding and we promote safe recruitment practice. Therefore, all successful applicants will undergo pre-employment checks, including DBS Clearance, as part of the onboarding process, if applicable to the nature of the role'.
Please note: St John does not accept speculative CVs and will only review CVs sent in application for an advertised vacancy.
