Profession animal facility manager

Animal facility managers coordinate and plan all activities of a zoo. They formulate policies, manage daily operations, and plan the use of materials and human resources. They are the driving force and public face of their institution. This often involves representing their institution on a national, regional and global scale and taking part in coordinated zoo activities.

Personality Type

• Enterprising / Investigative
• Enterprising / Conventional

Knowledge

• Zoo exhibit design

  Understand the various factors that influence effective zoo exhibit design as well as the steps towards realising that design.

• Environmental legislation

  The environmental policies and legislation applicable in a certain domain.

• Customer relationship management

  The customer-oriented management approach and basic principles of successful customer relations that focus on interactions with customers such as technical support, customer services, after-sales support and direct communication with the customer.

• Zoo community

  Zoo and aquarium community on a local, regional and global scale. Zoo membership associations, their guiding principles and how this might affect management of individual institutions within the wider community.

• Zoo regulations

  National, regional and international regulations related to zoos.

Skills

• Manage zoo staff

  Manage zoo staff, including zoo keeping staff at all levels and/or veterinarians and/or educators and/or horticulturalists.

• Delegate activities

  Delegate activities and tasks to others according to the ability, level of preparation, competence and legal scope of practice. Make sure that people understand what they should do and when they should do it.

• Develop visitor engagement strategies

  Working with others, develop visitor engagement strategies to ensure stability, or growth, in visitor numbers and encourage visitor satisfaction.

• Speak about your work in public

  Speak about your work to different kinds of audiences. Illustrate aspects depending on the audience and the occasion.

• Perform project management

  Manage and plan various resources, such as human resources, budget, deadline, results, and quality necessary for a specific project, and monitor the project's progress in order to achieve a specific goal within a set time and budget.

• Speak different languages

  Master foreign languages to be able to communicate in one or more foreign languages.

• Manage operational budgets

  Prepare, monitor and adjust operational budgets together with the economical/administrative manager/professionals in the arts institute/unit/project.

• Organise zoological exhibitions

  Organise zoological exhibitions and the display of live animals and zoological collections.

• Implement strategic management

  Implement a strategy for the development and transformation of the company. Strategic management involves the formulation and implementation of the major objectives and initiatives of a company by senior management on behalf of the owners, based on consideration of available resources and an assessment of the internal and external environments in which the organisation operates.

• Apply strategic thinking

  Apply generation and effective application of business insights and possible opportunities, in order to achieve competitive business advantage on a long-term basis.

• Manage budgets

  Plan, monitor and report on the budget.

• Manage work

  Supervise, instruct and plan work for teams or individual members of the team. Set up time schedules and make sure they are followed.

• Read zoo reports

  Read and process the reports of zookeepers and other zoological professionals, and compile the information for zoo records.

• Work effectively with other animal-related organisations

  Develop and sustain relationships with other organisations such as charities, government agencies, Non-Governmental Organisations and representative bodies, in relation to furthering animal health and welfare. Communicate veterinary principles and operate within multidisciplinary teams comprised of persons with varying degrees of scientific and administrative knowledge.'

• Respond to visitor complaints

  Respond to visitors complaints, in a correct and polite manner, offering a solution when possible and taking action when necessary.

• Oversee animal management

  Oversee all aspects of animal management.

Optional knowledge and skills

Source: Sisyphus ODB