Store Project Lead – 12 month FTC Bracknell, England
Job description
Your job is to understand, prioritise and organise activities that impact the physical store customer experience, across all Waitrose formats and third party partnerships. You will develop a roadmap of changes to the store environment that delivers the ultimate Waitrose experience and drives preference and loyalty amongst our target Customers.
You will be responsible for leading and managing a change in way of working for Store Design projects across Store Design, Store Development, and CX as well as with other key and impacted stakeholders. You will be the key conduit for ensuring that change is managed in the best way possible to mitigate against business risk.
Your role will be to lead the Store Design Process & Programme Manager in developing processes associated with the prioritisation and programme management of Store Design projects, developing a robust stage gate process to ensure projects are set up for success with clear accountabilities and approvals, developing appropriate templates or processes to ensure stakeholders are regularly updated on project progress.
Reporting to the Store Concept Design lead you will support the Store Design & process Manager to develop a 12-18 month roadmap of Store Design activities, providing a view of priorities versus resources & budget and supporting senior Stakeholders in evaluating and triaging opportunities to make decisions about which priorities to go after, in what order and recommending where we should invest resources & funding.
You will need to share and co-ordinate your roadmap with key teams and senior Stakeholders in the Customer, Finance, Commercial, Retail and Property Digital and Customer Service directorates amongst others. With a view of all Store Design activities and milestones across Customer Experience, Commercial & Store Development team, you’ll help streamline and manage Governance groups, resolve and escalate risks and issues to our momentum as appropriate.
Known for your organisation, practicality, stakeholder management and leadership skills in representing project information and updates, you’ll be a critical part of delivering our Waitrose Partnership plan and driving a customer focussed culture.
Through your profession you will have the opportunity to develop and stretch personally and professionally to achieve your potential.
The Partnership supports agile and flexible working practices, such as when, where and how we work. We have several different ways to work flexibly, including part-time, flexible or compressed hours, and job sharing. Head office areas also support a blended working approach.
We celebrate diversity and inclusion in the John lewis Partnership and we are committed to becoming the UK’s most inclusive business, reflecting and connecting with the diverse communities that we serve.
Key Responsibilities:
Lead the delivery of a clear, aggregated 12-18 month plan of Store Design activity, priorities and resources.
Provide a regular and authoritative view of short & long term progress, risks, issues and obstacles to the achievement of our Customer Strategy, identified Outcomes and our Waitrose Partnership plan.
Responsible for managing any immediate and future risks associated with the transitional period of change. Ensuring that immediate risks associated with any Store Design project are mitigated, as well as supporting in building robust future processes.
You will be the key face of change for multiple internal stakeholders. Accountable for managing and overseeing the backlog of current Store Design/Development/CX/CPG led projects that, in future, will be delivered through the Stage Gate process. It will be your task to ensure anything that can and should be delivered can be done as quickly as possible, and what cannot be achieved is well articulated to and understood by key stakeholders.
Support leaders, governance groups and decision making forums like the WDG to use and understand the information you present on our priorities and resources; provide a neutral objective voice to ensure the best outcome.
Develop a clear process for budget management and approvals processes associated with delivering a pipeline of change to the physical store environment including the delivery of milestone stores.
Manage and communicate changes associated with new ways of working to ensure new processes are developed collaboratively and are embedded to ensure a Lean, Simple, Fast approach to future project delivery.
Lead the evaluation of all current store environment activity, to ensure it has a clear business owner, business case and roadmap to delivery. Identify any risks and issues, propose and agree solutions with relevant stakeholders to expedite delivery.
Be a champion for planning, organisation and orchestration amongst stakeholders - displaying supreme stakeholder management and engagement. Be the expert in navigating our governance processes to drive the Store Design activity plan and through your relationships with the business, help streamline our governance in line with the principles of lean, simple and fast.
Aggregate the inputs into our Store Design backlog and priorities by leading and establishing a series of regular cross functional reviews and discussions with Retail, Trading, Property & others
Act in accordance with the Partnership’s purpose and democratic principles, constructively participating in co-ownership, and demonstrating to customers and each other that it is a better way of doing business. Share your knowledge, experiences, ideas and opinion to improve the Partnership, speaking honestly and frequently.
Essential Skills:
Organisation skills & Planning and prioritisation.
Leadership and management skills.
Stakeholder Management including senior levels.
Strong influencing skills.
Communication skills.
Analytical mindset.
Benefits of the Partnership and the role:
You will enjoy 25% discount at John Lewis and 20% in Waitrose
The Partnership has a competitive pension scheme where your contributions will be matched by the Partnership (up to 8% of pay)
Excellent work life balance, including focus on well being and flexible working and our marketing leading equal parenthood leave Policy
Find out more about the extensive range of exciting benefits that you could enjoy when you join us on our website under About the Partnership; Benefits.
Next Steps:
The application form consists of a CV upload followed by application questions. Please ensure you refresh the page each time you complete a task to ensure you complete everything that you need to in time. (If internal, check your Workday notifications and see further guidance on the PDW under "Internal application process").
Once you've submitted an application the next steps of the process, if successful, are likely to include a 1 stage virtual interview.
You'll be asked about any adjustments you might need to support the recruitment process. Let us know, and we'll be sure to discuss it with you.
Thanks for your patience in the meantime and for showing an interest in joining JLP.
For internal use only:
You can view a copy of the full job outline HERE
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