Change Planner

**About the role**

**Change Planner**

**12 Months FTC / Secondment**

**Up to 33k + Bonus + Pension + BUPA + ShareSave + 6.6 weeks holiday + Hybrid Working**

**Southampton, Store Support Office**

We believe anyone can improve their home to make life better. From our Southampton Store Support Office (SSO), we equip our stores, our people, and our whole business with everything it takes to help our millions of customers create a home they’ll love. Join us as Change Planner, and you’ll be a big part of this.

At B&Q we have a hybrid approach to working to increase flexibility in when and where we work. For this role we are looking for someone to be able to work from our head office 3 days a week.

**Key responsibilities**

As a Change Planner you will be responsible for delivering the successful range review of planning of either large complex and/or medium & small range change across the B&Q Estate. The Change Planner will also ensure any range change activity planned is set up to be delivered right first time, and has all the tools and communication requirements in place for a successful implementation.
- For reviews managed by Category Managers; Manage the cost creation, tracking and reporting of all costs associated with a project, ensuring any risks or changes are highlighted to the Category Manager in a timely manner
- For reviews managed by Project Managers; Support in the cost creation, processing and tracking of all costs owned within the Change Planner remit, ensuring any risks or changes are highlighted to the Project Manager in a timely manner
- Support the Category, Visual Merchandising and Planogram teams with robust and detailed knowledge of the existing store estate, enabling them to make informed decisions about project scopes, minimising the requirement for inefficient changes post scope creation
- Thoroughly question and draw on experience to gain a full understanding of the brief, ensuring a robust knowledge of the review requirements.
- To prepare & quality control store surveys (if required) to ensure the ‘as is’ status of the store estate understood & captured.
- Identify the gaps between ‘as is’ estate equipment, service infrastructure (e.g. sprinklers) and the needs of the planogram to provide at store level a full set of equipment, service change and shopfitting/merchandising (if applicable) requirements
- Interpret the needs of the individuals completing the change in stores, create and maintain a tailored execution plan containing all required technical information and external services schedules to enable right first-time implementation
- For PM led projects, create and manage a communication & project progression plan for external and internal stakeholders throughout the project
- Provide expert advice and issue resolution through the range change support log, acting as a key point of contact to handle implementation teams’ queries during their change project
- Provide best practice learnings to support implementation teams (B&Q, Agencies, External contractors)
- Working in collaboration with Retail to ensure the project is finalised, remedial activity is completed and sign off documentation is received

**Required skills & experience**
- Highly numerate with strong data management & analysis skills
- Has a methodical approach to detail planning with strong self-checking
- Detailed knowledge of the visual merchandising, planogramming and store planning process
- Ability to model costs at high level (for outline costing) and at individual store level (for budgeting)
- Detailed knowledge & appreciation of the complexity across product categories, equipment, and the B&Q estate
- Prior experience within Retail or of delivering retail change projects from within another function, i.e. Visual Merchandising
- Some travel with occasional overnight stays may be required
- Full driving licence preferred

**What's in it for me?**

As part of a great team, you’ll be valued for who you are.We’re committed to making B&Q more diverse and representative of the communities we serve, where everyone can feel they belong and have equal opportunities**. **You will have access to a range of networks that represent our colleagues and allies and help us to continue to put diversity and inclusion at the heart of our business.

We also recognise that wellness means different things to different people, and we want to help colleagues be at their best and feel well by offering a range of benefits to help you. As well as a competitive salary, our benefits package includes an award-winning pension scheme, bonus, ShareSave options, 6.6 weeks holiday, payroll giving, an Employee Assistance Programme, shopping discounts, colleague wellbeing benefits and lots more