HR Change Specialist

**HR Change Specialist**
- 220009D1)

For Sainsbury’s HR, people are the most important asset we have and we’re always looking for the brightest talent to bring fresh energy, experience and inspiration. This helps us to get the best out of our people and make sure they have everything they need to feel valued, engaged and motivated. Within HR we do exactly that and take pride in making a real difference to millions of customers’ lives.

As a HR Change Specialist, you will work flexibly across change activity to successfully design key change initiatives and programmes with business leaders. Using your knowledge and expertise of change management and a variety of HR disciplines you will engage and partner with all levels of leaders, working directly with Heads of HR Change, Directors of HR, Divisional Directors (DD) & Senior Managers (SM), as well as other leadership teams.

You will work on colleague related change projects that have the greatest impact on our business, designing, advising on, planning and when necessary implementing change, placing respect for our colleagues and commercial impact at the heart of what you do.
- What you need to do_
- Work flexibly across a range of different change projects and programmes as required, using a broad range of change management and generalist/specialist HR skills to design robust change plans
- Take accountability for the people elements of change projects and programmes, including but not limited to organisational design, changes to culture and ways of working, process and operational changes, implementation of new technology, as well as any HR initiated changes such as role removal, changes to terms and conditions or policy changes
- Be responsible for mobilising a change team when needed to manage the approach to change across consultation, communication, training, recruitment and engagement
- Develop strong working relationships with business leaders establishing credibility quickly and gaining a reputation as a trusted advisor with sound working knowledge of the change context
- Enable the strategic delivery of the business leader’s colleague vision by advising on best practice delivery, appropriate strategies and leadership techniques for managing & embedding change, with a clear focus on the delivery of the business case and achievement of the return on investment
- Up skill business leaders to successfully lead and implement change programmes ensuring that respect for our colleagues is at the heart of that implementation
- Simplify the complexity of change for colleagues, by consulting with business leaders to be able to articulate a compelling case for change
- Embrace, utilise and role model the use of technology in your own ways of working, and as part of the changes you are supporting
- Assess the readiness and end to end impact of the colleague change and make improvements and recommendations as needed to ensure successful change delivery at every stage, including identifying and responding to inter-dependencies with other programmes of activity
- Advise business leaders on appropriate approaches and responses to risk, dependency and issue management throughout the life cycle of the change proactively feeding these back to relevant stakeholders to mitigate their impact

**What you need to know and show**
- Have an extensive working knowledge of change management practices, methodologies and tools
- A credible understanding of project management (internally and externally) tools and principles
- A detailed understanding of HR disciplines, including but not exclusive to Employment Law, Reward, L&D, Resourcing, Talent & OD, ER & Policy
- Experience of managing and leading all stages of people change
- Ability to effectively influence, build relationships and give effective feedback, at all levels, up to and including DD
- Proactive in planning ahead even if working with ambiguity, anticipating risks & dependencies even if outside core remit, focusing on the right priorities demonstrating our values
- Able to react to evolving situations at pace, re-evaluating plans or decisions as they develop and able to identify and respond to interdependencies with other programmes
- Management of design and strategy of multiple change projects at the same time when necessary
- Displays mature and grounded confidence, responding in an appropriate manner to criticism and remaining optimistic in the face of obstacles
- Show courage to challenge, address the blockers and stop when things are not working
- Able to reflect and learn from past mistake and failures
- Draw on own resilience and confidence when dealing with difficulties or new situations
- Flexibility and confidence when communicating messages, engaging or presenting to stakeholders, typically up to SM & DD level
- Display a credible and confident presentation style, able to move from explaining to engaging

**What’s In it for You**

If being part of a hugely influential team wasn’t enough, you