Store Operational Excellence Manager - Simplification in Hampshire

18 months FTC From £51,000 - £58,000 + Pension + PMI + ShareSave + 6.6 weeks holiday + Company Car provided + Hybrid Working (2-3 days per week in the office) 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 a Store Operational Excellence Manager - Simplification and you’ll be a big part of this.

Role Purpose: Lead store operational excellence, challenging current thinking and working across multiple business owners to simplify what we ask our stores to do, and how we do it. The role modernises retail processes and supports the communication ensuring processes are clear, flexible that reduce risk and customer friction. Using data, insight and the voice of the store, it removes unnecessary tasks, improves efficiency, and reduces operational risk. Setting store teams up for success to embed the right level of discipline and consistency where it matters most.

What’s the job?

• End‑to‑End Store Process Simplification: Working across business owners leads to a change to simplify our store processes to remove unnecessary tasks and reduce complexity. Challenge current practices by eliminating activities that don’t add value and ensure all procedures are practical and scalable. Creating clarity of where we need discipline, consistency and creativity.
• Using Data, Insight, and the Voice of the Store to Prioritise Change: Leverage data, risk analysis, customer feedback, and colleague input to target valuable simplification opportunities. Ensure decisions reflect store experiences and track benefits like saved time, reduced risk, and improved customer experience.
• Reducing Operational Risk and Enabling Safe, Compliant Execution: Spot areas where process issues or poor communication increase risk. Work with safety and compliance teams to design straightforward, safe processes and avoid passing risks onto stores.
• Cross functional collaboration: Identify new tools across the business to modernise our approach to processes that also reflects a blended learning style for our store teams, working closely with our Technology teams to identify ways we can modernise our approach.
• Enabling Clear, Effective Communication to Stores: Make communications of store process simple and relevant to store operations. Streamline change implementation to minimise confusion from multiple channels and overlapping messages. Support leaders and field teams to communicate expectations clearly and consistently.

What we need:

• Strategic doer: Proven at turning strategy into store ready execution across multisite retail.
• Change maker: Delivers complex change at pace; simplifies the complicated and brings others with you.
• Data driven operator: Interprets trends, spots risk and converts insight into action that improves outcomes.
• Influential communicator: Energises and aligns stakeholders from shopfloor to senior leadership.
• Strong Operational experience: Understand the practicality of day‑to‑day operations and has the ability to validate risk vs reward.
• Organised and outcomes focused: Manages multiple priorities; keeps the main thing the main thing.
• Tech confident: Comfortable with Excel, PowerPoint and project tools (e.g. Monday.com). Full UK driving licence. Some weekend and out of hours store visits as required.

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!