Regional Quality Manager (South Coast England) in Manchester

Diageo was created in 1997 but its business is built on the principles and foundations laid years before by giants of the industry – Arthur Guinness, John Walker, Elizabeth Cumming and many more. Today, Diageo is a world class leader in beverage alcohol, producing an outstanding collection of over 200 brands and owning the top two largest spirit brands in the world, Johnnie Walker and Smirnoff and 20 of the world’s top 100 spirit brands. Its portfolio also includes Crown Royal, J&B, Buchanan’s and Windsor Whiskies, Cîroc and Ketel One vodkas, Captain Morgan, Baileys, Don Julio, Tanqueray and Guinness.

Diageo has built a strong platform for growth – through investment in its own brands, and by acquisition to broaden the geographical footprint and category depth and range. The company’s strong local business units are well positioned to win in increasingly competitive and fast-paced environments. Diageo’s portfolio is well-diversified across price-tiers, enabling it to participate where consumer opportunity is greatest, and to capture shifts in consumer preference.

Diageo's culture is built and maintained by the five values that underpin its business and guide how Diageo works. At Diageo, employees are passionate about its customers and consumers and want to be the best. They give each other the freedom to succeed and value each other. Employees work hard so they can be proud of what they do and how they do it. While Diageo moves at pace, constantly evolving and improving, its values remain consistent. Diageo wants employees to live these values every day, everywhere so that Diageo can be proud of what they do and be the best that they can be.

As the Regional Quality Manager you will play a key role in protecting and growing Diageo’s On Trade business. You will support and deploy an efficient model of internal and external dispense technical services for your region(s) through leading a team of regional Quality Executives (QEs) to ensure Diageo is consistently delivering against our Quality Standards. You will be responsible for the coaching, motivation and development of a technical team, creating an inclusive and positive culture that enables everyone to thrive and perform at their best. Working closely with the Heads of Field & Technical, Innovation and Central Capability teams, you will be relentless in driving continuous quality improvement for your region(s), seeking to understand what is happening at a regional and customer level, including managing events, and making interventions to ensure we are able to deliver fantastic customer outcomes.

Top Accountabilities

• Support and deploy the technical service model for your division, ensuring technical breakdowns are solved within SLA, and internal and external resource is optimised across territories to maximise potential for proactive work and events.
• Set and deliver quality standards for your region through clear objective setting and performance/KPI tracking of your regional Quality team, continuously optimising all quality levers, including in call standards, overflow work and equipment management.
• Support relationships with 3rd party contractors and lead brewers, ensuring regular business reviews and management of any interventions required to deliver against quality KPIs.
• Support budgets for 3rd party contractors and equipment, working cross functionally to manage in month forecasting & delivery.
• Understand and consistently apply the controls process of in outlet activity, including the audits and asset management procedures ensuring all direct reports are competent in and adhere to these standard practices.
• Lead Events Calendar for your region(s), ensuring we are set up operationally across resource and equipment and to deliver against our quality standards, ensuring all direct reports are competent in the end-to-end process.
• Drive regional connectivity between Technical services and Commercial teams, working hand in hand with regional Commercial Managers to ensure understanding of commercial priorities and translating these to the technical action plan/deliverables.
• Directly accountable for line managing a team of Quality Executives setting a clear direction/plan for their day-to-day activities/priorities and managing and assessing their performance against commercial and quality KPIs.
• Support the performance management of your regional QEs with regular days in trade, informal and formal coaching, and audits to ensure they adhere to functional standards, health and safety practices and are able to hit annual and quarterly KPIs, putting corrective plans in place where required to ensure acceptable individual and/or team performance.
• Responsible for building a positive, diverse and inclusive team culture in which team members are motivated, coached and developed to thrive as individuals and as a team.

Ideal Experiences / Qualifications / capabilities

• Experience of FMCG or other fast moving sector.
• Technical dispense expertise or strong understanding of dispense environment through working closely with technical teams.
• Strong understanding of how to contribute to and optimise commercial plans/KPIs through technical delivery.
• Experience of managing large teams with the ability to motivate, coach and develop high performance.
• Strong commitment to I&D, creating psychologically safe spaces where differences within the team are valued and leveraged to drive stronger outcomes.
• Strong practical thinker with ability to evaluate and adapt plans as required.
• Stakeholder engagement and ability to build strong strategic relationships internally and externally across all levels.
• Ability to create strong and productive team relationships in order to jointly deliver optimal outcomes.
• Analytical problem solving and decision making with proven track record of delivering continuous improvement.
• Excellent verbal and written communication.
• Excellent organisational and planning skills.

Celebrating our inclusive and diverse culture is core to Diageo’s purpose of “celebrating life every day everywhere”. This purpose is inclusive in nature, as it values everybody irrespective of background, disability, religion, gender identity, sexuality or ethnicity.

We know that for our team to thrive and to realize our ambition, we depend on having diverse talent with a range of backgrounds, skills and capabilities in each of the 180 countries in which we operate and to reflect our broad consumer base.

Flexibility is key to success in our business, and many of our staff work flexibly in many ways, including part-time, compressed hours, flexible location.

We will ensure that individuals with disabilities are provided reasonable accommodation to participate in the job application or interview process and to perform essential job functions. Don’t let anything stop you from applying!