Production Manager in Huntingdon

As we continue our mission to make people and nature happy through re-inventing chocolate, we’re looking for a Production Manager to join our Chocolate Manufacturing Team on a permanent basis. As Production Manager, you will be the operational lead for our Chocolate Manufacturing operation, playing a pivotal role in delivering safe, high-quality products that our customers know and love. You will inspire, develop and lead your teams, taking responsibility for their safety, wellbeing, engagement and performance. With a strong focus on quality and food safety, you will drive excellence across all stages of production.

You will lead the business unit through a balanced scorecard of KPIs, translating business objectives into consistent and measurable results. With a team accountable for 24 hours a day production, you will collaborate and work closely with our three Shift Managers to ensure seamless handovers, operational continuity and supporting a high performing and motivated team. This is a Monday-Friday, full-time position, operating across standard office working hours. There is no expectation to work weekends, however our Factory runs a 5-day-a-week operation, so we do expect this role to work a pattern that provides all teams (including nightshift) the touchpoints they require.

As well as a competitive salary and a range of company benefits, you’ll receive 50% discount on all products, and a 70% discount for you and your guests when you stay at our Rabot Estate hideaway on the paradise island of Saint Lucia. The onsite location for this role is at our Factory ‘Hadley Park’, in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, right in the heart of where our chocolates are made and where weekly, we can produce between 4 to 6 million of the chocolates we all know and love. Hadley Park is just 5 minutes off the A141 and 1.3 miles from Huntingdon train station, with direct rail links to London King’s Cross.

What you’ll be doing:

• Compliance to Safety and Quality Standards
• Accountable for Health and Safety of all colleagues in chocolate Manufacturing
• GMP ownership and analysis to drive improvement to business world class standards
• 100% compliance and confidence of companies processes and procedures
• Drive a Quality and Food Safety Culture to proactively minimise any risk to customers / colleagues.
• Drive root cause analysis and action planning for non-compliant produce.
• Ensure SOPs / CiCs are followed by the team for all parts of the operation and that skills matrices reflect this.
• Ensure mandatory training completion of all team members.
• Lead the business unit as main point of contact for all external audits.
• Utilisation of Systems such as WMS and OEE management to support and drive performance.

Leadership:

• Have a balanced approach of Support and Challenge towards the performance of the teams, with a target of clarity and accountability for everyone in the business unit.
• Drive pride into the team for their work area / product range.
• Frequently hold 121s with the managers to monitor performance and development of their teams, making sure clear objectives are set and managed, with clear bi-directional communication with all stakeholders.
• Evaluate performance of the team members and create development plans.
• Communicate on a daily / weekly basis on information around performance to the team.
• Complete Gap Analyses on Skills and communicate with Managers, plan training and resources to minimise labour spikes within week.
• Drive an accurate absence management culture to control attendance within the absence targets set by the business.
• Proactively manage the teams holiday allowance ensuring all holidays are consumed within year.
• Support the wider business acting as the SME for Chocolate Manufacturing.
• Lead the business unit to achieve the financial goals driving a CI culture to continuously strive for improvements in production.
• Formal communication at all levels to ensure an engaged workforce at site.

Operational responsibilities:

• Ownership of daily and weekly plan completion for the business unit, including being the main supplier for the Pack Area.
• Lead Daily Review Meetings and performance meetings across site.
• Liaise with the planning team to find the most effective and efficient way to deliver demand through daily meetings and forward-looking planning sessions.
• Safety, Quality, Delivery, Control KPIs reporting on time and accurately.
• The embedding of data into performance metrics / Power BI / Redzone to showcase performance and show opportunities to improve performance.
• Support the automation journey in manufacturing.
• Work closely with the Site Agency Provider to maintain and strengthen temporary staffing levels.
• Understanding the criticality of Temperature management to support product life cycle.
• Ensure optimal utilisation of materials and resources through yield and labour control, ensuring full understanding of material variances are owned and improved through the teams.

Who you are:

• People leadership and Motivation Capability.
• Ability to multi-task several short and longer term priorities minimising disruption to the operation.
• Knowledge and understanding of Food Hygiene and Food Safety standards, HACCP trained.
• Support and engage with a culture of Continuous Improvement to coach and develop team members to perform in their role.
• Proactively work with your team to continuously improve performance to KPI`s.
• To be fully flexible to the business needs and requirements where possible.

Who are we?

We’re one of the UK’s favourite premium chocolate brands, with a range of products spanning luxury gifts, alcohol and our pioneering drinking chocolate system, the Velvetiser™. A cacao pod takes years to grow – it can’t be rushed if it’s going to be just right for our products. The same can be said for Hotel Chocolat, which originally started as a mint production company before we realised it was luxury chocolate that we were really passionate about. Now, we’re market leaders in the industry. What began as an online-only business grew to over 140 stores across the UK, and we’re still growing… Today, we’re multi-category, multi-channel, and multi-territory, and our customers, colleagues, cacao farmers and suppliers all benefit from the success we make together.