Senior People Partner - People and Corp Affairs, Corp Services

Salary: Competitive Plus Benefits

Location: London Store Support Centre and Home, London, EC1M 6HA

Contract type: Permanent

Business area: People

Closing date: 14 August 2026

We'd all like amazing work to do, and real work-life balance. That's waiting for you at Sainsbury's. We're the first to say we do HR differently here. For a start, we work as business partners and specialists. Whether that's making sure nearly 150,000 colleagues are paid on time, or shaping a strategy that helps us attract the right people, put them in the right place, and unlock their potential. This is a fast-moving business, and our policies and rewards evolve with it. That's why we're as flexible as we can be about where and when you work. We're also flexible about your future. There's always room to move up or across, if that's what you want. We really value different perspectives, so there's no one opinion, no single path, and yours matters.

This is a hybrid role - London Store Support Centre (approx. 2 days per week) and home.

Our People Partner will partner with Senior leaders in HR, Corporate Affairs and Corporate Services as a trusted, visible advisor and business partner, supporting the execution and delivery of functional or geographic plans, set out by the Senior Leadership team. You will be a conduit into our centres of excellence, ensuring the correct expertise is engaged to solve business problems.

The role will drive our culture, enable performance, coach managers, and deliver a tangible return on investment by building regional or divisional capability, maximising capacity, and cost efficiency to deliver customer outcomes and shareholder value.

What you'll do:

• You will play a vital role in partnering with senior leaders in HR, Corporate Affairs and Corporate Services to provide trusted advisory support and guidance.
• Working collaboratively with the cross-functional teams and centres of excellence, you develop and deliver strategic regional or divisional people plans that address specific functional people challenges.
• Your responsibilities will involve mobilising and delivering against these plans, driving a high-performance culture through coaching and influencing leaders, executing and embedding business change initiatives, and fostering a collaborative and inclusive environment.
• Additionally, you will analyse people data to inform decision-making, track progress against targets and measures, and actively contribute to driving positive metrics related to engagement, talent, performance, diversity, equity, and inclusion.
• Your role will be essential in driving business performance and ensuring that the organisation is equipped with the right capabilities to succeed.

Who you are:

• You are a highly experienced and strategic HR professional with a proven track record of partnering with senior leaders and stakeholders in fast-paced, complex commercial organisations.
• With your expertise in creating and delivering people plans (ideally with a CIPD Level 5 + qualification) and in collaboration with Centres of Excellence, you have strong influencing and relationship-building skills.
• Your talent management experience, coupled with your ability to enable and drive business change and transformation, adds value to the organisation.
• As a data-driven decision-maker, you excel at analysing data and drawing insights from data to inform strategic decisions.
• With your deep understanding of organisational design and effectiveness, you contribute to shaping effective business partnerships.
• Demonstrable track record operating as a Senior People/HR Business Partner within a People and/or Corporate Services function in a complex commercial environment, working in close partnership with Centres of Expertise.
• Proven ability to partner with and influence senior stakeholders (PLT & SLT), to deliver people and organisational outcomes.
• Evidenced analytical capability, with the ability to interpret people and business data to diagnose issues, inform decisions and implement practical solutions that deliver measurable outcomes.
• Evidenced track record of supporting organisational change and delivering people elements of transformation programmes.
• Broad, applied knowledge across core people disciplines, including talent, performance, organisational design and employee relations.
• Proven capability to coach leaders to build capability and improve performance.

Just to let you know, this vacancy may close early if we receive a high volume of interest.

We are committed to being a truly inclusive retailer so you'll be welcomed whoever you are and wherever you work. Around here, there's always the chance to try something new - whether that's as part of an evolving team or somewhere else across the business - and we take development seriously and promise to support you. We also recognise and celebrate colleagues when they go the extra mile and, where possible, offer flexible working.

When you join our team, we'll also offer you an amazing range of benefits. Here are some of them:

• Starting off with colleague discount, you'll be able to save 10% on your shopping online and instore at Sainsbury's, Argos, TU and Habitat, and we regularly increase the discount to 15% at points during the year.
• We've also got you covered for your future with our pensions scheme and life cover.
• You'll also be able to share in our success as you may be eligible for a performance-related bonus of up to 20% of salary, depending on how we perform.
• Your wellbeing is important to us too. You'll receive an annual holiday allowance, and you can buy up to an additional week's holiday, and we provide private healthcare.
• We also offer other benefits that will help your money go further such as season ticket loans, interest free car loan of up to £10k, cycle to work scheme, health cash plans, salary advance (where you can access some of your pay before pay day) as well access to a great range of discounts from hundreds of other retailers.
• And if you ever need it there is also an Employee Assistance Programme.
• Moments that matter are as important to us as they are to you which is why we give up to 26 weeks' pay for maternity or adoption leave and up to 4 weeks' pay for paternity leave.

Please see for a range of our benefits (note, length of service and eligibility criteria may apply).