Stores People Partner - East Scotland in Edinburgh

Why join us

Joining Sainsbury’s as a Stores People Partner means being part of a collaborative, future‑focused People team committed to driving meaningful change across our store estate. You will play a key role in shaping how our people plans come to life in stores, ensuring consistency of execution and supporting leaders to build high‑performing teams. With the opportunity to influence regional people strategy, support effective workforce planning, and continually improve the colleague experience, you’ll be making a tangible impact every day. This role offers challenge, variety, and the chance to grow your career in a fast‑paced, customer‑centric, and people‑driven environment.

What you'll do

As a Stores People Partner at Sainsbury’s, you will be responsible for delivering consistent, high‑quality execution of the people plan across all stores in your region, setting the standard for great people delivery under the leadership of the Regional People Partner. You will support workforce and talent and succession planning to ensure stores have the right people and skills in place, and use data, insight, and trends to identify risk stores, diagnose root causes, and agree targeted actions to improve performance, capability, absence, and engagement. You will review progress against people plans, work closely with store leadership teams to embed agreed actions, and carry out sampling and quality checks to ensure People products and processes are implemented consistently and effectively. Alongside this, you will lead the delivery of cyclical people activities — such as performance, engagement, talent and succession and support people‑impacting change projects including transformation by ensuring strong communication, clear expectations, and operational readiness in stores. By building strong, trusted partnerships with Store Managers, Store People Leads, and operational leaders, you will translate strategic priorities into practical, store‑ready actions that enhance colleague experience, build capability, and drive improved outcomes across your area.

Who you are

As a Stores People Partner for Sainsbury's, you are an experienced professional with a proven track record of delivering people plans within fast‑paced, complex, commercial organisations. Your ability to collaborate effectively, analyse data, and support the delivery of people‑impacting change projects is essential for translating strategic objectives into consistent execution that drives performance, capability, and colleague experience. With a focus on building strong relationships, championing continuous improvement, and driving business transformation, you lead by example and inspire a culture of excellence, always putting colleagues and customers first in every action you take.

Please note: As this is a regional role, you will be required to travel to stores and sites within your area multiple times per week.

Essential Criteria

• Demonstrable experience delivering people plans and cyclical people activities within a fast‑paced, complex, commercial environment.
• Proven experience using people data to inform decisions, identify risk areas, track progress, and measure the impact of interventions.
• Evidence of supporting or implementing people‑impacting change projects, including change management and communication.
• Ability to collaborate with diverse stakeholders, presenting insight clearly and enabling consistent delivery across multiple locations.
• Experience planning, coordinating, and executing talent, performance, and reward activities in line with organisational processes and timelines.
• Experience supporting workforce planning and resource forecasting activities.
• Ability to review performance and risk stores, identify root causes, and drive targeted actions.
• Experience conducting sampling or quality checks to ensure consistent implementation of people processes or products.

Qualifications

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 get 10% off at Sainsbury's, Argos, TU and Habitat after 4 weeks. This increases to 15% off at Sainsbury’s every Friday and Saturday and 15% off at Argos every pay day. 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 10% 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 additional holiday. We also offer other benefits that will help your money go further such as season ticket loans, cycle to work scheme, health cash plans, pay 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.

Responsibilities

Our people are at the heart of our business, and we are looking for those that are just as passionate about that as we are. Join our People team, and come with us on a journey as we transform the way we do HR. Our team is made up of business partners working with leaders to get the most out of their teams, specialist knowledge in our centres of expertise, and colleague‑centric, efficient people services. Our work ranges from making sure that our 150,000+ colleagues are paid on time to attracting brilliant talent to drive our strategy, to unlocking the skills and capability of our colleagues. This is a fast‑moving business, and we make sure our policies and rewards keep up with that too. We know flexibility is important and helps you be more productive so there's more choice than ever about where and when you work. When it comes to your development, we'll support your growth in your own unique way. When you join us, you’ll be joining a team that knows just what it means to be happy and engaged, and who makes a real impact across our business.