director of projects + people experience

Director of projects + people experience

Wagamama, Greater London, England, United Kingdom

At Wagamama, food is life 🥢 and we’re here to make every bite count. With over 165 restaurants across the UK (and growing fast) we’ve been dishing up vibrant, fresh Asian‑inspired flavours since ’92. It’s all about good food, good vibes, and good company 🍜🔥

Purpose

As our director of projects + people experience you will be responsible for driving strategic initiatives that enhance business effectiveness and elevate the employee experience. This role ensures the successful delivery of key projects aligned with business priorities while fostering a culture of engagement, inclusion, and continuous improvement. You will provide leadership in projects, change management, and experience design to create a workplace where employees thrive and business goals are achieved.

Key accountabilities

• Deputising for CPO: In their absence, provide strategic leadership across all people functions within the restaurant group, maintaining continuity in decision‑making and ensuring alignment across the full group. This includes overseeing and directing the people team, acting as a key support across the full group, and attending key meetings in the CPO’s absence including executive meetings.
• Projects: Define and lead the strategic project roadmap for people initiatives, ensuring alignment with strategic goals. Oversee the planning, implementation, and delivery of projects, including culture programs and engagement initiatives. Drive collaboration, partnering with senior leadership to ensure seamless implementation. Own internal communications for projects, ensuring clear, timely, and engaging messaging to all stakeholders. Monitor initiative progress, making adjustments to ensure successful embedding, using feedback loops and data to inform continuous improvement. Manage timelines, budgets, and risks across multiple projects, ensuring initiatives are delivered on time, within scope, and with maximum impact. Keep stakeholders informed, managing expectations with clarity and empathy, providing regular updates and facilitating two‑way communication.
• Well‑being: Lead, develop and implement our well‑being strategy which will build a resilient workforce whilst ensuring our teams feel supported and educated.
• Reward: Create and deliver a forward‑thinking reward strategy working across the restaurant group to shape and align the reward strategy with business goals, ensuring fairness, transparency and employee engagement.
• Lead culture+implementation programme: Lead the successful implementation of all business initiatives across teams, driving cultural transformation and ensuring full implementation of strategic programmes to achieve organisational objectives.
• People experience + recruitment: Expert in all aspects of people experience at Wagamama, leveraging insights, expertise and thought leadership to challenge conventional approaches. Take full ownership of the end‑to‑end employee experience, ensuring it reflects our values and culture.
• Comms: Align the internal people communications strategy with the communications manager, ensuring clear, consistent and engaging messaging that reinforces the business culture and priorities.

What you’ll need

• Confident communicator and influencer at executive level
• Demonstrated experience operating at a director level
• Strategic thinker with the ability to translate vision into action
• Inspiring leader who empowers others and builds high‑performing teams
• Experience in fast‑paced, multi‑site or hospitality environments preferred
• Curious, creative and always looking for better
• A talented and collaborative leader, adept at engaging, motivating and developing teams across the business
• A team player, dynamic and enthusiastic, with a ‘can do’ attitude and a passion to be the best
• Genuinely interested in the performance of the business, rather than a single focus on their own area of expertise
• High integrity, able to instil trust at all levels, with a desire to create success that they can be “proud” of
• Attention to detail and sees the bigger picture – able to move seamlessly from focusing on detail to the broad strategic challenges and contributing to the success of the whole business

What’s in it for you

• Competitive salary + 30% bonus potential
• Come as you are culture, with modern offices, fresh fruit and soft drinks
• £200 monthly Wagamama food allowance – enjoy all your favourite dishes on us!
• Further discounts across retail, hospitality & leisure – perks that make life sweeter
• Supporting you every step of the way! Family‑friendly pay: 26 weeks full pay + 13 weeks half pay for expectant or adopting parents

Nothing brings people together like great food. No matter where you’re from or who you are, you’ve got a seat at our table – because food is the ultimate connector, and here everyone belongs.