People Business Partner – Food Stores (London)
£38,400 to £42,000 plus benefits (Work Level 6A)
Central London
12-month Secondment/FTC

We’re looking for a People Business Partner to join our People team on a 12-month fixed-term contract and help to deliver our Co-op colleague strategy. Our world is constantly evolving and, now more than ever, it’s critical that people are integrated throughout our business plans. We’re looking for proud co-operators who are forward thinking, commercially focussed and can role model our ways of working in an ever-changing environment.

In this role, you’ll build strong relationships within the wider people team and with the leaders you support, providing generalist HR advice and creative, pragmatic people solutions. This is a varied role with exposure across our Co-op and you’ll collaborate with a variety of teams across business areas. If you have the communication, partnering, and relationship-building skills that we’re looking for, we can offer you the opportunity to make a genuine impact on our colleagues’ experience.

We’ll look to you to primarily support the London patch of our Food Stores business, so the ability to travel regularly (sometimes 2 or 3 days per week) into Central London stores is essential. We operate as part of a national team covering the UK so the ability to reliably commute across the country as needed is helpful, too. There’ll also be occasional travel to our head office in Manchester, but other days can be worked from home or a local depot or store depending on your preference (find out more about our hybrid working policy at https://jobs.coop.co.uk/hybrid-working-policy).

What you’ll do

• Plan, design, deliver and evaluate work whilst engaging multiple partners to enable delivery of our people plans
• Work alongside business leaders to put in place robust solutions to listen and improve our colleague experience and support transformational change
• Provide generalist support, advice, and direction to leaders across the business on key focus areas such as absence, talent, succession and change activity
• Make sure that cyclical people-related activity (e.g performance management, talent development, people metrics) are delivered in the right way
• Analyse people data to provide insight and recommendation to leaders so teams can focus on the things that make the biggest difference to our colleagues
• Coach and mentor line managers in relation to the full range of people activity, with a focus on improving performance, building leadership capability, and increasing colleague engagement
• Build great relationships with central functions to optimise and improve our processes
• Make sure that Co-op’s vision, values, and dedication to inclusion are integrated into the day-to-day mindset of our teams

This role would suit people who have

• A good understanding of the people challenges and opportunities either within London or across food retail more generally
• Previous experience of effective communications and facilitating sessions with leaders including the ability to ‘read the room’, tailor, adapt in the moment and drive great outcomes that do right by our people
• Strong analytical skills, with the ability to interpret and draw upon meaningful insights
• High levels of pro-activity with the ability to work both autonomously and collaboratively
• The ability to quickly adapt to change and a willingness to bring ideas and explore improvement opportunities
• Previous experience of coaching and influencing people at different seniority levels
• Self-awareness and commitment to continuous personal growth as well as the ability to inspire others with the same

Why Co-op?

If you’ve got the skills and experience we’re looking for, we can offer you a competitive salary and great benefits package which includes 30% off Co-op branded products in our food stores (as well as other discounts on Co-op products and services). You’ll also get:

• An annual incentive scheme (based on personal and business performance)
• 28 days holiday (rising to 32 with service) plus bank holidays
• A pension with up to 10% employer contributions
• Access to a subsidised onsite gym (at our Manchester HQ)
• Coaching and training to support your career development
• Wagestream – a money management app that gives you access to a percentage of your pay as you earn it
• Grocery Aid – 24/7 access to a range of emotional, financial, and practical support services for you and your family

Building an inclusive work environment

At Co-op, we’re proud to do things a different way. As one of the world’s largest co-operatives, owned by millions of members, community is at the heart of what we do. Since our Co-op was founded in 1844, we’ve had a clear social purpose, and everything we do as a business helps to build more value for our member-owners every day.

We’re actively building diverse teams and we welcome applications from everyone. If you have a disability, we can make reasonable adjustments to our recruitment process according to your needs. We're also part of the Disability Confident scheme, meaning we'll always offer an interview to disabled candidates who apply through the scheme if they meet the minimum criteria for a job.

We'll ask whether you’d like to be considered under the Disability Confident scheme when you apply.

If we invite you to take part in the recruitment process for any of our jobs, we’ll ask you if you need any reasonable adjustments to enable you to participate.

You can find out more about our recruitment process at jobs.coop.co.uk/apply-process.

You can find out more about the Disability Confident scheme at Disability Confident Scheme - Co-op Colleagues and more about our commitments to diversity and inclusion here

As part of your application, you'll need to complete an online assessment. This assessment typically takes between 45-60 minutes. If you're a current Co-op colleague, this does not need to be completed.