Finance Manager - Retail Labour Costs
Salary: Competitive Plus Benefits
Location: London Store Support Centre, London, EC1M 6HA
Contract type: Permanent
Business area: Finance & Transformation
Closing date: 29 June 2026
Requisition ID: 400067110
We’d all like amazing work to do, and real work-life balance. That’s waiting for you here at Sainsbury’s. For a FTSE business, we move incredibly fast. When we’re not leading projects, we’re supporting teams across the wider group to achieve their goals. And here, you can see the impact of your work as soon as you walk into a store, giving you a real sense of purpose and responsibility. Better still, the team around you will listen to your ideas and opinions, and you’ll have every chance to try something new. The scale and complexity of our business mean there’s always something new to learn, and we’ll support you every step of the way. We’re trusted to get on with it. So get ready to make things happen.
Location: London Store Support Centre & Home - colleagues go into the office 1-2 days per week on average.
Why join us
Joining Sainsbury's as a Finance Manager for Retail Labour Costs offers a unique opportunity to play a pivotal role in managing one of the largest and most complex cost lines in the P&L - retail labour, covering store colleague and management costs across the estate. As part of the Retail Costs Team, you will collaborate closely with senior leadership to provide deep analytical insights, financial control, and strategic guidance that drives performance and optimises workforce efficiency. With a focus on transformation and continuous improvement, you will have the chance to lead a team, influence key business decisions, and contribute to shaping the financial success of the company while fostering a culture of curiosity, accountability, and high performance.
What you'll do
You will play a pivotal role in partnering with the Director of Labour & Operating Models and Retail leadership teams to provide deep analytical insight, robust financial control, and commercial challenge to drive performance and optimise workforce efficiency. You will be responsible for translating operational metrics into financial impacts and actionable recommendations, supporting P&L delivery, forecasting, financial modelling, and labour cost-saving programmes. Additionally, you will lead a team of finance analysts, fostering a culture of curiosity, ownership, and accountability while effectively managing commercial relationships and influencing senior decision-makers to achieve best-in-class business partnering and financial performance.
Who you are
You are a professionally qualified accountant with a strong focus on driving excellent financial and commercial performance while maintaining robust financial control. Your extensive experience in business partnering and influencing senior decision-makers, coupled with your ability to provide clear data-driven insights and high-impact analysis, enables you to support key transformation programmes and drive efficiency in labour costs. With a proactive and forward-thinking approach, you lead a culture of curiosity, ownership, and accountability, demonstrating resilience and adaptability in managing complex financial challenges and driving positive change within the organisation.
Essential Criteria
- Professionally qualified accountant (ACA, ACCA or CIMA) with experience working within Retail, FMCG or a similar large fast paced organisation
- Demonstrable experience of business partnering and influencing commercial and operational stakeholders, including presenting, challenging and communicating financial insights to senior leaders up to Director level
- Demonstrable people management experience
- Proven ability to identify risks, opportunities and performance improvement areas, using financial and commercial insight to challenge business performance and support decision-making
- Evidence of managing commercial relationships and balancing competing priorities, including making recommendations, appropriately challenging requests and delivering outcomes in a changing environment
- Experience of maintaining robust financial controls and leading or supporting change initiatives, including managing associated risks, issues and stakeholder impacts
#LI-CE1
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 www.sainsburys.jobs for a range of our benefits (note, length of service and eligibility criteria may apply).
