Transformation Manager (Retail People)
Salary: Competitive Plus Benefits
Location: London Store Support Centre - Field Based and Home, London, EC1M 6HA
Contract type: Permanent
Business area: People
Closing date: 01 September 2026
Requisition ID: 400076689
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, field-based role with flexibility to travel across the UK.
About the team
Our Retail People Transformation team sits within the People Division and is focused on shaping how change lands for colleagues across Retail. Working closely with People Transformation, People Effectiveness, Centres of Expertise, People Change and Deployment, People Partners and business stakeholders, the team turns business priorities into practical people outcomes that are delivered well and embedded sustainably.
This is a brilliant opportunity to be part of a divisionally focused transformation team supporting building our retail workforce for the future. You will work in a matrix environment, collaborating with central People Transformation colleagues while staying close to the realities of frontline retail. It is a role for someone who wants to make change feel clear, connected and meaningful for colleagues and customers.
More about the role
As Transformation Manager, Retail People, you will lead the end-to-end delivery of retail people change and transformation outcomes. You will translate business needs into solutions, put the right delivery approach in place, and make sure outcomes are implemented effectively, embedded sustainably and measured against clear success criteria.
Day to day, you can expect to shape scopes, milestones, governance, stakeholder engagement plans, RAIDD logs, change impact assessments and measures of success. Initial work is expected to include defining future skills for hourly paid retail colleagues, developing strategic workforce planning insight, and partnering with on centres of expertise teams to align capability, learning propositions and identifying opportunities to ensure skills-based thinking is woven throughout our retail colleague lifecycle. The role is agile by nature, so you may also move across related workstreams, such as induction and performance, to ensure the best outcomes for our colleagues, as priorities evolve.
More about you
You will bring demonstrable experience delivering people change or HR transformation from concept through to implementation, with the judgement to balance pace, quality, colleague impact and measurable value. You will be comfortable working with ambiguity, adapting plans as priorities shift, and bringing structure to complex programmes without losing sight of the colleague and customer experience.
You will be collaborative, curious, and confident working across a matrix environment. You will know how to build effective relationships, influence stakeholders, surface risks early, and remove barriers to delivery. You will also demonstrate Sainsbury’s valued behaviours by owning outcomes, making things better through insight and feedback, and being human in how you lead change with and through others.
Essential criteria
Project Management skills (proven experience essential on large scale projects from development of solutions through to delivery)
Strong commercial acumen and experience working in a commercially focused organisation
Experience of enabling and delivering significant business change / transformation
Able to react to evolving situations at pace, re-evaluating plans or decisions as they develop and able to identify and respond to interdependencies with other programmes
Experience working in HR (Specialist / Generalist role)
Proven experience of innovating solutions to business problems is essential. You will need to have creative, problem-solving skills to ensure that the right solutions to the outcome are identified
Proven experience of delivering programmes for front-line workforces in fast-paced, service-focused industries
Desirable
Experience using different project delivery methodologies e.g. Agile experience
Experience of organisational change delivery, inc. skills and capability frameworks
Project Management qualifications
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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).
