Strategy Lead
£90,000 + plus great benefits, including up to 10% employer pension contribution, private healthcare, and a company car or £6,000 car allowance (Work Level 4)
12-month secondment/FTC
Manchester city centre (hybrid working)

We’re open to applications from candidates who may require flexible working arrangements. There’ll be an opportunity to discuss your flexible working requirements during the interview process, and at offer stage.

We’re looking for a Strategy Lead to join our Vision and Strategy team in Manchester on a 12-month fixed-term contract to help us drive the long-term strategic direction of our Co-op. In this role you’ll work in a hybrid way – splitting your time between home and the office (find out more about our hybrid working policy at colleagues.coop.co.uk/hybrid-working-policy).

As a Strategy Lead at Co-op, you’ll work alongside our operating board and leaders to develop strategies that’ll help us deliver our long-term vision. We’ll look to you to partner our most senior leaders; designing and co-ordinating key strategy planning sessions, leading discovery teams, and driving new initiatives across the wider business.

What you’ll do

• Work alongside our most senior leaders across Co-op to prompt and support the development of our longer-term vision and strategy
• Lead multi-disciplinary teams to define, develop, and recommend ideas and initiatives; creating strategic roadmaps to help plan our activity
• Design and deliver strategy sessions for teams and colleagues up to executive level
• Provide regular strategic insights to colleagues to support their decision making, working with our Data & Insight team to encourage strategic thinking
• Make sure we’re always working in-line with our strategies; challenging processes and ways of working when necessary

This role would suit people who have

• Experience designing and leading strategy events for senior teams; using models and strategic frameworks to guide decision-making
• Strong commercial understanding, with experience of strategy development and partnering, with high levels of curiosity and willingness to learn and discover
• Experience in visioning, operating systems, systems thinking, and experience design
• Experience building and leading multi-disciplinary teams
• Good communication and relationship-building skills, with the ability to influence and challenge people inclusively

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:

• Private healthcare
• A company car or car allowance
• An annual bonus (based on personal and business performance)
• 28 days holiday pro-rata (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
• YuLife – an app that rewards you for exercising with discounts and vouchers for your favourite brands

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 a fairer world for our members, customers, colleagues, and communities.

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 and all our commitments to diversity and inclusion at colleagues.coop.co.uk/diversity-inclusion-and-wellbeing.