Workforce Design & Transformation Manager - VIC (Hawthorn East)

A new role means a new way to win together. We’ve been proudly serving Australian communities since 1914 and at the heart of our continued success lies our 115,000 team members working across the country. If you’re looking for a career-defining opportunity, take the next step and explore another way your work can have impact and make a difference.

About the team

People and Culture are dedicated to fostering  an engaged and empowered workplace. One that’s strong, diverse and where our team members have exciting career pathways to choose from. We do it by making people’s lives easier through better experiences, useful tools, and by providing ongoing opportunities to learn and grow.

Our Workforce Design & Transformation team partners across Coles Group to solve complex organisational challenges, shape future operating models and design the workforce required to deliver our strategy. Operating as an enterprise internal consulting capability, we bring together organisation design, workforce planning, change and transformation expertise to deliver practical, sustainable business outcomes.

About Us

Since 1914, we've proudly served Australian communities, and today more than 115,000 team members help us deliver exceptional experiences for our customers every day. At Coles Group, you'll be part of a business that's transforming the future of retail while creating meaningful opportunities for our people to grow, thrive and make an impact.

Our People & Culture team plays a critical role in shaping the future workforce at Coles. We partner across the business to deliver innovative workforce solutions, drive organisational effectiveness and create an environment where our team members can do their best work.

Responsibilities

Workforce Transformation & Strategy

• Lead the design and delivery of enterprise-wide workforce transformation programs that support Coles Group strategic priorities, operating model evolution and long-term workforce outcomes.
• Partner with senior business leaders, People & Culture leaders and transformation teams to shape large-scale organisational design and operating model initiatives across complex business environments.
• Lead the development of future-state workforce and organisational models that optimise organisational effectiveness, capability, spans and layers, decision rights, accountability and team member experience.
• Translate enterprise strategy into pragmatic workforce transformation initiatives, ensuring alignment between business priorities, organisational structures, operating rhythms and workforce capability requirements.
• Lead and integrate multiple transformation workstreams across operating model design, organisational design, role design, workforce planning, governance, change adoption and implementation.
• Drive program governance, prioritisation, planning and delivery activities to ensure transformation initiatives are sequenced, integrated and executed effectively.
• Anticipate and proactively manage program risks, dependencies, impacts and organisational readiness considerations that may affect transformation outcomes.
• Establish measurable success metrics and monitor value realisation, workforce impacts and organisational effectiveness outcomes following implementation.

Organisation Design & Operating Model Excellence

• Lead end-to-end operating model design activities, including assessment of current-state operating models, identification of improvement opportunities and development of future-state organisational solutions.
• Design scalable organisational structures, governance frameworks, capability models and role architectures that support strategic, operational and customer outcomes.
• Facilitate organisation design workshops and executive discussions to align leaders on future-state structures, accountabilities and workforce implications.
• Lead the design and documentation of role accountabilities, decision-making frameworks, governance mechanisms and organisational interfaces.
• Apply systems thinking and enterprise-wide perspectives to ensure organisation design decisions are integrated across functions, teams and strategic initiatives.
• Ensure organisational design principles balance customer outcomes, commercial priorities, operational efficiency, team member experience and long-term sustainability.
• Drive consistency and rigour in organisation design methodologies, frameworks, standards and governance practices across transformation programs.

Change Leadership & Stakeholder Engagement

• Lead and role model the integration of structured change management methodologies into workforce transformation programs to support sustainable adoption and behavioural change.
• Partner with leaders to build change readiness, leadership capability and workforce engagement through periods of significant organisational transformation.
• Design and implement adoption and transition approaches that support leaders and team members through organisational and operating model change.
• Develop enterprise workforce transformation narratives and strategic messaging that create alignment, clarity and commitment across stakeholders.
• Facilitate leadership alignment and decision-making through complex and ambiguous transformation environments.
• Identify organisational capability gaps and partner with stakeholders to define capability uplift and workforce transition requirements.
• Act as a trusted advisor to senior leaders on workforce transformation, organisational effectiveness, operating model design and enterprise change.
• Provide strategic recommendations informed by data, external trends, industry benchmarks and contemporary organisation design practices.
• Maintain awareness of external workforce, transformation, operating model and organisational design trends to inform Coles Group workforce strategies.
• Build organisational capability and maturity in workforce transformation, organisation design and change leadership practices.
• Champion innovation, continuous improvement and contemporary workforce thinking across transformation programs and People & Culture.
• Foster collaboration, transparency and knowledge sharing across cross-functional stakeholders and transformation teams.

Governance, Risk & Leadership

• Accountable for individual and team compliance with company values, policies and procedures, including the Coles Code of Conduct and all applicable external laws and regulations.
• Embed governance, compliance and risk management requirements into transformation planning and delivery activities.
• Lead a high-performance, customer-focused and collaborative team culture that encourages accountability, curiosity and continuous improvement.
• Coach, mentor and develop team capability in organisation design, operating model thinking, transformation delivery and stakeholder engagement.
• Lead and support the prioritisation and allocation of work across multiple concurrent enterprise initiatives.

About You:

You are an experienced workforce transformation and organisation design leader who thrives in complex environments and enjoys translating strategy into meaningful organisational outcomes. You bring strong commercial acumen, an enterprise mindset and the ability to influence senior stakeholders through change while balancing strategic thinking with practical execution.

You'll Bring:

• Extensive experience leading complex enterprise transformation, operating model and organisational design programs within large, matrixed organisations.
• Strong track record designing and implementing future-state operating models and organisational structures that deliver measurable business and workforce outcomes.
• Experience shaping and delivering large-scale workforce transformation initiatives involving organisation redesign, role redesign, governance changes and workforce transitions.
• Demonstrated success partnering with senior executives and influencing complex stakeholder groups through ambiguity, competing priorities and organisational change.
• Ability to balance strategic thinking with practical execution and delivery rigour.
• Experience integrating organisation design, change management and transformation delivery disciplines to enable sustainable implementation.
• Strong capability in using workforce and organisational data, insights and external benchmarks to inform strategic decision making.
• Experience leading teams and developing capability within transformation, organisation design or strategic workforce functions.
• Experience working within large-scale commercial, operational or customer-centric environments.
• Relevant tertiary qualifications in organisational psychology, business, human resources, strategy, transformation or related disciplines.

What’s in it for you?

• Flexible working options: We know that work is only one part of your life, so we actively encourage a positive work-life balance and provide hybrid working options to help you achieve it.
• Office perks: Take advantage of our gym facility and fitness classes, free parking, BBQ area, mini-Coles supermarket, fooderie hub where you can sample new products before they hit the shelves, school holiday program and so much more when you come in.
• Discounts: Eligible team members receive 5% discount all year round on your Supermarket and Liquor online and in-store purchases. We also offer additional periods of double discount (10%) at various times throughout the year. As well as hotdeals exclusive to team members that translate into additional savings.
• Reward through recognition: Give and receive recognition, linked to our Coles values, through our digital recognition platform ‘mythanks’. You can accumulate points to redeem in the online shop for exciting gifts and electronic gift cards from an extensive range of retailers.
• Opportunities for learning and development: No matter where you start within our diverse business, you’ll have experiences, exposure, and education to satisfy you. Discover and explore a variety of career development programs and job-specific training.
• Paid parental leave: We understand how important your life outside work is and offer permanent team members paid parental leave to support you in balancing work and family.
• Investment in your future: Our annual team member share plan offer allows eligible team members to make regular pre-tax salary sacrifice deductions to purchase Coles Group shares.

About the recruitment process

We’re continuing to build a gender equitable team, and a culture that is just as diverse, inclusive and welcoming as the communities we serve. We are committed to creating a workplace that is safe and respectful for our team. We encourage applications from people of all ages, cultures (including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples), abilities, sexual orientation and gender identities.

We’re happy to adjust our recruitment process to support candidates with disability. For further information and additional contact details visit the ‘Our Recruitment Process’ section of our careers site or email inclusionrecruitment@coles.com.au

Job ID: 193585

Employment Type: Full time

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