Communications Manager - Operational News & Planning (9-12 Month FTC)

Full Job Description

The Sainsbury's Corporate Affairs team creates great conversations that inspire our communities to choose, recommend and go the extra mile for us. With roles that span Corporate Comms, Product PR, Brand Comms, Government Relations and Internal Comms, we work as a strategic partner to the wider business, to create one compelling Sainsbury's story that delivers real business value.

The Internal Communications Team is the engine room for communications across Sainsbury’s business, brands and channels, owning the communication of our strategy, priorities and progress and telling everyone across the business what they need to know. 

As Communications Manager - Operational News & Planning, you’ll be responsible for ensuring our colleagues have the right information they need to do their jobs, so they can deliver a busy programme of activity in store. You’ll do this by ensuring our urgent and tactical communications are issued at the right time and through the right channel, making sure the information is simple to understand and action. 

You’ll need to be a natural organiser who enjoys working in a fast-paced environment to often tight deadlines, championing our operational communications framework, developing our processes and measuring our success. You’ll have the ability to keep a clear focus under pressure, keep the team on track to proactively work towards meeting deadlines and always have what’s best for our colleagues at the front of mind. 

More about the role:

• Work closely with other members of the Operational Communications team, who collectively are responsible for the collation and delivery of operational communications channels to all locations: stores, depots and store support centres.
• Ensure that all operational communications have a clear strategic narrative that helps colleagues understand the role that they and a particular activity play in delivering our strategic objectives.
• Support the Senior Operational Communications Manager in the ongoing work to simplify and improve our operational communications, with the aim of enabling our store leaders to land operational changes brilliantly and to spend more time on the shop floor with their colleagues and customers.
• Work closely with our Tech teams to review and develop the applications we use to connect with stores. 
• Take ownership of the team’s reporting, and analyse the data to produce insights and actions to improve our communications. 
• Build a deep understanding of how our business works and use that, along with outstanding communications skills, to advise a variety of Store Support Centre colleagues on the best way to deliver their communications. 
• Provide weekend and evening and early morning cover on a rota basis for urgent messages, business results and announcements.
• Flexibly work five in seven days across a week at key times of year (Christmas and Easter), to support stores in getting the information they need at the right time.

More about you:

• Outstanding written and verbal communication skills. Excellent writing, editing and proofreading skills, and the ability to write in our company tone of voice.
• Confident in working flexibly, including on tasks outside of your immediate remit where required.
• Previous experience of planning, designing and delivering operational communications is desirable.
• Experience of working in internal communications in a large, complex and multi-location organisation is desirable. 
• Highly organised and proactive – able to juggle and prioritise a busy agenda and respond calmly and quickly to changing situations and a level of ambiguity.
• Ability to build strong relationships within a broad range of stakeholders.
• Action-orientated with high energy, pace, agility and pragmatism.
• Excellent judgement and strong attention to detail.
• Confident using MS Office. 

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 10% 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. We also offer other benefits that will help your money go further such as season ticket loans, 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 for a range of our benefits (note, length of service and eligibility criteria may apply).

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