Location

Hybrid: 1-2 days at our Support Centre in Coleshill, Birmingham. 

Why The Works?

🏆 10th Best Big Company to Work For 2024 - 'Best Companies'

We don’t just sell products.
We inspire reading, learning, creativity and play.

The Works. It literally means everything. And whatever your story or background, we’re all about unlocking imagination and making creativity accessible to everyone. Whether you’re engaging with customers on the frontline or supporting our colleagues behind the scenes, your impact can be profound and far-reaching.

This is more than toys and books and art supplies. This is about inspiring people to read, learn, create and play. So, with the right passion, it all starts with you.

Become a Junior People Partner

As our Junior People Partner – Retail, you will support the Retail People Partner in delivering the People Plan across our 500+ stores across the UK. You will be a key point of contact to our Area Managers, coaching and supporting them as required by the Retail People Partner, further embedding the Key People Initiatives to inspire and motivate our People with an end goal of driving business performance through People.

Your role will involve working with the Retail People Partner to ensure that the People Key Deliverables are being achieved throughout the entire colleague experience lifecycle, making continuous improvements to our Retail business through our people enablers and processes. This will include championing employee engagement, succession planning for our Store Manager roles, ownership of exit interview data. You will be adaptable and make recommendations to the Retail People Partner on opportunities to improve and streamline our ways of working to benefit our stakeholders.

As a key point of contact for our Area Managers, you will guide them with best practice throughout conversations around both our Internal Talent Map and their approach to Performance Management. Where possible, you will attend Area Meetings to share key People Messages and updates. At the heart of our business are our Retail Teams, and to ensure we are listening, learning and delivering agile and suitable People initiatives, you will regularly spend time in our Stores across the UK, gaining feedback and making recommendations to the People Partner on what can be done to further inspire, engage and develop our People.

You will analyse people data and spot trends across our Retail teams, working collaboratively with the wider People team to implement the appropriate tools, resources and support to ensure we deliver operational excellence in our People Processes and practices. You will play a key role in the delivery of People projects, aligned to our People Plan, and work alongside the Retail People Partner to land, embed and measure the success of these.

You will be a brand ambassador of our Crafty, Caring and Can-do values – and be adaptable and flexible, supporting the People Partner, and wider People team.

Your Mission

• Be a trusted Partner: Build and maintain strong relationships with your stakeholders, enabling you to influence effectively when required. By fully understanding our Retail business, you will add true value to our Retail teams by making sound and data driven recommendations.

• People Plan: Support the People Partner with delivering the People Plan, and local People Plans across Retail.

• Champion Engagement: Continue to drive our Action Planning agenda, continuing to embed our Engagement survey ways of working into Retail, ensuring all colleagues are receiving the results, and Line Managers are facilitating great conversations around these results and their identified opportunities for improvement.

• Talent Map/Succession Planning: Support the People Partner in keeping alive the Succession Planning for Retail, ensuring collaboration with the wider People Team, to ensure we are developing our people to set them up for success in their career development.

• Collaborative project work: Work with the wider People Team/wider business to input and contribute to projects that support the People Plan, considering our Retail colleagues at all times, and what is going to land most successfully with them for maximum impact.

• People Data: Analyse and spot trends in People Data across retail, making suggestions for solutions on how best to approach any trends spotted to make a positive impact.

• Upskill our Area Managers: Through coaching conversations where required, you will continually aim upskill our Area Managers in all People Practices such as Leadership, Engagement, Performance Management, Development conversations etc.

• Attend Regional and Area meetings: Representing the People team at Retail meetings, you will share key People Updates to ensure we are communicating and informing our People, providing them with insightful information to enable them further in their roles.

• Listening to our People: Spending time out in stores, asking questions and gaining feedback on what People initiatives will add value, whilst learning what is working well and what opportunities we have to improve. Hosting Listening Sessions when required, to gain a true insight and understanding of the current “temperature”. Utilising these learnings and supporting the Retail People Partner in channelling the feedback productively.

• Colleague Experience Lifecycle: Champion our values and behaviours so that our colleagues are supported, engaged and inspired at every part of their career journey with us, from joining the business to gaining their feedback at their end of the journey with us.

• Deputise: Act as the deputy in the absence of the People Partner.

Skills/Behaviours That Will Set You Apart

• People-Focused Approach: You prioritise the engagement of our colleagues, clearly understanding that engaged colleagues perform better.

• Influence and Challenge: You can influence and constructively challenge when necessary to ensure we do the right thing.

• Confident Partnering: You can seamlessly embed into your stakeholder group, using your credibility and knowledge to build relationships quickly.

• Initiative and Passionate: You use your initiative and have the energy and passion to make things happen.

• Teamwork and Collaboration: You believe in the power of teamwork and collaboration as the best way to achieve results.

• Networking and Relationships: You understand the importance of networking and building strong relationships.

• Self-Starter: You are a self-starter, solutions orientated and committed to driving your own development.

• Attention to Detail: You have a forensic attention to detail to help us get things right the first time.

Our PERKS really are ‘The Works’

• 💪 25% Colleague Discount! - Plus, exclusive Double Discount days!
• 😎 MyWorks - Access exclusive online discounts across hundreds of retailers, holidays, utilities deals, tech and more!
• 🚀 Holiday – 33 days including bank holidays.
• 💃 Holiday Purchase - Purchase an additional 5 days
• 🎓 Can-Do Academy - Grow your skills and career with instant access to further training and development in areas that interest you.
• 💸 Wagestream - Claim early access to 50% of your wages as you earn them – for when ‘life’ happens!
• 🏬 Share Scheme - Unleash your inner Monopoly mogul and own a piece of The Works!
• 💛 24/7 support for you and your family - Through our partnership with the Retail Trust who provide an Employee Assistance Programme and so much more!
• 🩺 Healthcare Cash Plan – To support your everyday healthcare costs
• 🥳 And loads more! – Long Service Awards, pension, life assurance, Cycle to Work and optional charity giving.

Our Purpose

To inspire reading. learning, creativity and play - making lives more fulfilled.

Our Values

We are Crafty | We are Caring | We are Can-do

We Listen. We Care

Each year, we run an anonymous colleague engagement survey. This is so important for us to hear your feedback and suggestions. We want to know what’s going great, and what needs a couple of tweaks to help make The Works the best place you’ve ever worked! You’ll have opportunity to help give us that direction.

Promoting Diversity, Inclusion, and Applying Reasonable Adjustments

At The Works, we are proud to have an inclusive culture where everyone truly feels able to be themselves. Our roles are open to all, including under-represented groups such as ethnic minorities, people with disabilities, carers & members of the LGBTQ+ community (including those who identify as lesbian, gay, bi, trans, non-binary, or use another term).

We are open to discussions around working hours and flexible working. And, where possible, we'll try to support this. If you need reasonable adjustments for an interview you might attend with us, let us know in your application and we’ll be happy to help!