Regional Profit Protection Business Partner in Birmingham

Contract: 12 Month Fixed Term

Ideal Locations: Field based within 2 hours of Birmingham or Leicester or within 2 hours of central London. Travel to Handforth once a month or as required.

About the Role

The Retail Business Partner plays an essential role within our team. The overarching purpose is to mitigate risk within the assigned region, whilst using your extensive experience to support and enhance the customer experience. You will play a key role in delivering several strategic objectives, such as the implementation and monitoring of controls around stock, cash, assets, the safety of our colleagues and the security of our retail premises.

In this role you will be the subject matter expert and will partner closely with the Regional Directors and other key members of the retail field team, by providing operational expertise and utilising industry knowledge and contacts.

As a strong influencer and leader, you will engage retail leadership teams to support their delivery of shrink KPI’s, notably around stock loss and waste results, discounts, refunds, and cash. You will be a strong influencer and will be able to collaborate closely with the wider team and other key business functions.

Key Responsibilities but not limited to

• Monitor store KPI’s around stock accuracy, write offs, cash and security, flag inconsistencies and outliers with regional teams and influence direction to mitigate risk.
• Be responsible for the Profit Protection agenda within your assigned region, together with all associated communications and material. Plan and maintain your own visit schedule and engage and develop area champions to promote the agenda.
• Conduct fair and consistent operational audits to benchmark position and progress.
• Own and distribute accurate and timely reporting to regional teams where appropriate.
• Create or sponsor relevant training material and deliver training as appropriate, either face to face, via video conference or webinar.
• Engage leadership teams, the wider field team and any other colleagues across the business that are relevant to the operation.
• Share best practice with other regions and collaborate with key stakeholders to help set retails teams up for success.
• Support retail teams with their physical security controls, including CCTV systems, access control, perimeter security, intruder alarms, URN’s and manned guarding.
• Coordinate deployment of physical security across the region, ensure we are operating to budget and that deployment addresses any risks to colleague safety.
• Ensure all in store incidents are logged correctly using our Shield reporting system and responded to as appropriate.
• Conduct or coordinate all Profit Protection investigations for dishonesty, internal fraud cases, and breaches of process across the assigned region. Liaise with the People Team and review case files, before assigning investigating managers.
• Liaise with Police and local authorities as required.
• Support or lead projects across the assigned region or the wider business, ensuring compliance with project scope, monitoring, and collation of results and presentation back to relevant stakeholders.
• Use your knowledge, experience, and contacts to recommend solutions to problems or opportunities.

Experience and Skills - Essential

• Must be able to demonstrate strong leadership and influencing skills with a minimum 5 years’ experience in relatable positions.
• Honesty and integrity.
• Experience of operating in a retail environment.
• Must be proficient in reviewing large volumes of data, including MI reporting and financial data.

Experience and Skills – Desirable

• Multi-site Profit Protection experience highly desirable, but not 100% essential for a secondment role.
• Knowledge of Profit Protection procedures and audit or controls environments.
• Investigative training, any relevant risk management, or Loss Prevention qualifications.
• Strong mathematical skills.
• Knowledge or experience with data mining solutions.

About You

• Leadership - You must be able to lead, inspire and develop people, whilst influencing the wider stakeholder group up to and including director level.
• Collaboration - You must be able to work in a team orientated environment, both internally and externally with key stakeholders and industry professionals.
• Problem Solving - You must identify and analyse problems through monitoring of processes and controls and accurate data interpretation.
• Detail – You must have a strong attention to detail to enable the accurate identification and mitigation of risks.
• Consumer focused – You must support the building of a stronger consumer brand, which will enable us to become the destination of choice for pet care.
• 5 years’ experience in a similar Profit Protection role would be an advantage, but not essential as this is a secondment role. The relevant leadership, coaching, influencing and problem-solving skills will be critical.