Head of Grooming in Chester House, Epsom Ave, Handforth, Cheadle, Greater Manchester, SK9 3DF

• Field based, national travel from home location
• Highly competitive total reward package

About Us

“We put pets first” is our number one value at Pets at Home. Every colleague has a part to play to ensure that we deliver on this value every day. Our love and understanding of pets led us to develop our long-term goal to improve the life of every pet in the UK.

This covers not only the pets in our care, the pets of owners that use our products and services but also the pets that we can help through our charity work and through educating and advocating for change in society and the wider pet care and veterinary industry.

We put pets first; it’s not simply a statement, its’ our driving principle.

About the role

Our Grooming business has gone from strength to strength over the past few years and is an integral part of our Pets offering as we continue to put pets first.

Our Grooming customers are amongst our most loyal and we want to continue to grow and evolve our relationship with these customers.

The Head of Grooming is accountable for the P&L of the Grooming business, working in strong partnership with the three Regional Operations Directors (RODs), alongside driving the high performance of your direct central grooming team. Our grooming colleagues are highly skilled, and we have recently embedded our Reset Plan which supports a progressive career pathway that enables our colleagues to continue to learn and develop.

You will be responsible for identifying future opportunities and initiatives to develop the future strategy of our Grooming business, translating vision into delivery alongside engaging a number of broad supporting teams to support strong Grooming business results.

An overview of some of the core deliverables and focus for the role

Sales Delivery & P&L Ownership - Accountable for the sales plan delivery for Grooming across all three regions, driving growth and strong commerciality in partnership with the Regional Operations Directors. Robust management of cost lines across colleagues, equipment and more to ensure your P&L is not compromised. Driving occupancy to ensure that we have the right volume of appointments relevant to the level of resource

Strategic Visioning - Be able to see the bigger picture and understand how the Grooming business can evolve aligning with business values and strategic goals. An awareness of competitor activity and external trends to influence your approach to ensure competitive advantage, across both larger organisations and independents. An ability to understand how Grooming benefits the Group and how Grooming can be used to unlock future opportunities across Retail, Pet and Vets

Relationship and Stakeholder Management – Creating robust relationships across the RODs and the Area Management population, utilising the Grooming champions to support positive growth. Forging honest and strong two-way relationship with your leadership peers across the Group to ensure a consistent Grooming voice is represented to the rest of the business. An ability to build, grow and maintain relationships that are likely to be remote for the majority of time

High Performing Team - A highly engaged and motivated team that feels set up to succeed, with low colleague turnover. A robust performance management culture, with empowered and knowledgeable Senior GDETS (Grooming, Development & Expertise Trainers), GDETS and SSTs (Senior Salon Trainers) who are able to consistently raise the bar, praising and constructively challenging and managing under-performance where required. An ability to identify talented colleagues and support and coach them to thrive within the Pets Group

About You – what we would like you to bring to our role and teams

As a true commercial leader, you will be adept at understanding the mechanisms of running a successful business. From translating business strategy into meaningful storytelling for your team and stakeholders, enabling the vision and articulating accountabilities. A natural leader and persuader, you will drive advocacy whilst ensuring the delivery of P&L, through effective management of costs lines and a deep knowledge of the operational make-up of the Grooming business.

Your leadership behaviours will drive the desire for continuous growth within your teams, bringing a natural energy to want to drive positive change on key focuses such as diversity and inclusion, empowering our colleagues to truly be themselves at work

Skills and Behaviours

• Proven senior leadership capability, able to engage with senior leaders and exec within the organisation
• Outstanding interpersonal skills with an ability to build trusting and robust relationships, both in person and remotely
• Excellent communication skills, both written and verbal and an awareness and ability to adapt communication style for varying audiences
• A data focused mindset, gaining insight to drive and execute commercial opportunities and taking actions to mitigate risks
• Proven leadership skills with a high support, high challenge approach to develop and drive a high performing team culture
• A natural coach and developer of people, inspiring your broader teams through a natural drive and energy to support, creating fun and positivity
• Ability to spot trends and to influence change, working with senior leaders
• Sound experience of providing clarity of business case and seeing this managed through effective delivery including planning, monitoring, implementing and reviewing

Additional Benefits:

In addition to a competitive salary, car allowance and bonus scheme, we also offer a comprehensive employee

Pets just see people. They aren’t biased and they don’t discriminate. We take our inspiration from pets, and we value and respect difference in all its forms. Our aim is to reflect the diversity of the communities we operate in, and every colleague can help us achieve this. We encourage our people to be themselves so even if your skills and experience don’t perfectly align, if you think you can make a unique contribution through your values and behaviours, we want to hear from you!