Senior Operational Planning Manager

Job content

At M&G our vision is: to become the best loved and most successful savings and investment businessand we’re looking for people who are excited about joining us on our journey. We’re digitally transforming and investing heavily in technology and innovation to develop new and improved customer propositions that really raise the bar for our customers. To help us achieve our vision we’re looking for exceptional people who live our values and behaviours and who can inspire others; embrace change; deliver results and keep it simple.

We know that an inclusive environment makes us more accessible and ensures we attract, engage, promote and retain exceptional people. We welcome applications from all individuals regardless of age, gender/gender identity, sexual orientation, ethnicity/nationality, disability, or military service and welcome those who have taken career breaks. We will consider flexible working arrangements or home working arrangements for any of our roles and also offer work place accommodations to ensure you have what you need to effectively deliver in your role.

What You Can Expect From Us

We are committed to creating an environment where you can be exceptional at all you do. To help us deliver this, we promise to:

• Challenge Your Limits by creating a stimulating working environment and providing opportunities for you to be involved in meaningful and challenging work
• Support Your Aspirations with a commitment to learning and development that helps you achieve and build your experience with people who want you to succeed
• Value Your Input whereby leaders and managers will involve you in key decisions, listen to your thoughts and recognise the important contribution you make
• Balance Your Life through a work life partnership that focuses on making this an inclusive, diverse and friendly place to work and offers the flexibility and support that enables everyone to be at their best
  

How Do We Support Our Employees

All M&G plc employees will be supported in the workplace through our M&G Employee Assistance Programme (EAP). If you need counselling, confidential financial or legal advice. The service is available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year and offers access to qualified professionals who can provide specialist information, advice and support on many issues. It offers a broad range of services, including help with family issues, maintaining work/life balance and mental health support.

The Role: Senior Operational Planning Manager (Hybrid working - Edinburgh or Stirling or Reading or London)

The team is responsible for the operational planning oversight of the entire outsourced Heritage operation: Front Office (Voice), Back Office and Complaints (circa 2000 FTE managing ~25000 inbound calls and ~80000 inbound emails, messages or letters in the Back Office each week). We collaborate on the plans with our partners and use continual learning to increase forecast accuracy. We link Operations and Planning to drive the required customer outcomes, identify customer issues for planning purposes and then drive intervention and planning resolutions for improved ops direction. We work across the entire business; Risk, Commercial, MI/Data and Performance, Customer Experience & Journey Improvement to deliver day-on-day planning solutions. For the next 12 – 24 months the need for an improved and controlled planning function is heightened by the continued migration of our legacy books of business on to a new strategic platform, a huge transformation operation in which the team will play a vital part.

The role holder will be responsible for the detailed management and oversight of ~13 Operational Plans, encompassing ~100 teams for front and back office. The role holder will need to engage in controlled implementation of change runways (Planning Forum) where an understanding of change runway items will be captured in the plans, working with the supplier, Risk, Commercial, Ops and performance, they will drive the planning performance tempo and manage the outcomes in accordance with the business-defined appetite.

Additionally, the role holder will be responsible for developing, gaining senior agreement on, and then implementing and driving the Operational Planning Insight strategy. This strategy will, amongst other things, define the key operational parameters associated with Operational Planning methods of best practice, linking the Front and Back Office and Complaints areas, and lay out the roadmap towards uplifting improved CSAT and NPS measures. It will develop a methodology for looking in more detail at the true business performance and how this manifests in our operational plans, and then develop the thinking and consensus around areas for priority action and focus from the business. Whilst this role is a strategic role, it’s also a hands on role where the role holder has to be comfortable dissecting and reconstructing Operational Plans through multiple lenses i.e. customer, data, operations, change, finance and SLA.

Manager Or Expert

Key Work Level Accountabilities:

• For people managers, accountable for managing and motivating others to ensure quality of delivery to customers and stakeholders
• For technical specialists, accountable for delivering expert advice or service, using specialist knowledge and subject matter expertise
• Applies judgement to deliver outcomes, evaluating a range of potential solutions, considering the impact for customers, cost and risk
• Manages conflicts that may impact delivery
• Challenges upwards given knowledge of delivery and awareness of complex systems and the broader picture
• Identifies and anticipates need for changes to continuously improve quality and efficiency of output
• Manages resources and risks using expert judgment, know-how and experience
  

Key Knowledge, Skills & Experience

• Strong knowledge of, and track record of experience in, resource modelling, planning and forecasting
• Highly proficient in the use of spreadsheets and basic statistical techniques.
• Strong knowledge of performance, operational planning, workflow management, allocation and the inherent links between them.
• Must have experience of Operational Planning within large multi-product operations, balancing quantitative (KPIs) and operational direction using a resourcing staircase.
• Must be capable of distilling complex information into senior leadership briefing formats and briefing clearly up to and including senior leaderships.
• Must have experience of working with large operational workflow systems and IT stacks and able to extract insight from the CRM, workflow orchestration or raw data layer
• Must have experience of working in operations undergoing significant transformational activity whilst continuing to deliver a planning tempo.
• Desirable to have had exposure to Agile delivery concepts
  

Work Level: Manager/Expert

Recruiter Name: Chloe Murphy

Closing Date: 13/06/2022

We live by four behaviours at M&G and we ask all our employees to:

• Inspire Others - Support and encourage each other, creating an environment where everyone can contribute and succeed
• Embrace Change - Be open to change, willing to be challenged and able to adapt quickly and imaginatively to new ideas
• Deliver Results - Focus on outcomes, set high standards and deliver with energy and determination
• Keep it Simple - Cut through complexity and bureaucracy, be clear and decisive and never overcomplicate things