Head of Planning

Overview

With 24 million customers across seven countries, Sky is Europe’s leading media and entertainment company and is proud to be part of the Comcast group. Our 31,000 employees help connect our customers with the very best of Sports, News, the arts and to our own local, original content. Following the success of Sky originals like Chernobyl, Patrick Melrose, Das Boot and Gomorrah we launched Sky Studios and now plan to more than double our investment in original drama and comedy over the next five years.

Our technology allows customers to watch what they want, when they want, how they want, and as we connect millions of families to content they love, it is our responsibility to do it safely – that’s why we offer services like Sky Broadband Buddy and the Sky Kids app. And our online streaming service, NOW TV, brings viewers all the enjoyment of Sky with the flexibility of a contract-free service.

We also believe that a company of our scale has a responsibility that goes beyond our business, and into the community. Our Sky Ocean Rescue campaign has reached millions across Europe, we’re on track to be free of single-use plastic by 2020, we’re investing £25million over five years in ocean-saving tech and we’re a proud employer – recognised by The Times and Stonewall for our approach to inclusivity.

Job purpose – Planning

The Customer Service Group (CSG) is responsible for every customer interaction with Sky. This includes the following divisions.

• Customer Sales and retention activity, both face to face and via our UK contact centres and over 180 Retail stores across the UK  (approx. 5000 direct employees).
• Our Service function across UK contact centres, digital and our in-home engineer workforce (delivering 21m contacts, 3m visits and 7000 direct employees).
• Operational support, including our colleague and customer planning teams that enable our operations to work effectively.

We have a fantastic opportunity for a Head of Planning to join our Colleague and Customer Planning team within CSG and take our colleague engagement and customer service to the next level.

Within the planning leadership team we have Heads of Planning leading teams managing the end to end planning for thousands of colleagues across our vast contact centre estate and across our Home Service and Retail estate delivering exceptional service to our customers.

It’s an exciting time for both these business areas as we transform to support business growth, new products and new ways of working, with the planning team being at the heart of this exciting transformation.

As a result of this transformation we are looking for talented planning staff at all levels, including the exciting opportunity to join as Head of Planning – Transformation.

We are looking for a hands on, data driven leader with excellent engagement skills; who can bring fresh thinking and ideas to inspire the team to build and deliver service excellence and industry leading planning practices.

What you’ll do:

As Head of Planning – Transformation you will be accountable for building, driving and delivering our strategic resourcing strategy to enable ambitious and innovative business plans. You will also be the glue that brings our planning teams across Sales, Service, Home Service and Retail together, creating pan-CSG planning solutions to deliver an exceptional and efficient planning service to our colleagues and customers.

What you’ll bring:

You will have a:

• background in strategic planning – designing and delivering business transformation in a multi-disciplined environment.
• proven complex people management and workflow modelling skills (shift patterns, surges in demand) Excellent engagement and communication skills in order to break down complex models into stakeholder language.
• data-driven approach to problem solving and decision making.
• the ability to operate both strategically and tactically in a high energy fast paced environment.
• strong set of influencing skills, with ability to take the initiative and drive change.
• proven track record in a complex organisation and the corresponding leadership abilities, with strong influencing and decision making skills.
• appreciation of Sky’s wider business and priorities.
• relentless focus on continuous improvement to drive improvement initiatives in customer experience and operational efficiency.
• background in complex contact centre or field management forecasting and planning with in-depth knowledge of field planning cycle & disciplines.
• proven experience of large planning systems (Oracle, IFS), including optimisation to ensure most efficient use of resources.

For further information on the role, to assess your fit as a potential candidate or a general and confidential discussion, please contact Michael Dickson or Rebecca Little from FWB Park Brown on +44 131 539 7087 or michael@fwbparkbrown.com and rebecca@fwbparkbrown.com

We celebrate diversity. Because different people, with different perspectives make Sky a better business. Our customers are incredibly diverse, so we should be, too. That’s why we’re working hard to build an inclusive culture, where you can be yourself. Whoever you are. Wherever you’re from. We recognise how vital it is that our workforce reflects the diverse communities in our customer base. Having diverse backgrounds, ethnicities and ways of thinking helps ensure that we always challenge each other and make sure that we are getting it right, communicating well and tailoring our services appropriately and inclusively for all. We welcome and encourage applications from everyone, including from underrepresented groups.