State P&C Business Partner

A new role means a new way to win together. We’ve been proudly serving Australian communities since 1914 and at the heart of our continued success lies our 115,000 team members working across the country. If you’re looking for a career-defining opportunity, take the next step and explore another way your work can have impact and make a difference.

About the team

People and Culture are dedicated to fostering  an engaged and empowered workplace. One that’s strong, diverse and where our team members have exciting career pathways to choose from. We do it by making people’s lives easier through better experiences, useful tools, and by providing ongoing opportunities to learn and grow.

We’ve been proudly serving Australian communities since 1914 and have grown to become a top 30-listed company on the ASX with a portfolio of iconic homegrown brands. At the heart of our continued success is over 115,000 team members working across the country, all contributing to bringing our customers smiles. You’ll not only get to see your work make a difference, you’ll be part of a team working together to help Australians eat and live better every day.

The Opportunity   

We have an opportunity for an experienced P&C Business Partner to join our P&C Operations Partnering team, following a recent internal promotion. 

You’ll partner with senior operational leaders across large, complex and geographically dispersed Coles Liquor portfolios, helping them navigate people and organisational challenges and make sound decisions that support business performance. 

Working closely with leaders, you’ll translate business priorities into practical people strategies and solutions across workforce planning, organisational design, leadership, capability, engagement, talent, performance and change. 

This role goes beyond providing P&C advice. You’ll use data, business context and your P&C expertise to understand what is driving an issue, identify the right response and influence leaders through to implementation. You’ll coach and challenge leaders, bring different perspectives to the conversation and help turn decisions into practical action. 

You’ll also contribute to broader P&C and business initiatives that strengthen capability, improve ways of working and support sustainable performance. 

This is a great opportunity for an experienced Business Partner who enjoys working with senior leaders, solving complex problems and combining strategic thinking with practical delivery. 

About the role  

Reporting to the P&C Manager Liquor, you’ll partner closely with senior leaders to understand their business priorities and identify the people, workforce and organisational actions that will have the greatest impact. 

You’ll bring strong judgement, commercial awareness and the confidence to challenge thinking when needed, while building trusted and credible relationships with your stakeholders. 

Through the Liquorland banner, our Coles Liquor team works to bring customers the drinks they want, when and how they want them. With a network of more than 950 stores nationally, you’ll partner with State Managers across Victoria and Western Australia to support the delivery of their business and people priorities. 

Your work will contribute to stronger leadership and organisational capability, improved productivity and retention, effective management of workforce risks and stronger team performance. 

Key Responsibilities  

• Partner with senior leaders to understand business priorities, identify people and organisational challenges and provide commercially informed advice and solutions. 

• Coach and constructively challenge leaders, helping them test assumptions, consider different options and make sound decisions on complex people matters. 

• Use people, workforce and business data to identify trends, underlying issues, risks and opportunities, and translate these into clear recommendations. 

• Translate business needs into practical P&C solutions, working across talent, performance, capability, leadership, engagement, culture and workforce planning. 

• Strengthen leadership, talent and performance outcomes by helping leaders identify capability needs, address performance issues, develop talent and build stronger teams. 

• Shape and deliver people and change initiatives across the portfolio, supporting effective planning, stakeholder engagement, communication and implementation. 

• Lead core P&C activities across your portfolio, including workforce planning, talent, performance and engagement cycles, using these to support better leadership decisions and people outcomes. 

About you and your skills  

You’ll bring strong experience in a P&C Business Partnering or broad generalist P&C role, ideally within a large, complex or fast-paced organisation, with a track record of partnering directly with senior leaders. 

Importantly, you’ll be able to demonstrate how you’ve moved beyond providing advice to understanding business problems, identifying the people or organisational issues behind them, shaping practical solutions and influencing leaders through to implementation. 

You’ll also bring: 

• Demonstrated experience partnering with senior leaders, with the credibility and confidence to influence, coach and constructively challenge their thinking.  

• A strong track record of translating business priorities into practical people strategies and solutions, and working with leaders to implement them effectively.  

• Broad experience across workforce planning, organisational effectiveness, talent, performance, capability and change, with the ability to connect people activity to broader business priorities.  

• Strong commercial acumen, with an understanding of how workforce and people decisions can affect operational performance, productivity, customer outcomes, capability, retention and risk.  

• Strong analytical and critical thinking capability, with the ability to interrogate data, identify patterns and underlying issues, test assumptions and turn insights into clear recommendations.  

• Experience managing multiple priorities, projects or workstreams in a changing environment, including working through ambiguity, competing demands and barriers to delivery.  

• The ability to work effectively across P&C, bringing together specialist expertise and different perspectives across the Centres of Excellence to develop practical, integrated solutions.  

• Strong P&C knowledge, judgement and communication capability, with the ability to make complex issues clear, provide practical advice and build credibility with a range of stakeholders.  

This position will be based in Victoria, with some interstate travel required to support stakeholders in Western Australia and South Australia. 

What’s in it for you?

• Flexible working options: We know that work is only one part of your life, so we actively encourage a positive work-life balance and provide hybrid working options to help you achieve it.
• Office perks: Take advantage of our gym facility and fitness classes, free parking, BBQ area, mini-Coles supermarket, fooderie hub where you can sample new products before they hit the shelves, school holiday program and so much more when you come in.
• Discounts: Eligible team members receive 5% discount all year round on your Supermarket and Liquor online and in-store purchases. We also offer additional periods of double discount (10%) at various times throughout the year. As well as hotdeals exclusive to team members that translate into additional savings.
• Reward through recognition: Give and receive recognition, linked to our Coles values, through our digital recognition platform ‘mythanks’. You can accumulate points to redeem in the online shop for exciting gifts and electronic gift cards from an extensive range of retailers.
• Opportunities for learning and development: No matter where you start within our diverse business, you’ll have experiences, exposure, and education to satisfy you. Discover and explore a variety of career development programs and job-specific training.
• Paid parental leave: We understand how important your life outside work is and offer permanent team members paid parental leave to support you in balancing work and family.
• Investment in your future: Our annual team member share plan offer allows eligible team members to make regular pre-tax salary sacrifice deductions to purchase Coles Group shares.

About the recruitment process

We’re continuing to build a gender equitable team, and a culture that is just as diverse, inclusive and welcoming as the communities we serve. We are committed to creating a workplace that is safe and respectful for our team. We encourage applications from people of all ages, cultures (including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples), abilities, sexual orientation and gender identities.

We’re happy to adjust our recruitment process to support candidates with disability. For further information and additional contact details visit the ‘Our Recruitment Process’ section of our careers site or email inclusionrecruitment@coles.com.au

Job ID: 190976

Employment Type: Full time

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