Senior Program Manager: Skills Transformation

The Senior Program Manager for Skills Transformation is responsible for the governance and active program and / or portfolio management of the highly complex program of Skills Marketplace, this in turn is linked to our company and People department strategy & objectives. 

First and foremost, the Senior Program Manager for Skills Transformation is responsible for shaping the overarching vision and strategy for the design and scaling of a skills marketplace at B.com. They will build the required roadmaps in line with interdependent business priorities, strategies and stakeholders. They will design these based on data and business needs, and deliver against the shared objectives with key milestones that have been agreed upon. They will also be responsible for stakeholder management, sequencing, governance, planning and cadence for the project.

The Senior Program Managers lead by example in ensuring the skills program(s) are proactively lead and managed in a consistent quality manner, whilst working with business units & functions to ensure timely decisions and mitigations are in place to support the company and department objectives. 

In this role, the Senior Program Manager is exposed to Senior Stakeholders and working closely with their teams. Depending on the scope: The Senior Program Manager may lead a team of program- and project managers who are responsible for the several streams of work within the Skills Marketplace workstreams.

B Responsible

• Lead the highly complex and strategic priority of Global Skills Transformation at B.com. This includes a full review of the existing Skills pilot and reshaping of the future vision of a skills first approach at B.com. They will also be responsible for the creation of robust design principles, clear strategy, success criteria, timely road maps, stakeholder engagement plans; including the identification of opportunities to improve the impact & experience for our employees globally.


• Create an environment that stimulates Thought leadership on the subject of all things skills by keeping abreast of external market developments and data to be a single source of truth and provide trusted advisory on the topic of Skills transformation to Senior stakeholders in the organisation enabling them to make informed decisions on this topic. Including the identification and recommendation of potential partners and suppliers to position us as a market leader in this space across the industry.


• Lead a small (possibly virtual) team in the development of an agreed skills taxonomy and alignment of learning content to the identified skills needs per job family and agree a realistic roll out plan per business unit. Managing the deployment of skills via project management and scheduling tools


• Regular tracking and reporting status and progress of all streams of work (globally) to identify risk and potential barriers to the future success of this project and be proactive in the identification and management of relevant dependencies (both within as well as cross departments and 3rd parties) in order to minimize risks and challenges.


• Significant Influencing and cross collaboration needed across the COE’s and Senior Business leaders to ensure sponsorship of the skills vision and allocated time and resources by the business units required for effective translation of the strategic skills initiative to the go to market /implementation of the skills products.


• Work in close partnership with the People Systems team to evaluating, plan and manage the use of technology to augment and automate human skills via specialist analytical tools


• Work in partnership with business units and functions leadership to ensure resources are allocated to the right work, within headcount and P&L budget

B.Skilled

• 12+ years of experience in project management, with a range of different methodologies and techniques.


• Strong leadership skills, ability to influence and steer leadership and senior management.


• Ability to influence VP level and productively interact with SVP level


• Preferred HR transformation or People led consultancy experience


• Proven track record in change management in large organization


• Lead independently multiple high complexity programs (end-2-end)


• Have a solid business understanding. Independently use quantitative and qualitative data to drive decision making and lead by example


• Analytical skilled and mastering data handling, able to tell a clear story with data/insights


• Think holistically and be able to articulate long term vision for the craft and for the department strategy


• Solid change management experience (including methodologies and best practices)


• Exceptional interpersonal skills focused on collaboration, building links and relationships within diverse teams, across organization and outside


• Effectively communicate to large (upward) audience, strong influencer in groups


• Ability to break up highly complex problems into actionable and easy to understand solutions.


• Able to function well within ambiguity and in a constantly changing environment