ESSENTIAL SKILLS:

• Deep experience in leading, growing and scaling high performing teams, improving customer delivery, success measures and employee engagement on a consistent basis (achieving +25 eNPS scores minimum) and managing within a cost budget
• Exceptional communication and ability to develop robust and enduring relationships with stakeholders, with regular engagement with C-suite individuals at Zellis
• Inspiring leader with outstanding skills and ability to work effectively at all levels
• Able to manage, mitigate and facilitate the resolution for people and delivery risks and issues
• Will have the gravitas, charisma, and knowledge to be credible in all business situations
• Action oriented and collaborative team player with defined leadership qualities enabling them to gain confidence and buy-in from their peers
• Sets extremely high standards for self and team and they need to be both strategist as well as strong operator, with a continuous improvement mindset
• Capable of conveying complex concepts in simple terms and of tailoring their presentation style of delivery to suit their audience
• Excellent interpersonal skills will be needed to build strong relationships and to sustain confidence with customers and other colleagues that will be critical to the success of this role
• Experience working in the HR & Payroll software and/or outsourcing industry

ABOUT THE ROLE

The Director of Project Management will be responsible for leading and growing a multi-disciplinary/multi-skilled team of customer facing Implementation Programme and Project Managers across the UK and Kochi. These programme and project managers are responsible for the successful implementation of Zellis’ solutions and services on stand-alone engagements or as part of a wider project team, and whilst focussed on solutions and systems delivery, support other customer engagements including management consultancy, BI and analytics and sales/commercial growth.
They will be an extremely strong people leader who will be accountable for building a centre of excellence in the UK and Kochi for programme and project management. They will own developing skills, performance managing individuals and supporting colleagues in the build of their careers. They will own proactive and reactive resourcing, capacity planning and management (including the cost budget for the resource pool) and will align with the Director of Implementation by making sure that all Implementation and ad-hoc change delivery is suitably staffed.
They will play a leading role in transformation, by creating and developing new and improved approaches to Implementation and working across Zellis (especially with Zellis Product and IT teams) to automate and accelerate customer delivery whilst not losing sight of quality and customer success criteria. They will help embed change for new tools and ways of working and will accelerate the adoption and product operational readiness for their teams.
They will also play a key role in supporting building new propositions that fulfil a market demand but also leverage the skills of the team and developing assets and methods that make repeatable tasks more efficient over time. This could be across the UK and Kochi Implementation colleague population.
The chosen candidate will bring gravitas and a pragmatic and transformational approach to engaging internal stakeholders – ensuring that they are acting as a servant leader to the market facing units, whilst also bringing to bear their experience and offering constructive tension in the operating model.

IN THIS ROLE YOUR KEY RESPONSIBILITIES WILL BE:

• Achievement of the key financial measures and outcomes for the Implementation Service Lines, in particular management of the cost budgets into the overall Implementation P&L and chargeability/revenue generating chargeability performance of the service lines
• Achievement of key delivery objectives for the Implementation Service Lines, including employee engagement (eNPS), current and accelerated time to value for mid-market and enterprise delivery (all territories), commercial lead generation as part of delivery, on time delivery and delivery NPS
• Lead and grow the Implementation Service Lines, building skills and expertise to justify external rates and ensure we are bringing value to customers
• Develop skills and knowledge rapidly to ensure that we have the best Project Managers in the HCM market
• Schedule people on to projects and ensure that they are fully utilised but not over allocated, ensuring that consideration is given to skills required and skills available, customer requirements, team chemistry etc.
• Take accountability for capacity planning and management for your team (including recommendations for recruitment when needed)
• Manage conflicts in resourcing and proactively propose resolution paths
• Support a structured career development path for Implementation colleagues, and performance manage those underperforming taking inputs from key stakeholders
• Consume ahead of time product/release changes to ensure people are trained/skilled adequately to be able to offer Services during the canary ring and to support day 1 of general availability
• Develop or contribute to propositions that leverage the skills of the team and fulfil a market need
• Design, develop, deploy and change manage (with the support of the wider Zellis business) assets, methods and automation to improve the delivery of repeatable tasks to enable the organisation to scale without adding in an exponential growth in costs
• Support chargeable activities from time to time at the Director of Implementation’s request, to provide project QA etc.
• Act as a coach and advisor to ensure people are the very best versions of themselves without getting directly involved in the delivery of a programme
• Accelerate and grow the Service lines offshore, including a clear RACI and hand offs, ensuring quality is maintained, and managing a safe transition between on and offshore resources
• Build, maintain, lead and engage a high-calibre team
• Supporting the Director of Implementation in delivery of their objectives