Sustainability Manager, Farm Data and Performance

About the roleAt the John Lewis Partnership we want to be one of the UK’s most purpose-led and sustainable businesses. We aim to enhance and differentiate the Partnership’s position as a market leader in Ethics and Sustainability.

We are seeking a highly motivated and collaborative Sustainability Manager, Farm Data and Performance to join our Agriculture and wider Ethics and Sustainability teams. This unique role is pivotal to Waitrose's commitment to a "happier world" responsible for sourcing and curating insight relating to Ethics and Sustainability (E&S) performance in farms supplying Waitrose own brand.
You will be the digital product owner responsible for rolling out, maintaining and evolving the third party digital platform to capture E&S insights about Waitrose own brand supply chain. This is an opportunity to own, shape, and continuously improve a critical platform in a newly created role within the Partnership.
You will measure progress against our ethics and sustainability policies and public commitments, and to use data to capture insights, identify new opportunities and drive decisions to positively transform the food system. You will prioritise and deliver activities to enhance and differentiate the Partnership’s position as a market leader in ethical and sustainable sourcing.
This role plays a key function in empowering, supporting and challenging JLP / Waitrose decision-makers to deliver changes to the agricultural supply base that support progress towards Ethics and Sustainability priorities and points of differentiation, including but not limited to:
- Animal welfare leadership
- Net zero farms by 2035; wider net zero targets
- Nature targets, such as Science-based Targets for Nature
- Supporting more than 2,000 British farmers move to nature-friendly practices
- Creating a happier world through improving the livelihoods of people

• Salary - £55,300 - £83,000 depending on experience

• Contract type  - This position is a Permanent contract.

• Working pattern/flexible working - The Partnership has adopted a hybrid working approach, meaning you'll be able to work a mixture between the office in Bracknell and home based upon your personal needs whilst balancing the needs of the business which may require some time at our office in Pimlico in Central London. The role will involve a combination of office work, home working (approximately two days per week), and considerable supplier engagement, including travel/site visits.

• Location - Bracknell Head Office

• This role is known internally as Farm Metrics Manager

Key responsibilities

• Roadmap delivery and ways of working: Drive rollout of Farm Metrics roadmap, completion of data collection and generation of insights. Introduce, embed and evolve ways of working across suppliers, third party data platform vendors  and business stakeholders, leading on: Working groups, OKRs, processes to manage non compliance, non conformances and escalations where required.

• Data quality and actionable insights: Lead continuous improvement of data quality and insights, through ongoing discovery and trial of new approaches. Coordination of vendor technology enhancements and utilisation of insights to identify risks and opportunities to drive change

• Stakeholder management: Serve as the primary point of contact for all stakeholders related to Farm Metrics, including suppliers, farmers/growers, E&S subject matter experts, and Waitrose business stakeholders. Own the Farm Metrics FAQs and support pages.

• Customer proposition: Actively focus on how you can engage our customers in our E&S strategy and activity, with E&S being embedded into the customer proposition. Support the delivery of the key E&S narrative for external and internal stakeholders that sits within our overall storytelling.

• Operational efficiency, data governance: Identify and deliver opportunities to reduce the burden of data collection, integrate to utilise existing data sources and improve governance of data in alignment with wider JLP architecture.

• Governance, policy & legal: Continuously support governance and policy as an enabler for data collection and insights. In addition to  collaborating with legal and compliance to find pragmatic solutions to supplier non conformance within a GSCOP context including regular review and enhancement of data sharing agreements.

• Industry collaboration: Explore and identify new opportunities for collaboration with industry stakeholders and suppliers to drive industry standards and enhance the Partnership’s reputation for ethical and sustainable agriculture.

Essential skills/experience you’ll need

• Degree level qualification or equivalent relevant experience in agricultural, environmental, ecological sciences or data analysis 

• Strong communication, organisational, prioritisation and planning skills, driving pace and change in a complex multi-stakeholder environment 

• Proven digital product development and business analysis experience 

• Experience driving change at the interface of ethical, sustainability and commercial functions in a comparable context (either in-house or consultancy) 

• Highly collaborative; excellent stakeholder management skills with an ability to build consensus and drive change through others (including senior executives); comfortable with ambiguity 

• Experience in understanding relevant legislation, certification standards and assurance schemes linked e.g. food production, agriculture, animal welfare and carbon reporting 

• Experience of delivering successful strategic projects 

• Strong ability to challenge data quality, insights generated and externally facing benchmarking and scorecards 

Desirable skills/experience you may have

• Detailed technical understanding of processes relevant to the role, such as agriculture, manufacturing 

• Technology expertise: 4yrs+ experience in designing and building bespoke software, including domain modelling, build of APIs and databases 

• Experience developing process flow and entity relationship modelling 

• Strong commercial understanding and strategic problem-solving to align initiatives with business goals 

• Data-driven and analytical - analyses complex data, improves data quality and governance, to generate insights, measure progress, and solve intricate problems. 

• Process and systems savvy - enhances business processes, understands system integration principles to drive efficiency and seamless data flow across platforms. 

• Legal: Proven experience collaborating with legal to find pragmatic solutions, ideally within a GSCOP context 

• Awareness of certification standards and assurance schemes (eg  BRC Red Tractor, LEAF, SEDEX/SMETA, ASC, MSC, BBFAW, CIWF, WWF, SBTN, SBTi, WRAP, GlobalG.A.P. etc) 

#LI-HEADOFFICE#LI-SD1About The Partnership

We’re the largest employee owned business in the UK and home of our cherished brands, John Lewis and Waitrose. We’re not just employees, we’re Partners, driven by our purpose to build a happier world. As we look to our future, there’s never been a more exciting time to join us.  

We’re ruthlessly focused on being brilliant at retail. We continue to innovate, adapt and diversify. Never Knowingly Undersold on price, quality and service in John Lewis and passionately serving food-lovers in Waitrose.   

As Partners we all share the responsibility of ownership and in its rewards. We use our voices to contribute to our success, working together through the good and challenging times, holding true to our behaviours and treating everyone with kindness and respect. 

We all own making the Partnership somewhere we belong. Embracing our differences and creating an environment where we’re free to be ourselves and can THRIVE. Growing ourselves individually, and as a collective. 

As Partners, we make all the difference. And, we all own it.  

Important points to note:  

It’s important to note that some of our roles are subject to pre-employment vetting (which may include DBS checks for successful candidates). If required, you’ll be informed and provided with information about vetting during the recruitment process and we encourage you to complete any vetting documents quickly to avoid delays. Any DBS checks required will be carried out by a third-party registered body and financial probity checks may also be required for some of our roles.  

We occasionally close vacancies early in the event we receive a high volume of applications, and therefore, we recommend you apply early. If you require a reasonable adjustment due to a disability which means you may need longer to complete your application please contact us as soon as possible.

We want all of our Partners to have a good work-life balance and we support flexible working. This might mean flexible or compressed hours, job sharing or shorter hour contracts, where possible. Please discuss this further with the hiring manager during your interview.