Performance Advocate

Performance Advocate (Continuous Improvement)

Full Time – 37 hours per week

Up to 12 months Fixed Term Contract/Secondment

Location – Pity Me, Durham, County Durham

Salary: £49,810 - £58,600 (depending on experience) Durham

About the role

We’ve a great opportunity to become our Performance Advocate (CI) who will be working in collaboration with the Metering Strategy and Technical Operations Manager supporting the creation and implementation of a Lean Transformation within Metering Operations.

NWL is undergoing a significant expansion of its smart meter installation programme, resulting in rapid operational growth. We are seeking a skilled professional to evaluate and refine our existing processes, identifying gaps, inefficiencies, and bottlenecks. In this role, you will collaborate closely with key stakeholders to design, recommend, and implement effective improvements that enhance overall performance and delivery.

You’ll be a critical member of the Metering Operations Team, focusing on clear CI projects which will be identified through using LEAN/CI methodologies. You will be expected to take a holistic approach and will identify smarter ways of; improving the customer experience, delivering efficient processes, performance management; developing skills and cultural change. 

The successful candidate will support deployment of Lean solutions, helping to create an environment that promotes continuous improvement; simplifying processes, increases employee and customer satisfaction; and reduces variability and waste. You’ll be working to establish a development plan and approach to drive a continuous improvement mind-set, delivering and sustaining change. We’re looking for you to utilise a range of methods from on the job coaching and technical capability build workshops.

We’re looking for you to work with field and office based teams across Metering Operations to identify opportunities for improvement and lead changes to simplify, improve, standardise, streamline and drive overall productivity.

We’re looking for you to design and introduce sustainability assessments for news ways of working, to identify opportunities for improvement and best practice sharing, including a range of methods, from group coaching, process confirmations or observations. Supporting the embedding of processes to maximise efficiencies.

Travel between our sites is a requirement of this role.

About you

For such an exciting role we are looking for you to have proven experience of driving change projects or transformations, with evidence of results, along with proven experience of working for multiple stakeholders, across different disciplines, implementing customer and operational focused business change and initiatives.

It would also be great if you had experience in facilitation, creating engaging sessions and consultancy, coaching and mentoring.

You’ll have proven experience in understanding of how individuals learn, and how to develop them, along with being a self-confident individual with effective communication and interpersonal skills, confident to challenge based on facts and objective insights.

We’re looking for you to have proven ability to understand and analyse numerical data, writing clear, easy-to-understand reports that clarify opportunities for improvement and how to implement them once this has been distilled.  

You’ll be comfortable at handling multiple lean projects, prioritising workloads and delegating effectively in order to deliver results, along with being able to relate to others and to work together as an effective team in order to achieve a mutually satisfying outcome and drive forward improvements. Tracking benefits from baseline measures will be essential to measuring success.

Please note this role may require a DBS to be completed prior to employment.

Here at Northumbrian Water/Essex & Suffolk Water, we embrace and value Diversity, Inclusion and Equity, and encourage all colleagues to bring their most authentic self to work.

Our colleague network groups include our Rainbow Support Network (LGBTQIA+), REACH (Race, Ethnicity, and Cultural Heritage), WiSTEM (Women in STEM) and Thisability (disability and neurodiversity) networks. They provide a safe space for colleagues from diverse backgrounds, welcoming all colleagues regardless of their personal characteristics to participate in valuable conversation that improves our organisational awareness, understanding and inclusivity.

We encourage and welcome all applications, as we strive to be an equal opportunity employer, committed to having diverse communities represented within all our teams, structures, and organisation. 

About us

Here are NWG we strive to make Northumbrian Water Group (NWG) a Great Place to Work, for all. We embrace and value Diversity, Inclusion and Equity and encourage you to bring your full self to work. As an equal opportunity employer we’re committed to having a diverse community represented across our business.

We’re aware that not everyone will have every skill listed in the job description, however if you have some of the skills listed, we'd encourage you to apply

NWG at a glance:

Our purpose at NWG is caring for the essential needs of our communities and environment, now and for generations to come.

We do this by providing reliable and affordable water and wastewater services for our customers.

We make a positive difference by operating efficiently and investing prudently, to maintain a sustainable and resilient business.

Our vision is to be the national leader in the provision of sustainable water and wastewater services. To support us in achieving our vision, we have five core values which are the guiding principles, defining who we are, what we do and how we do it.

Our benefits

We’re a Great Place to Work because of the amazing people who work for us, and to say thank you we offer a range of benefits to colleagues. Our ‘Tap Into’ benefits include:

• Generous holiday entitlement starting at 26, plus bank holidays and additional time off on Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve. There’s also the option to buy or sell holidays.
• Company pension scheme, where we’ll double match your contributions up to an employer contribution of 10%.
• Free access to local attractions.
• A fantastic discount scheme, with savings on days out, shopping, travel and more.
• Award winning ‘Living Well’ wellbeing support, including access to a digital GP service for you and your family members.
• Support with sustainable travel – through salary sacrifice cars and a cycle to work scheme.
• Financial wellbeing support – access our community savings scheme, financial education and low cost loans through Salary Finance. We also provide 4 x Life Assurance and an Income Protection Scheme.
• Support with your development – we offer a range of development opportunities, can support you through an interest free qualification loan and we’ll even pay for any relevant professional body subscription.