Team Manager – South West London

About the role
Are you a natural leader with a passion for developing others?
Do you have leadership experience in food retail?
Can you drive a culture of high standards whilst delivering excellent service?

If the answer is yes, our Team Manager role may be the one for you!

Waitrose & Partners are recruiting team managers to work in our South West London stores. Successful candidates will undertake a structured training programme across a number of locations in this area before permanent appointment throughout 2025.

As a Team Manager in one of our Waitrose shops, you'll influence and motivate your team and be a positive role model for delivering outstanding Partner-led customer service that is distinctively Waitrose, passionate partners serving food lovers.

Your strong leadership and team working skills will make all the difference to your team and, ultimately, the impression our customers have about the Waitrose brand. Keeping them returning again and again by earning their trust and loyalty for a lifetime, whilst helping to maximise sales and profit.

It's fast-paced and at times you'll oversee the entire day-to-day operation of the shop.

1. Using your commercial skills to maximise sales and profit while minimising wastage.
2. Ensuring consistently high levels of availability and merchandising as well as delivering an efficient, legal, and secure store operation.
3. Improving and maintaining customer satisfaction.
4. Using your people skills to manage your team, from leading and inspiring to people related tasks like organising holidays and managing absences.
5. Create a supportive culture of care, belonging, pace and productivity.
6. Engage and lead partners in delivering and embedding change consistently and effectively within your shop.

Essential skills/experience you'll need:

1. Experience of leading a team in a fast-paced, customer-focused environment.
2. People Management skills.
3. Able to demonstrate an innate passion for and understanding of retail.
4. Resilience to support and plan your team’s response to change.
5. Ability to influence stakeholders.
6. Advanced communication skills.

Desirable skills/experience you may have:

1. Experience of supporting with the Disciplinary and Grievance process.
2. Regulatory Compliance Management.
3. Personal Licence Holder.
4. Food Hygiene Level 3.

About 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. If required, you’ll find out more about vetting throughout the recruitment process and we encourage you to complete any vetting documents quickly to avoid delays.

We also recommend that you apply as soon as possible as vacancies can close early if we see a high number of applicants.

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.