PA to Director - Talent, Performance Leadership and Retail Heads of People Partnering

Start    Joining Date - End of January 2027

Location

Hybrid – SSC (Manchester, London or Coventry) and home. The team is dispersed across all three locations, so most of your time will be spent working from home, with occasional travel to London and your base location.

Why Join Us

Joining Sainsbury's means becoming part of an organisation that places the customer at the centre of everything it does. As a Personal Assistant, you will play a crucial role in providing professional and confidential support to senior leaders within our People function and the wider team. In our agile environment, you will collaborate seamlessly with teams across the business, using the knowledge, insight and talent available to us. With opportunities for learning and development, a competitive salary and a comprehensive range of benefits, including flexible working arrangements, you will be joining a team that values work-life balance and prioritises the growth and well-being of its employees. Be part of a company that values strong relationships and places a high emphasis on excellence and confidentiality in everything we do.

What you'll do

As a Personal Assistant at Sainsbury’s, you will provide professional, confidential support to senior leaders and the wider team, helping them manage key priorities effectively. You will proactively manage complex diaries, coordinate meetings, events and travel, prepare relevant information and pre-reading, and support presentations, reports, expenses and wider administration as required.

You will act as a key point of contact, prioritising communications, responding to queries and ensuring actions are followed up. You will help coordinate team activity, training and schedules, build strong relationships across the business and wider PA network, and maintain discretion and confidentiality while identifying opportunities to simplify ways of working.

Who You Are

You are highly organised, proactive and confident supporting senior leaders and wider teams. You can manage competing priorities, coordinate meetings and events, communicate clearly and ensure accurate information is delivered on time. You are comfortable using Microsoft Office and business systems, able to learn quickly, and can organise and summarise information with accuracy. You work independently, use good judgment, handle confidential information appropriately and build strong relationships across all levels, with the confidence to challenge and influence when needed.

Essential Criteria

• Demonstrable experience providing administrative and diary management support to senior leaders, including coordinating meetings, events, travel and accommodation arrangements.
• Proven ability to manage multiple priorities, track actions and deliver accurate information within agreed timescales in a fast-paced environment.
• Experience preparing business documentation, such as presentations, agendas, meeting minutes and stakeholder communications.
• Proficiency in Microsoft Office applications (including Excel and PowerPoint), with experience using business systems to manage, analyse or report on information and the ability to learn new systems quickly.
• Demonstrable ability to handle confidential information appropriately and build effective working relationships with stakeholders at a range of levels.

Please note this vacancy advertisement may close early if we experience significant interest

We’d all like amazing work to do, and real work–life balance. That’s waiting for you at Sainsbury’s. We’re the first to say we do HR differently here. For a start, we work as business partners and specialists — whether that’s making sure nearly 150,000 colleagues are paid on time, or shaping a strategy that helps us attract the right people, put them in the right place, and unlock their potential. This is a fast-moving business, and our policies and rewards evolve with it. That’s why we’re as flexible as we can be about where and when you work. We’re also flexible about your future. There’s always room to move up or across, if that’s what you want. We really value different perspectives, so there’s no one opinion, no single path, and yours matters.

We are committed to being a truly inclusive retailer so you’ll be welcomed whoever you are and wherever you work. Around here, there’s always the chance to try something new — whether that’s as part of an evolving team or somewhere else across the business - and we take development seriously and promise to support you. We also recognise and celebrate colleagues when they go the extra mile and, where possible, offer flexible working. When you join our team, we’ll also offer you an amazing range of benefits. Here are some of them:

Starting off with colleague discount, you'll be able to save 10% on your shopping online and instore at Sainsbury's, Argos, TU and Habitat, and we regularly increase the discount to 15% at points during the year. We've also got you covered for your future with our pensions scheme and life cover. You'll also be able to share in our success as you may be eligible for a performance-related bonus of up to 5% of salary, depending on how we perform.

Your wellbeing is important to us too. You'll receive an annual holiday allowance and you can buy up to an additional week's holiday. We also offer other benefits that will help your money go further such as season ticket loans, cycle to work scheme, health cash plans, salary advance (where you can access some of your pay before pay day) as well access to a great range of discounts from hundreds of other retailers. And if you ever need it there is also an employee assistance programme.

Moments that matter are as important to us as they are to you which is why we give up to 26 weeks’ pay for maternity or adoption leave and up to 4 weeks’ pay for paternity leave.

Please see www.sainsburys.jobs for a range of our benefits (note, length of service and eligibility criteria may apply).