Senior Process Improvement Manager

Overview

Home. There’s no place like it.

And there’s no feeling like helping people create the joy of feeling truly at home. At Dunelm, that’s what we do. We’re the UK's number one choice for homewares because we make home life lovelier for our customers. And we’ve crafted a workplace that feels just as welcoming – where you can bring your ideas, be yourself, and feel right at home.

At Dunelm, we are focused on making it easy for customers to feel at home while running a simple, efficient and well controlled business. Our ambition is to unlock near-term value and enable scalable, sustainable growth over the next five years through a customer-centric transformation driven by end-to-end systemic thinking. This will deliver a substantial productivity benefit and improve our operating cost-to-sales ratio long-term.

The Process Improvement Manager will play a pivotal role in delivering Dunelm's transformation ambition by identifying, shaping and leading strategic process improvement initiatives that drive measurable business value. The role is accountable for the delivery and realisation of agreed business benefits, including cost reduction, productivity improvement and operating model simplification, through enterprise-wide process transformation initiatives.

The role will help to embed a system thinking approach at Dunelm—viewing the organisation as a set of linked processes that collectively deliver outcomes—ensuring improvements optimise end-to-end flow rather than isolated steps.

Working across the enterprise, the successful candidate will play a key role in improving how value is delivered across the organisation through a connected system of processes – identifying and implementing improvements that make our processes simpler, faster and more effective. The role requires strong leadership, influencing and delivery capabilities, with responsibility for managing programmes from inception through to benefits realisation.

The successful candidate will operate confidently at senior leadership levels, helping to shape the E2E Process & Productivity transformation roadmap by identifying the process, capability and operating-model changes required to achieve Dunelm’s strategic and financial objectives. Advising Executive sponsors and DLT members on enterprise-wide transformation choices, sequencing, dependencies and trade-offs, influencing which opportunities are progressed and how benefits are delivered. Work your way, together

We’re a hybrid business, which means you’ll have flexibility alongside time together with your team. In this role, you can expect 3 days a week in the office or on-site, helping you stay connected, collaborate and do your best work for our customers.

What you'll be doing

• Lead the identification, prioritisation and delivery of enterprise-wide process improvement opportunities that deliver measurable cost reduction, productivity gains and commercial value.
• Build, validate and deliver robust value cases, ensuring benefits are clearly defined, tracked and realised.
• Own the design and delivery of cross-functional solutions that address root causes across the complete end-to-end process, including changes to process, accountabilities, controls, organisation, data and technology.
• Resolve conflicting functional priorities and secure agreement to enterprise-level solutions where the optimum end-to-end outcome may require multiple functions to change established practices or accept local trade-offs.
• Provide authoritative recommendations to business leaders and governance forums where trade-offs are required between financial value, customer outcomes, colleague impact, risk and delivery complexity.
• Lead and manage a multidisciplinary team of process improvement professionals and third-party specialists, setting priorities, allocating resources, managing performance and developing capability across the team.
• Use enterprise data, external benchmarks, process performance insight, colleague and customer evidence, and commercial analysis to diagnose root causes, identify value pools and build an evidence-based pipeline of improvement opportunities.
• Translate strategic objectives and financial commitments into cross-functional process interventions, prioritising opportunities according to value, feasibility, risk and organisational capacity.
• Develop innovative operating solutions that combine process redesign, organisational change, data, technology, automation and human and AI capabilities, rather than limiting interventions to incremental process improvement.
• Challenge existing operating assumptions and define materially different ways of working where incremental simplification will not deliver the required strategic or financial outcome.
• Apply systems thinking and end-to-end process design principles to drive sustainable improvements across complex value streams.
• Manage day-to-day programme delivery, ensuring milestones, dependencies, resources and budgets are effectively controlled.
• Maintain effective governance, providing regular reporting on programme performance, benefits, risks, issues and opportunities. Escalating critical risks, decisions and opportunities through agreed governance forums, ensuring timely intervention and executive visibility where required.
• Drive and champion process simplification, standardisation and efficiency improvements across teams to help build a culture of continuous improvement through introduction to practical tools and approaches (e.g Lean, value stream mapping).
• Support business leaders in embedding new processes, capabilities and ways of working to ensure sustained outcomes.

Scope and Key Interfaces

• Influence and challenge stakeholders across all business functions to identify and prioritise improvement opportunities.
• Build strong relationships and credibility with senior stakeholders, including Directors, Divisional Leadership Teams and Executive Committee members.
• Facilitate senior-level workshops and decision-making forums to align stakeholders around priorities and outcomes.
• Work closely with Finance to validate benefits, track delivery and ensure robust financial governance.
• Partner with Risk, Technology, Data and Operational teams to ensure improvements are scalable, sustainable and well controlled.
• Manage relationships with external suppliers, consulting partners and delivery vendors, ensuring value for money and successful delivery of agreed outcomes.
• Act as a trusted advisor on process improvement, operational excellence and AI-enabled transformation opportunities.

What we'll look for in you

Capabilities and Qualifications

Essential

• Demonstrable experience leading significant cost-out and operational improvement programmes, delivering measurable financial benefits, within large organisations.
• Demonstrated application of system thinking in a business context (interdependencies, flow optimisation, root cause analysis), able to articulate a strong understanding of enterprise operating models and the interaction between process, organisation, technology, data, controls and colleague capability.
• Proven track record of identifying, shaping and delivering business transformation and process improvement initiatives.
• Ability to rapidly build sufficient commercial and operational understanding of unfamiliar business areas to diagnose performance, challenge established assumptions and co-design practicable solutions with functional experts.
• Experience using external benchmarks, industry insight and emerging practice to challenge internal performance and identify improvement potential.
• Strong experience influencing and presenting to senior stakeholders, including Director, DLT and Executive-level audiences.
• Experience managing complex programmes and portfolios, including governance, reporting, risk management and benefits tracking.
• Experience leading and managing third-party suppliers, consulting partners and delivery vendors.
• Strong commercial acumen with the ability to balance cost, risk and customer outcomes.
• Expertise in process improvement methodologies including Lean, Six Sigma and Value Stream Mapping.
• Excellent facilitation, influencing and stakeholder management skills.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving capability with a focus on practical delivery and outcomes.

Desirable

• Experience applying AI, automation and emerging technologies to improve business performance and unlock value.
• Lean Six Sigma qualification or equivalent continuous improvement certification.
• Experience within a retail, supply chain, customer operations or multi-channel business environment.