About the team
You’ll be part of Sainsbury’s Corporate Affairs function, a team focused on building trust, driving colleague engagement and strengthening our corporate reputation. At the heart of the organisation, the Colleague Engagement team plays a critical role in listening to colleagues, turning insight into action and creating meaningful experiences that help colleagues feel heard, valued and connected. Working closely with teams across the business, the function ensures engagement activity is joined‑up, purposeful and focused on what matters most to colleagues and leaders.
More about the role
This maternity cover role takes ownership of key colleague engagement activity, ensuring continuity across established programmes and campaigns. You’ll be responsible for the end‑to‑end delivery of agreed engagement initiatives, picking up existing plans and seeing them through delivery while capturing learning to inform future activity.
You can expect a hands‑on role in a fast‑moving environment, leading campaigns such as Comic Relief, Summer of Sport and the Christmas engagement programme. You’ll work across Corporate Affairs, People, Retail and Corporate functions, aligning multiple stakeholders, setting clear measures of success and ensuring engagement activity is delivered to brief, timeline and budget.
More about you
You’re someone who can step into an established programme with confidence, quickly building relationships and delivering with pace and clarity. You’re comfortable managing multiple priorities, using insight and feedback to shape activity and continuously improve the colleague experience.
You bring a collaborative mindset, enjoy working cross‑functionally and have a clear focus on translating strategy and priorities into practical, engaging delivery that resonates with colleagues across the organisation.
Essential criteria
1. Proven experience delivering colleague engagement, employee experience or internal communications activity within a large, complex organisation.
2. Demonstrable experience of owning projects end to end, from planning and delivery through to evaluation and learning capture.
3. Ability to translate information into clear, engaging and practical written materials for colleagues and stakeholders.
4. Evidence of managing multiple priorities simultaneously, adapting plans in response to feedback and changing demands.
5. Proven ability to take a holistic view of engagement activity, ensuring initiatives connect to create a coherent colleague experience.
We’d all like amazing work to do, and real work-life balance. That’s waiting for you at Sainsbury’s. Here, you’ll enjoy a broad range of projects, no matter your level, because our Corporate Affairs team is non-hierarchical and truly connected to the rest of the business. Whether it’s internal, external or government relations, you’ll collaborate with teams across everything from food waste to health, and from clothing to Nectar, supporting campaigns that really make a difference. You’ll help build trust in Sainsbury’s with customers, senior stakeholders and the media. And if non-linear progression is what you’re looking for, you’ll find opportunities everywhere.
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 20% 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, and we provide private healthcare. We also offer other benefits that will help your money go further such as season ticket loans, interest free car loan of up to £10k, 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 for a range of our benefits (note, length of service and eligibility criteria may apply).