Outsource Performance Manager

Who are we?

We're the UK's largest water provider, with over 15 million customers to serve every day. Water is essential to daily life, and that means our business is always open. We make a difference daily to millions of customers by supplying 2.7 billion litres of water to around 10 million homes. Our main role is to ensure customers can turn on the tap and get world-class drinking water 24/7. We also safely transport and treat waste, returning it back to the environment.

About the role:

The Outsource Performance Manager will be responsible for driving and monitoring the overall operational performance for a key commercial outsourced partner within the Customer Services function. Primarily this role is about building successful and collaborative relationships within the partnership to ensure daily performance is aligned to agreed plans.

You will be required to understand and overcome barriers that prevent high performance, seeking workable solutions that drive improvements in customer experience and support best practices and understand performance trends, informing and implementing corrective strategies where necessary.

What you'll be doing:

• Managing the overall performance for one of our outsourced partners with Customer Services ensuring delivery of optimal performance, quality and costs while managing any issues
• Ensuring efficiency that all outsource partner interactions underpin and support Thames Water's strategic objectives and deliver quality customer experiences maximising revenue potential
• Conducting commercial performance and service delivery reviews as per defined governance processes
• Recommending and supporting root cause analysis to outperform and/or correct poor performance and support with initiating negotiations for specific contract delivery, reconciliation and change management
• Translating Operational Performance into Financial Performance (and vice versa)
• Encouraging an innovative service delivery from our outsourced suppliers while maintaining delivery of quality customer experiences
• Identifying opportunities to improve service and/or reduce cost and champion initiatives through implementation
• Develop and monitor a performance framework by which to measure current process effectiveness and impact of future changes/improvements

What we're looking for:

• Extensive experience of managing an offshore third-party supplier in an operational / business partner role
• Strong commercial acumen
• Ability to communicate requirements and policy to outsource partners
• Experience in Customer Service delivery, including regulatory requirements affecting outsourcing
• Strong relationship management, commercial and negotiation skills up to Leadership Team level
• Ability to travel abroad up to 6 weeks of the year
• Confident presentation skills - particularly when conveying detailed/complex messages
• Fantastic relationship management skills - with the ability to influence at senior manager and director level
• Knowledge of key performance drivers for effective performance management
• Ability to train and coach in a clear and professional manner ensuring directional clarity is achieved
• Versatile, with the ability to adapt quickly to the changing needs of a rapidly developing business.

Here's why you should join us!

We're proud of the positive ways of working we have adopted during the pandemic. We want to create a more flexible and dynamic environment so all our colleagues can thrive. For our office-based roles, we are moving to a hybrid approach where we will provide options around working from our offices, our operational sites and home dependent on role/team/individual. This will be discussed during the assessment process.

Thames Water is a rewarding and diverse place to work. If you join us, you'll enjoy our flexible working arrangements and be supported with progression and development opportunities. We're proud to be a Stonewall Diversity Champion, Disability Confident Leader, Times Top 50 Employer for Women, Race at work charter signatory and Carer Confident great place to work. We also support local events and charities.

Our competitive salary package includes an excellent contributory pension, 26 days holiday per year, increasing with length of service, access to money-saving and benefits schemes and much more!

You can find our more in our working for us section of our website.