Head of Process Excellence

**Why you'll love working with Tower**

At Tower, we live and breathe our values - they are at the heart of every interaction. **Our people come first, **we pride ourselves on creating a diverse and inclusive space that allows our people to thrive. Encouraging everyone to bring their whole selves to work, we aim to represent the diverse communities we work in and with. We celebrate all ages, genders, sexual orientations, races, religions, and everything else that helps to make our culture special. We are proud holders of the Rainbow and DV Free Ticks which are important to us.

We also have a plan to lead our industry forward into a more customer-centric future with innovation and disruptive thinking, as a unique Kiwi and Pacific insurance provider operating for over 150 years, with roots back to Dunedin.

**What will you be doing?**

At Tower, we are **progressing boldly** to align with future insurance trends, we have created this exciting new role to lead organizational uplift in the efficacy and quality of our processes. You will have the opportunity to establish Tower's Process Excellence Practice and strategy as well as drive process lead transformation to ensure our processes are future fit.

Reporting to the Chief Customer Experience Officer, you will lead Tower's Process Excellence Programme, develop and establish Tower's Process Excellence Practice, and formulate and implement the strategy and the plans for Tower to become a leader in productivity and efficiency in Insurance Financial Services.

**Our customers are our compass. **This role will be at the heart of our mission to improve the lives of our customers. Your role will not only be about optimizing processes; it's about enhancing the way people interact with our services.

You can expect to be across the following:

- Design, build, and establish the desired future state and the process improvement practice for Tower to uplift methodologies, tools, practices, and policies, including ways of working and defining resource requirements.
- Establish a Process Excellence team/squad to review and analyse the current state of organisational-wide processes (including root cause analysis and process mapping) to facilitate the creation of Tower's process excellence and continuous improvement strategy (linked to business strategy, purpose, and values)
- Assess processes to determine how to reduce rework, improve quality, improve efficiency, and/or improve the ability to deliver desired services while triggering automation opportunities.

**What you'll need**

You will be able to take the lead in transforming processes and help shape the way people across New Zealand and the Pacific experience insurance.

**To be successful in this role, you will also be able to demonstrate the following**:

- Extensive experience (10 years or more) in process/operational excellence and/or similar role, preferably leading complex organisation-wide process improvement/operational excellence programmes.
- Certified in lean six sigma or equivalent, with a lean mindset and a human-centred innovation approach.
- Experience in using process mapping tools and other supporting systems and tools to enable process excellence.
- Strong project management and agile skills, with the ability to manage multiple complex process-related projects simultaneously and deliver measurable and sustainable results.
- Exceptional communication skills, with the ability to communicate complex concepts and ideas to both technical and non-technical stakeholders, negotiate and influence senior and executive leaders, and foster a culture and practice of process excellence and continuous improvement across Tower.
- Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with the ability to critically evaluate information gathered from multiple sources, deal effectively with ambiguous and unstructured problems and situations, and navigate the complexities of cross-border and/or diverse teams and engagements.
- Prior experience with change management methodologies and practices, with the ability to initiate open and candid coaching conversations at all levels, and move easily between big picture thinking and managing relevant detail.
- Appreciation of the importance of risk management and compliance responsibilities, and upholding Tower's values and code of conduct

We pride ourselves on encouraging everyone to bring their whole selves to work, and we embrace diverse opinions, experiences, and backgrounds. Making sure we **are doing what's right**.

**What we'll bring to the table**

In addition to a competitive salary, we offer a range of perks and benefits to celebrate and look after our Tower employees.

**Highlights include**:

- Our people come first as we offer 16 weeks of paid leave for the primary carer and 4 weeks of paid leave partner's leave.
- A paid day off on your birthday, as well as two extra annual leave days every year and the option to buy an additional eight days of leave. So up to six weeks