Pets at Home Limited
Practice Readiness Manager - 9 months FTC
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Practice Readiness Lead (9 Month FTC)
Support Office in Handforth / Hybrid
At Pets at Home, we're on an exciting journey through Darwin, our multi-year programme to implement a brand-new Practice Management System across our Veterinary Practices. With over 75 Practices already live, 2,000+ colleagues trained and millions of patient records successfully migrated, we're now entering the next critical phase of deployment.
To help us achieve this, we're looking for a Practice Readiness Lead (9 Month FTC) to join the Darwin Programme team.
This is a highly visible, business-critical role that sits at the heart of one of the largest transformation programmes in the organisation. You'll partner with Practices, Business Development Partners (BDPs), Regional Directors and project teams to ensure Practices are fully prepared for one of the most significant operational changes they may experience in over 20 years.
About the role
As our second Practice Readiness Lead, you'll work alongside our existing Readiness Lead to support the successful rollout of Darwin across more than 350 remaining Practices.
Whilst Practices are responsible for completing their readiness activities, you'll own the process that helps them get there. You'll provide guidance, monitor progress, identify risks, coordinate interventions and help ensure every Practice is set up for a successful go-live.
No two days will be the same. You could be supporting a Practice that goes live tomorrow, troubleshooting a readiness challenge with a Regional Director, and reviewing progress for Practices scheduled to deploy in the coming months, all in the same day.
This role requires exceptional organisation, judgement, stakeholder management and the ability to confidently manage multiple priorities at once.
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What you'll be doing
Driving Practice Readiness
- Become an expert in the end-to-end Darwin readiness journey, understanding each activity, milestone, checkpoint and dependency.
- Support Practices, BDPs and Regional Directors through key readiness checkpoints and deployment milestones.
- Track readiness progress across multiple Practices simultaneously, identifying risks and escalating concerns where appropriate.
- Intervene proactively when Practices require additional support to remain on track for a successful go-live.
- Monitor deployment readiness and ensure critical activities are completed at the right time.
- Provide status updates, insights and recommendations to the Darwin Programme team.
Building Strong Relationships
- Act as a key point of contact for readiness-related queries across the business.
- Build trusted relationships with Practices, BDPs, Regional Directors and wider programme stakeholders.
- Support communications through team calls, stakeholder meetings, Viva Engage and programme updates.
- Represent the Darwin team professionally in highly visible forums where deployment readiness, risks and decisions are discussed.
Continuous Improvement
- Gather feedback from Practices and stakeholders to improve readiness processes, guidance and materials.
- Help evolve the readiness approach as deployment volumes increase and programme complexity grows.
- Share lessons learned, celebrate successes and support wider business awareness of the programme.
- Contribute to building a sustainable readiness capability that leaves a lasting legacy beyond the programme.
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About you
We're looking for someone who is highly organised, proactive and confident managing multiple moving parts.
You'll likely bring:
- Strong stakeholder management and relationship-building skills.
- Experience coordinating large projects, operational activity or business change initiatives.
- Excellent communication skills with the ability to influence and guide stakeholders at all levels.
- Strong problem-solving skills and an ability to identify risks before they become issues.
- Confidence managing competing priorities in a fast-paced environment.
- A collaborative, supportive approach with a passion for helping others navigate change.
- Experience within programme delivery, project coordination, change management, operations or transformation environments would be highly beneficial.
Why join us?
This is a unique opportunity to play a pivotal role in one of the most significant transformation programmes in the business.
You'll have the chance to:
- Make a tangible impact on hundreds of Practice deployments.
- Work with a wide range of stakeholders across the organisation.
- Gain exposure to a major business transformation programme.
- Influence how we deliver change across our Practices.
- Join a supportive, collaborative team committed to delivering exceptional outcomes.
Every successful go-live helps our Practices better serve pets and their owners, and you'll be right at the heart of making that happen.
If you're excited by complex challenges, stakeholder engagement and helping people successfully navigate change, we'd love to hear from you.
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