Project and workflow manager / coordinator (12 month FTC)

Salary: £30,000+ dependent on experience (+bonus +benefits)

Hachette UK is a creative powerhouse and the UK's second largest book publishing group. Our mission is to make it easy for everyone to discover new worlds of ideas, learning, entertainment and opportunity.

We're made up of 10 autonomous publishing divisions and over 60 imprints with a rich and diverse history and an incredible range of authors. We're also the market leader in e-books and publish a range of bestsellers in audio format, the fastest growing part of our business.

Our award-winning adult publishing divisions are Orion, which won Publisher of the Year at the 2021 British Book Awards; Little, Brown; John Murray Press; Hodder & Stoughton; Headline; Octopus, and Bookouture. They publish fiction and non-fiction in digital, audio and print format, from the world's best and most diverse authors, including Brit Bennett, Candice Carty-Williams, Martina Cole, Michael Connelly, John Grisham, Stephen King, Stieg Larsson, Nelson Mandela, Stephenie Meyer, Maggie O'Farrell, Delia Owens, Ian Rankin, J.K. Rowling, Colson Whitehead, and Malala Yousafzai. Hachette Children's Group publishes a wide and vibrant range of books for children across all age ranges, while Hachette Learning is a market leader in resources for both primary and secondary schools.

Hachette UK is part of Hachette Livre, the world's third largest trade and educational publisher. As well as our headquarters in Carmelite House, London, and our state-of-the-art book distribution centre in Didcot, Oxfordshire, we have recently opened five new offices in Manchester, Bristol, Sheffield, Newcastle, and Edinburgh. The UK region also includes offices in Australia, New Zealand, India, Singapore, the Caribbean, and Ireland.

It's an exciting time to join our business because the publishing market continues to grow and thrive. The UK remains the largest exporter of physical books in the world and book adaptations for film and TV are the foundation of the UK's creative industries.

What you'll be doing

The role of Project and Workflow Manager / Coordinator will act as a key intermediary between Royalties managers and external stakeholders, utilising Jira CRM system that tracks communications between both parties.

The Project and Workflow Manager / Coordinator will ensure that the Royalties team are supported and empowered to make full and effective use of the system, ensuring that all progress is updated and prioritised effectively, escalated and resolved, and an overall smooth running of the function. They will also be responsible for delivering information to third parties in a timely and effective manner.

Effective and efficient time management are paramount to this role, as are expert customer service and stakeholder management skills. This role would suit someone who is highly organised, proactive, is able to and enjoys managing different projects at once and has strong time management skills.

Who we are looking for

We are looking for a highly organised and proactive individual with proven experience managing workflow or CRM systems. The ideal candidate will have strong stakeholder management and communication skills, with the ability to coordinate a team, manage CRM workflows, and ensure tasks are delivered within agreed deadlines. They will be detail-oriented and methodical, capable of prioritising competing demands. Experience working with CRM systems, project delivery, and ideally knowledge of publishing or royalties would be valuable.

Lead workflow management system

• Implement and deliver a workflow system during a time of high volume and high pressure.
• Lead and manage stakeholder communications to a high standard.

Work closely with the team to ensure that workflow moves effectively within set deadlines and hitting agreed KPIs.

• Lead the day-to-day administration of the CRM system for a team of approximately 20.
• Ensure tickets are raised and updated, tracking communications with third parties, ensuring everything is accurately logged, categorised, and updated.
• Monitor ticket queues to ensure no tickets are missed, delayed, or left unresolved.
• Ensure critical and high-value customers are prioritised appropriately.
• Identify and improve the system workflow to streamline the reporting and working process.
• Produce regular status updates on the position of open tickets and to deliver valuable insight to the overall comms position, identifying issues early and escalating appropriately.

Team support and process management

• Establish and manage a structured timetable to track workload and mitigate against issues.
• Support the team to manage competing priorities within a high-pressure environment.
• Identify and action improvements and find solutions to issues.
• Provide guidance and support training to ensure adherence to processes.

Collaboration & Support

• Work closely with the Project Eve team to enable development and delivery of improvements to the royalty system.
• Work closely with Finance leadership team to recognise and resolve issues within Royalties and the wider finance team.

Identify any risks or issues that may lead to deadlines being missed and escalate urgent issues to senior stakeholders appropriately.

Experience/Knowledge

• Proven experience managing Projects and/or Workflow projects.
• Proven experience managing a CRM system.
• Outstanding communication and stakeholder management skills (written and verbal)
• Proven experience working on time sensitive tasks and able to thrive under pressure.
• Expert organisational skills, able to manage their own time and others, to ensure that progress is actioned within the required timeframes.
• Some experience within the publishing industry or royalties would be valuable.

Personal Attributes/Skills

• Excellent Stakeholder Management: able to understand the challenges the team are facing and support them effectively.
• Highly organised and methodical: able to use initiative skills to structure their own workload and create clear systems to manage multiple deadlines.
• Detail-oriented: strong focus on accuracy, ensuring no details are missed and all data is captured correctly.
• Accountable and proactive: takes ownership of outcomes and anticipates potential issues before they escalate.

Other

• Travel to other Hachette sites as and when required.
• Flexibility to work outside of normal office hours if required.

What we offer

Our staff are our greatest asset, and our benefits reflect this:

• 28 annual leave days per year, increases to 29 days after 2 years' service and goes up to 30 days after 5 years' (+ bank holidays)
• Generous pension schemes
• Rent deposit loans
• 2 community days per year
• Summer hours (finishing at 1pm on Fridays during the summer months)
• Retail discounts through Hachette rewards
• Cycle to Work scheme
• Eye care vouchers
• Wide-ranging training library
• Development programmes (including mentoring)
• Up to 70% off book purchases
• A charity bookshelf
• 12 Staff-led employee networks that are voluntary, including AgeWise, Gender Balance, Thrive, Pride, All Together, Wellbeing and religious networks
• Season ticket loans
• And much more!

This role is based in our London office, with a blend of in-office (3 days) and homeworking (2 days) per week.

Our commitment

Hachette employs people on the basis of their abilities. We aim to attract and develop talent from a base as broad as the world of readers we want to reach, with a wide and representative range of age, faith, disability, race, gender, sexuality and socio-economic, regional and cultural backgrounds.

If you are shortlisted and need us to make any adjustments to help you attend your interview, please let us know.

The Book Trade Charity offers financial support to people looking to enter the book trade but who may struggle to afford the costs of attending interviews and undertaking junior roles. For more information visit www.booktradeentrysupport.org

We welcome and encourage applications from candidates who are under-represented in the creative industries.

Please make sure that you state in your application that you found this role via Creative Access.