Design Competence Lead

(Fluent Finnish and English language skills are required for this role.) 

SOK Design consists of around 50 in-house designers and 20+ external designers, who design everyday omni-channel customer and employee experiences in and for S Group’s markets, department stores, hotels, restaurants, service stations, bank, and co-op member services. With and by design, we impact on the everyday lives of millions of people living in Finland and tens of thousands of S Group employees. Now, we are looking for a Design Competence Lead to take care of our designers’ HR matters, competence development, career paths, and growth. 

Design Competence Lead, SOK Design 

We are looking for a designer with solid people skills and an interest in competence development. You’ll be working as a competence lead and HR supervisor to our designers, who are doing hands-on design work and creating value in their cross-functional teams and business areas. In your competence area, there will be +10 designers, mainly from the fields of visual, UI/UX, service and product design. You are supporting, mentoring, inspiring, and motivating them, removing obstacles, participating in talent development and career growth, and improving design capabilities, processes and operations. You will also be an active part of recruiting and acquiring talent, whether it be internal or external talent. You’ll be part of a our Design leadership team and work in close collaboration with our Design Competence Leads and Design Leads to support our entire team. You’ll also support business areas with no designers yet, and promote Design Thinking within SOK and whole S Group. 

Responsibilities 

• Working as an HR manager for our designers and supporting their well-being and employee experience throughout their employment lifecycle 
• Supporting the designers of your competence area with their career growth 
• Supporting the business areas with internal recruitments and external talent acquiring to ensure the best possible staffing 
• Support the new-joiners in onboarding to get new designers up and running smoothly 
• Design competence development together with design leads of the different business areas 
• Developing the design culture by advocating Design Thinking within SOK and S Group to support customer-centric service creation 
• Improving the overall ways of working between designers, developers, and business colleagues to facilitate customer-centric change 
• Development of design capabilities by improving the design processes and tooling together with other design competence leads, to ensure smooth and efficient design operations 

What we hope from you 

• A designer background and extensive experience in designing digital services.  
• A strong background in Product Design would be beneficial to complement the current skillset of the design competence team. 
• Previous experience working as a supervisor for designers 

• Being an empathic people leader and people person with good interpersonal skills 
• Knowledge in coaching designers’ personal growth and developing design capabilities, and willingness to support and inspire others in their professional growth 
• Familiarity with agile ways of working and experience in working in a cross-functional team 
• Excellent communication skills in both Finnish and English; our working language in SOK Design is English-first, and as an HR Manager you should be able to have confidential, sensitive and personal discussions with both languages 

What we offer for you 

• A possibility to gain leadership, coaching and mentoring experience 
• A possibility to have a large impact on designer experience and how design work is done by the biggest private employer in Finland 
• A chance to ease the daily work lives of our employees and continue building a designer community within SOK 
• A chance to build and implement Design Thinking and customer-centric development with other designers 
• Team of great designers with whom to learn and grow professionally 
• As a large organization we have diverse career and development opportunities 
• A possibility to develop your design know-how with modern tools 
• Stable, flexible, and development-oriented working environment based on responsible and cooperative principles 
• Wide range of employee benefits from our own products and services 
• Occupational healthcare, sports and culture benefit, lunch benefit in our staff restaurant, and access to the hobby and sports facilities in Ässäkeskus 

How to apply 

Please submit your CV and potentially a portfolio demonstrating you as a design competence lead here on Sunday 18.8.2024 the latest. Our recruiter will be in touch with you! Once contact is made, you will have the chance to ask questions about this job, our people, and what your future could look like at SOK. 

Our interview process is comprehensive, and relatively painless. Besides the recruiter, you will meet the hiring manager, peers and relevant stakeholders to give you a realistic picture of what it’s like to work here. As a final step of the process, we’ll be performing a light talent assessment. As with our working culture, our candidate process reflects a nurturing environment of psychological safety coupled by an analysis of your compatibility, design-wise and socially. In short: we are good people, looking for more, good people. 

We look forward to meeting you! 

If you are hired to the competence area working with financial and banking solutions, and sensitive data (S-Pankki and S-mobiili teams), we will check your credit history, corporate connections and make the security clearance. 

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