ISC Innovation Programme Management Lead

Welcome to Haleon. We’re a purpose-driven, world-class consumer company putting everyday health in the hands of millions. In just three years since our launch, we’ve grown, evolved and are now entering an exciting new chapter – one filled with bold ambitions and enormous opportunity.

Our trusted portfolio of brands – including Sensodyne®, Panadol®, Advil®, Voltaren®, Theraflu®, Otrivin®, and Centrum® – lead in resilient and growing categories. What sets us apart is our unique blend of deep human understanding and trusted science.

Now it’s time to fully realise the full potential of our business and our people. We do this through our Win as One strategy. It puts our purpose – to deliver better everyday health with humanity – at the heart of everything we do. It unites us, inspires us, and challenges us to be better every day, driven by our agile, performance-focused culture.

About the role

The IPM lead is a crucial contributor to the overall performance of Haleon innovation. This role is the integrator between technical and business plans and connects:

• Innovation strategy with excellence in execution (rigorous risk and stage gate management)
• What’s possible vs what’s needed – reconciles business requirements with master plans: work on the right thing (innovation sufficiency) and change manage with discipline
• Resource allocation – recommend resource allocation choices to where it matters most /where we scale.

The IPM leader role scope:

Innovation portfolio management – tracks and makes sufficiency visible and orchestrates master plan alignment across functions

• Advising / providing choices and options towards sufficiency

Program acceleration – removes bottle necks and navigates through options to deliver success criteria jointly with Technical Platforms and Commercial leadership

• Integrated Innovation master plan – coordinate across functions

Governance – excellence in management and governance of the innovation programs

• Manages stage gate innovation lifecycle
• Leads stage gate forums
• Manages Rigorous change management
• Ensures ambition for agility and speed and enterprise risk associated are understood in order to make sound decisions

Decision support

• Leads priority choices to make fewer, bigger, better launches
• Structure investment decisions – prioritize investments based on value and feasibility

Drives collaboration across R&D, Commercial and QSC as well as BU / category teams so that our program is delivered according to project success criteria or better.

Leading a team of PMs to achieve high performance in addition to supporing the growth and development of the team.

Value tracking (ROI, strategic impact, efficiency) – consistent across the enterprise and regularly shared in Innovation council

Key responsibilities

This role has responsibility and oversight of the activities below with the added complexity of multiple stakeholders, different functions, and governance / business expectations:

• Innovation sufficiency – measurement and providing visibility
• Leadership alongside the Marketing, Supply Chain and R&D functional leaders, that is needed to shape choices that close sufficiency haps, or to drive initiative success (make programs bigger / better)
• Drive Speed to impact of innovation by providing structure, fast project initiation, planning and well coordinated execution thus enabling delivery of innovation to BUs in the fastest, most robust way possible
• Line management responsibility for a team of program leaders / project managers. Coach and mentor the team to ensure we have the best project management capability in place to ensure efficient delivery. Drives individual and team growth and progression inline with haleon behaviours.
• Measures consistently launch success across category / OU’s – Lean on a robust success criteria and sufficiency measurement and operationalises learning from past projects.
• As a snr. Leader, role models Haleon behaviours and provides leadership, coaching, mentoring etc across the enterprise. The key contribution of this role is to support sound decision providing best value for the enterprise.
• Chair of the monthly PMB / Stage gate council (stage-gate governance forum) ensuring well prepared documents that correspond the BIC standard, a robust decision-making process and robust change management and documentation.
• Ensure appropriate communication and stakeholder management across functions and geographies on an ongoing basis to ensure programme tracking and reporting is managed appropriately and to the right quality
• Facilitate core team interactions through provision of high calibre Project Managers to ensure achievement of short and long term objectives through timely decision making, effective stakeholder communication, adherence to established project governance processes, proper tracking and progress, contingency planning and issue resolution
• Resolve conflicts through skilled negotiation, tact and diplomacy

Why you?

Basic Qualifications:

• Business leadership – ability to connect business objectives, technical possibilities and operationalizing those among multiple conflicting priorities.
• Demonstrated strong business acumen – able to turn complex and dynamic challenges into commercial success
• Experience and proven track record working in project management / project operations or equivalent within a large, complex matrix organization.
• Influence without authority – leadership presence and rapport built on undisputable ability to provide 360 deg view of a problem statement and a balanced view of options for a sound decision to be made
• Ability to build and maintain networks with multiple stakeholders and peers across different functions within the category, commercial, expert, technical platforms etc.

 

 

 

 Job Posting End Date

 

 

2026-08-31

 

 

 

Equal Opportunities

Haleon are committed to mobilising our purpose in a way that represents the diverse consumers and communities who rely on our brands every day. It guides us in creating an inclusive culture, where different backgrounds and views are valued and respected – all in support of understanding and best serving the needs of our consumers and unleashing the full potential of our people. It’s important to us that Haleon is a place where all our employees feel they truly belong.

During the application process, we may ask you to share some personal information, which is entirely voluntary. This information ensures we meet certain regulatory and reporting obligations and supports the development, refinement, and execution of our inclusion and belonging programmes that are open to all Haleon employees. 

The personal information you provide will be kept confidential, used only for legitimate business purposes, and will never be used in making any employment decisions, including hiring decisions.

 

 

 

Adjustment or Accommodations Request

If you require a reasonable adjustment or accommodation or other assistance to apply for a job at Haleon at any stage of the application process, please let your recruiter know by providing them with a description of specific adjustments you are requesting. We’ll provide all reasonable adjustments to support you throughout the recruitment process and treat all information you provide us in confidence. 

 

 

 

Note to candidates

The Haleon recruitment team will contact you using a Haleon email account (@haleon.com). If you are not sure whether the email you received is from Haleon, please get in touch.