Category Manager - HR, Recruitment & Contingent

At M&G, our purpose is to give everyone real confidence to put their money to work. With a heritage dating back more than 175 years, we have a long history of innovation in savings and investments, combining asset management and insurance expertise to offer a wide range of solutions.

Our two distinct operating segments, Asset Management and Life, work together to provide access to balanced, long-term investment and savings solutions.

Through telling it like it is, owning it now and moving it forward together with care and integrity; we are creating an exceptional place to work for exceptional talent.

We will consider flexible working arrangements for any of our roles and offer workplace adjustments to ensure you have the support you need to succeed in your role.

The Role: Category Manager - HR, Recruitment & Contingent

Role Purpose

The Category Manager is the commercial owner of the HR, Recruitment and Contingent category and acts as an internal commercial consultant to the business. The postholder offers senior stakeholders three things: deep knowledge of the category and its supply market, strategic sourcing capability, and negotiation expertise. Using these, the postholder builds and owns the category strategy and savings plan, competes with vendors on commercial strategy, and influences how the business specifies and buys. Success is measured by realised cost reduction across the category and by the value the business places on Procurement’s advice.

Context

M&G Procurement is on a transformation journey, our objectives include: Identifying and delivering material, recurring cost reduction on M&G third-party spend; and materially improving how the business experiences Procurement, measured through an internal NPS. To achieve these objectives, Procurement is moving from a business unit aligned, generalist model to a category structure that operates as an internal commercial consultancy. The UK team offers the business deep category knowledge, strategic sourcing capability and negotiation expertise, so that M&G can compete with its vendors on commercial strategy.

Key Responsibilities

Category Strategy and Commercial Leadership

• •Build, own and execute the category strategy for HR, Recruitment and Contingent, based on a detailed understanding of supply market structure, vendor commercial models, cost drivers and market trends.
• •Maintain living category plans covering market analysis, supply base segmentation, demand profiling, route to market and savings opportunities.
• •Develop commercial strategies for key vendors well ahead of renewal, so that M&G negotiates from a position of insight and has credible alternatives.
• •Lead high-value sourcing events and negotiations, including setting the negotiation strategy, BATNA and walk-away position, managing concessions and holding positions with incumbents. Manage senior supplier relationships under commercial pressure.
• •Design sourcing events and evaluation criteria, and decide how much process each event needs based on its value, risk and complexity.
• •Introduce competitive tension into renewals and new commitments, moving from single-source and incumbent renewal to structured market engagement, preferred supplier frameworks and normalised rate cards.

Savings and Value Delivery

• •Build and own the category savings plan against an agreed share of the group cost reduction target, sizing and prioritising opportunities by value and deliverability.
• •Agree baselines and savings methodology with Finance before work starts, and follow savings through until they show in budgets and run rates.
• •Build total cost of ownership and should-cost models, model the budget impact of sourcing options and how savings will be recognised in each department’s P&L cost reports, and make sourcing recommendations on that basis.
• •Use price, volume and demand levers, including rate reduction, volume aggregation, supplier consolidation and specification change.
• •Challenge demand and specification using category and industry knowledge: question whether a requirement is needed at all, and at what volume, service level, specification and term; identify over-specification, duplicate purchasing and avoidable demand; and propose options such as a lower service tier, a shorter term or reuse of existing contracts, setting out the trade offs in commercial terms.
• •Report savings and cost avoidance separately and accurately, and maintain a forward pipeline that gives Finance and the business visibility of upcoming activity.

Internal Consultancy and Stakeholder Influence

• •Act as a trusted commercial adviser to senior business owners across the HR, Recruitment and Contingent spend area, engaging early in their planning rather than at the point of purchase.
• •Influence stakeholder decisions on sourcing, demand and specification without formal authority, and present category insight, evaluation and commercial recommendations to governance forums.
• •Act as the Procurement relationship lead for nominated senior stakeholders where assigned, bringing in other category colleagues as their agenda requires.
• •Seek and act on stakeholder feedback, contributing to the improvement in how the business experiences Procurement.

Supplier Management

• •Set the commercial direction for key suppliers in the category and lead the commercial input to vendor strategy.
• •Influence and partner with in-business vendor management and vendor performance teams so that supplier reviews, contract changes and renewals secure the strongest commercial outcome for M&G.
• •Find value in the existing supply base, including through rate review, supplier consolidation and contract optimisation.

Working with the M&G India Procurement Team

• •Direct category execution work delivered by the India team, providing clear briefs, priorities and commercial context.
• •Review the quality of execution outputs and work with India leads to maintain a responsive, consistent service to the business.

Contract, Risk and Governance

• •Shape commercial terms, including pricing mechanisms, indexation, service credits and exit provisions, working with Legal.
• •Apply third-party risk management, outsourcing and regulatory requirements as they apply to HR, Recruitment and Contingent, and identify regulatory risk such as material outsourcing.
• •Apply procurement standards and governance proportionately, and record activity in the system of record and eSourcing tooling.

Data, Digital and AI

• •Use spend data, Power BI dashboards and AI tools to analyse trends and anomalies, identify future sourcing opportunities and present a clear commercial account of what the management information shows.
• •Question data rather than accept it at face value, and work with India colleagues to keep category data accurate.

People and Capability

• •Coach and develop Category Specialists and India colleagues working in the category, reviewing their work and building category capability across the UK and India.
• •Plan how onshore and offshore capacity is used across the category, so that effort is directed at the highest value work.
• •Share category intelligence across the Procurement team and support cross-category opportunities.

Person Specification

Essential

• •Substantial category management or strategic sourcing experience, with a track record of delivering measurable savings in a complex organisation.
• •Category knowledge and experience as set out in the Category Knowledge Requirements above.
• •Demonstrable experience of planning and leading negotiations on high-value contracts with major vendors, including setting negotiation strategy and BATNA.
• •Credibility with senior stakeholders, evidence of influencing business decisions without formal authority, and experience of presenting commercial recommendations to senior governance forums.
• •Strong commercial and financial judgement, including total cost of ownership and should-cost analysis, and the ability to explain budget and P&L impact to st