Senior Manager, Operational Excellence in St. Catharines

St.Catharines Corp Office
St Catharines, ON L2S 3W3, CAN

At Meridian our aspiration is to integrate our purpose into everything we do for people, the planet, and communities. We believe that our greatest opportunity is to create opportunity and meet people where they are.

Reporting to the Director, Operational Excellence & Controls, the Senior Manager, Operational Excellence leads the operational transformation and continuous improvement agenda across Operations. The role is accountable for identifying, prioritizing and delivering measurable improvements in efficiency, productivity, capacity, quality and employee experience through process redesign, Lean and Six Sigma practices, intelligent automation, artificial intelligence (AI), robotic process automation (RPA), workflow optimization and performance analytics.

The Senior Manager translates enterprise and Operations priorities into a practical improvement roadmap, supported by disciplined opportunity intake, business cases, delivery governance, change adoption and benefits realization. Working across Retail Operations, Specialized Operations, Member Services & Support and control functions, the role simplifies end-to-end processes, reduces manual effort and builds scalable operating capability.

The role partners closely with Operations leaders, Technology, Risk, Compliance, Transformation, Data and external providers to implement sustainable solutions within Meridian standards and risk appetite. Through a specialized team and cross-functional delivery partners, the Senior Manager strengthens continuous improvement capability and enables responsible adoption of emerging technologies across Operations.

Key Responsibilities

Operational Excellence Strategy and Improvement Portfolio

• Build a continuous improvement orientation across the organization.
• Build trust and transparency in quality of work as a means to delivering value to the customer, internal and external stakeholders.
• Demonstrate data-driven insights (new & existing metrics) and succeed in driving continuous improvement performance across the organization.
• Build and maintain a highly successful, operational excellence and continuous improvement function on record and metric driven.
• Develop and support capability across the organization to continuously shrink operations holes, find automation opportunities to achieve operating improvements.
• Embed Lean, Six Sigma, data analysis, design thinking, and user oriented development principles.
• Drive automation, data outputs and augmented decision making to support operational excellence and adx performance.
• Measure and drive the progress and adoption of continuous improvement and automation initiatives.
• Foster a culture of continuous improvement within the organization to achieve big, lasting performance improvement.
• Build a high performing team through developing capacity, career trajectory and succession planning for team members.

AI, Automation, RPA and Workflow Enablement

• Own the Operations pipeline for AI, intelligent automation, RPA, workflow and process‑mining opportunities, from ideation through implementation and optimization.
• Partner with Technology, Data, Risk, Compliance and business teams to translate operational needs into scalable, secure and sustainable solutions.
• Develop business cases and requirements that clearly define the problem, target process, expected benefits, control impacts, implementation needs and ongoing ownership.
• Promote responsible use of AI and automation, including appropriate human oversight, testing, documentation, monitoring, escalation and adherence to enterprise standards.
• Lead implementation and operational readiness activities for automation and workflow solutions, including process changes, training, communications and adoption.
• Monitor solution performance and work with partners to resolve defects, manage exceptions and continuously improve realized value.

Productivity, Capacity and Benefits Realization

• Develop productivity and capacity‑improvement frameworks that enable consistent measurement of workload, effort, throughput, turnaround time, quality and resource utilization.
• Use operational data and process insights to identify performance gaps, demand patterns, root causes and opportunities to release or redirect capacity.
• Establish baseline, targets and benefits‑realization plans for improvement initiatives, including financial, capacity, service, quality, risk and employee‑experience outcomes.
• Validate and report realized benefits, distinguish one‑time from sustainable improvements and ensure benefits are embedded in operating plans and performance routines.
• Support Operations leaders with workload balancing, workforce planning, service‑level trade‑offs and prioritization decisions.
• Develop concise executive reporting on the improvement portfolio, delivery status, realized outcomes, risks and decisions required.

Change Delivery and Enterprise Partnership

• Lead cross‑functional initiatives involving process redesign, technology implementation, operating‑model change and service transformation.
• Facilitate workshops and working sessions to define problems, align stakeholders, design solutions and accelerate decisions.
• Build trusted relationships across Operations, Technology, Transformation, Data, Risk, Compliance, Finance, Human Resources and Member Experience.
• Apply structured change‑management practices to ensure affected teams understand, adopt and sustain new processes, tools and ways of working.
• Anticipate delivery and adoption risks, elevate issues appropriately and ensure clear accountability for decisions and follow‑through.
• Coordinate external vendors or professional‑service partners where required and monitor delivery against agreed outcomes.

People Leadership and Continuous Improvement Capability

• Build a high‑performing, engaged and inclusive team focused on operational excellence, innovation, measurable outcomes and practical execution.
• Provide leadership, coaching, performance management, succession planning and professional development for direct reports.
• Develop process‑improvement, automation, AI, analytical, change and benefits‑realization capabilities across the team and broader Operations portfolio.
• Create standards, toolkits, training and communities of practice that enable leaders and employees to identify and implement improvements.
• Promote

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