Lead Product Owner

Lead Product Owner is an exciting opportunity to contribute to the business outcomes within Long Term Care. This team focuses on delivering solutions that create and support Disciplined Contract Management, by reinventing the LTC customer experience to be digital-first by upgrading legacy systems, evolving LTC technology architecture to enable scale, expand operational efficiencies, and drive STP automation.

The Lead Product Owner acts as the voice of the business and the voice of the customer for a major component of Long-Term Care Insurance customer journeys. The Lead Product Owner represents and drives business needs across multiple delivery teams to ensure business and end-user satisfaction. This role contributes to the realization of LTC strategy, vision, and OKRs by aligning and prioritizing business goals with actionable results. This individual may have one or more Product Owner(s) or Senior Product Owner(s) reporting into this role; responsible for coaching and career development.

Position Responsibilities:
Voice of the Business and Customer

• Responsible for business outcomes in alignment with segment/global priorities

• Acts as the voice of the business and voice of the customer within the squads to ensure business and end-user satisfaction

• Maintains an excellent understanding of business, customer, and end-user pain points, needs, and preferences

• Maintains an excellent understanding of relevant personas and customer journeys in order to advocate for the ideal experience

• Proactively monitors and shares industry, competitive and general business trends to enable strategic planning and delivery of outcomes in alignment with segment priorities

• Consistently applies the customer lens to solutions

• Ensures the voice of the customer/stakeholder is prominent and accurate in the definition of user stories

Value/Backlog Management

• Drives the strategy, planning and delivery of key capabilities

• Primarily leads the squad(s) in ensuring value creation for the business, customers, and end-users by owning the squad backlog and ensuring that the highest value work is always being executed

• Builds and grooms the user story backlog for squads (prioritizing based on value)

• Ensures the backlog is visible, clear and understood by all squad members

• Incorporates feedback from stakeholder demos, interviews, user research, and engineering into the squad backlog

• Accepts the work outputs (i.e. completed user stories) of the squad by ensuring all stories meet the definition of done

Squad Alignment & Communication

• Brings strong coaching mindset to agile practices and product content knowledge

• Strong leadership capabilities and is a champion of agile practices and product content knowledge; acts as role model

• Specify and effectively communicate desired outcomes for current and future capabilities

• Leads or assists in demonstrations of the squad’s outputs (i.e. working software)

• Reviews and contributes to the roadmap

• Drafts the squad’s specific objectives and key results (OKRs)

Required Qualifications:

• 10 years of experience in a business role enabling innovation or growth within the insurance industry

• A bachelor's degree or College diploma is required

• Team leadership with direct management of Product Owner(s) and/or Senior Product Owner(s)

• Strong Project Management experience with an Agile approach

• Excellent knowledge of the Long Term Care Insurance market, with previous or active role as a Senior Product Owner/Manager, Operational leader, Contact Center Leader or eServices leader

• Excellent understanding of flow of work from intake to release to optimize work in progress, clearly communicating priorities for upcoming work, and maintaining alignment to OKRs

• Excellent coaching mindset and abilities, enabling team members to define solutions, and deliver outcomes

• Engagement of squad members to collaborate, promote ownership and accountability of tasks, and maintain continuous improvement mindset

• Acts as a thought partner to stakeholders with excellent stakeholder management and communication skills in defining outcomes, communicating progress, and facilitating planning meetings

• In-depth level of knowledge and understanding of the area of practice

• Excellent knowledge of digital capabilities to service end customers and financial professionals

• Excellent knowledge of digital enterprise enablement technologies and practices

Preferred Qualifications:

• Previous team management and/or coaching experience preferred

When you join our team:

• We’ll empower you to learn and grow the career you want.

• We’ll recognize and support you in a flexible environment where well-being and inclusion are more than just words.

• As part of our global team, we’ll support you in shaping the future you want to see.

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About Manulife and John Hancock

Manulife Financial Corporation is a leading international financial services provider, helping people make their decisions easier and lives better. To learn more about us, visit https://www.manulife.com/en/about/our-story.html .

Manulife is an Equal Opportunity Employer

At Manulife/John Hancock, we embrace our diversity. We strive to attract, develop and retain a workforce that is as diverse as the customers we serve and to foster an inclusive work environment that embraces the strength of cultures and individuals. We are committed to fair recruitment, retention, advancement and compensation, and we administer all of our practices and programs without discrimination on the basis of race, ancestry, place of origin, colour, ethnic origin, citizenship, religion or religious beliefs, creed, sex (including pregnancy and pregnancy-related conditions), sexual orientation, genetic characteristics, veteran status, gender identity, gender expression, age, marital status, family status, disability, or any other ground protected by applicable law.

It is our priority to remove barriers to provide equal access to employment. A Human Resources representative will work with applicants who request a reasonable accommodation during the application process. All information shared during the accommodation request process will be stored and used in a manner that is consistent with applicable laws and Manulife/John Hancock policies. To request a reasonable accommodation in the application process, contact recruitment@manulife.com .

Referenced Salary Location

Salary range is expected to be between

If you are applying for this role outside of the primary location, please contact recruitment@manulife.com for the salary range for your location. The actual salary will vary depending on local market conditions, geography and relevant job-related factors such as knowledge, skills, qualifications, experience, and education/training. Employees also have the opportunity to participate in incentive programs and earn incentive compensation tied to business and individual performance.

Manulife/John Hancock offers eligible employees a wide array of customizable benefits, including health, dental, mental health, vision, short- and long-term disability, life and AD&D insurance coverage, adoption/surrogacy and wellness benefits, and employee/family assistance plans. We also offer eligible employees various retirement savings plans (including pension/401(k) savings plans and a global share ownership plan with employer matching contributions) and financial education and counseling resources. Our generous paid time off program in the U.S. includes up to 11 paid holidays, 3 personal days, 150 hours of vacation, and 40 hours of sick time (or more where required by law) each year, and we offer the full range of statutory leaves of absence.

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