U.S. Employer Portfolio Strategic Planning Lead - Cigna Healthcare - Hybrid

GENERAL PURPOSE:

Portfolio Management is a way to bridge the gap between strategy and implementation. The U.S. Employer Portfolio Strategic Planning Lead role will be responsible for supporting leadership with the planning and organization of business strategy, priorities, and goals.  The role will be engaging with multiple stakeholders to plan and deliver strategic cross-functional initiatives. Working closely with leadership, this role serves as the voice of program/project for U.S. Employer project feasibility, impact assessments and estimation, ensuring all impacts are captured and accounted for in the timeframes needed. They will align on cross function assessment status, addresses risk/issues, project estimate, and value alignment. The ideal candidate will not only manage business processes, but also actively influence strategic intent. The successful candidate for this role will be a self-starter, intellectually curious and bring the ability to transform various developments and actions into a synthesized set of business updates and strategies for a senior executive-level audience.

In addition, they may support the Change Management process and will work with the project team and organizational leaders to ensure adoption, utilization and proficiency of the changes that impact employees in the organization to increase benefit realization, value creation, ROI and the achievement of results and outcomes. This includes oversight and leadership of all process change management and impacted team activities. This person will focus on the people side of change. The primary responsibility will be creating and implementing change management strategies and plans that maximize stakeholder adoption and usage while minimizing resistance.

RESPONSIBILITIES:

Portfolio Management – U.S. Employer

• Serves as a critical business partner and advisor to the Senior Leadership teams for our U.S. Employer initiatives working in close partnership with Technology and Finance.

• Once portfolio decisions are made, supports resource planning, and ensures execution readiness.

• Acts as a connector to ensure business initiatives are prioritized, addressed, and escalated appropriately, provide strategic guidance, align with the leadership team, and drive the appropriate flow of decisions and information in furtherance of strategy execution.

• Aligning first with leadership, the Portfolio role represents U.S. Employer business in portfolio and prioritization activity where appropriate.

• Drives and is accountable for the execution of annual portfolio strategic Kick off and roadmap activities.

• Supports the development of portfolio business strategy, priorities, and goals.

• Supports prioritization of the strategic initiatives within the portfolio and the associated capacity planning requirements for the business by providing the necessary information to leadership to make the right decisions.

• Point of escalation if risks/issues cannot be resolved within the cross functional partners.

• Performing post-mortems relative to U.S. Employer Portfolio Strategy and Intake outcomes.

• Support coordination/curation of portfolio management process, responsible for ongoing implementation, adherence, revisions, etc. Participates in team meetings, strategic areas of focus across the team and governance in partnership with the leadership team. Continuously improve management practices to enable communication, collaboration, and shared accountability for success.

• Partner with the Delivery teams to ensure alignment to the portfolio management process, strategy development / translation process, and portfolio management process.

• Owns leadership and cross-functional forums /meeting management, including agenda setting, facilitation, and action item resolution.

• Partners very closely with leadership and Communications team on overall communication strategy related to portfolio status. Assists in the content creation for key communication materials to be used internally and externally.

• Ensures consistent presentation of the project in all media, including presentations, Web sites, memos, speeches, print, etc.

• Support the development of executive audience materials as required, leveraging SMEs and Communication partners.

Impact & Feasibility Assessment

• For all high priority requests with business and technology impacts, this role will be responsible for assessing impacts, supporting prioritizing, and scoping various projects/programs.

• Demonstrate the ability to take initiative and act with urgency, accountability, and integrity.

• Experience in broad operational functions and ability to identify connectivity points and synergies across cross-functional requests.

• Facilitate and steer discussions where little to no context may be available in pursuit of clearly defined next steps and/or solutions.

• Skilled in influencing and negotiating with ability to successfully engage and interact with partners across various leadership levels.

• Demonstrate courage and be comfortable with addressing problems and having difficult conversations.

• Experience in project management, process improvement, change management, and Agile methodologies.

• Develop and maintain relationships with business partners, including working collaboratively on projects and pilots within U.S. Employer organization and across multiple business and technology units.

Process  Change Management:

• Design, develop and implement change management strategies and plans.

• Supervises execution of activities related to organizational change management and end user readiness.

• Manages resolution of potential organizational obstacles.

• Communicates and educates the user community on administrative system progress, objectives, and requirements to include a means by which to evaluate and ensure organizational readiness.

• Works with process teams to ensure that new design elements are being appropriately communicated to the organization and effectively incorporated into end user training content.

• Perform/assess Stakeholder and change impact analysis identifying potential project impacts/risks.

• Identify and anticipate organizational challenges and/or resistance; develop risk mitigation plan.

• Spearhead initiatives to develop employees’ understanding and acceptance of impacts on specific job roles, policies, technology impacts and business practices.

• Work with teams to ensure that new process and technology design elements are being appropriately communicated to the organization.

QUALIFICATIONS:

• Bachelor’s degree and 5 years of related work experience required; prior experience leading management processes for a business unit preferred.

• SAFe Agile Methodology certification and/or PMP Project Management Certification preferred.

• Strong Change Management discipline and components of Change Management.

• Experience in health care required.

• Expertise in the Cigna organization, business processes and workflows to facilitate execution of initiatives preferred.

• Ability to work effectively in a dynamic and rapidly changing team-based, heavily matrixed environment.

• Experience driving results-oriented work with demonstrated project management skills.

• Strong analytic and decision-making abilities.

• Ability to foster collaboration, value other perspectives and gain support and buy-in for portfolio strategies.

• Problem solving and root cause identification skills.

• Excellent oral, written, presentation and communication skills.

• Can convey complex information in an understandable way to various audiences.

• Strong business acumen, with proven ability to leverage knowledge base to quickly come up to speed in new business areas and new types of projects.

• Proven ability to develop strong working relationships and establish a high level of credibility across lines of business and organizational levels.

• Demonstrated ability to rally support around vision & strategy.

If you will be working at home occasionally or permanently, the internet connection must be obtained through a cable broadband or fiber optic internet service provider with speeds of at least 10Mbps download/5Mbps upload.

For this position, we anticipate offering an annual salary of 110,000 - 183,300 USD / yearly, depending on relevant factors, including experience and geographic location.

This role is also anticipated to be eligible to participate in an annual bonus plan.

We want you to be healthy, balanced, and feel secure. That’s why you’ll enjoy a comprehensive range of benefits, with a focus on supporting your whole health. Starting on day one of your employment, you’ll be offered several health-related benefits including medical, vision, dental, and well-being and behavioral health programs. We also offer 401(k) with company match, company paid life insurance, tuition reimbursement, a minimum of 18 days of paid time off per year and paid holidays. For more details on our employee benefits programs, visit Life at Cigna Group.

About Cigna Healthcare

Cigna Healthcare, a division of The Cigna Group, is an advocate for better health through every stage of life. We guide our customers through the health care system, empowering them with the information and insight they need to make the best choices for improving their health and vitality. Join us in driving growth and improving lives.

Qualified applicants will be considered without regard to race, color, age, disability, sex, childbirth (including pregnancy) or related medical conditions including but not limited to lactation, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, veteran or military status, religion, national origin, ancestry, marital or familial status, genetic information, status with regard to public assistance, citizenship status or any other characteristic protected by applicable equal employment opportunity laws.

If you require reasonable accommodation in completing the online application process, please email: SeeYourself@cigna.com for support. Do not email SeeYourself@cigna.com for an update on your application or to provide your resume as you will not receive a response.

The Cigna Group has a tobacco-free policy and reserves the right not to hire tobacco/nicotine users in states where that is legally permissible. Candidates in such states who use tobacco/nicotine will not be considered for employment unless they enter a qualifying smoking cessation program prior to the start of their employment. These states include: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nebraska, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Utah, Vermont, and Washington State.

Qualified applicants with criminal histories will be considered for employment in a manner consistent with all federal, state and local ordinances.