IT Project Manager

Founded over 35 years ago, First Quality is a family-owned company that has grown from a small business in McElhattan, Pennsylvania into a group of companies, employing over 5,000 team members, while maintaining our family values and entrepreneurial spirit. With corporate offices in New York and Pennsylvania and 8 manufacturing campuses across the U.S. and Canada, the companies within the First Quality group produce high-quality personal care and household products for large retailers and healthcare organizations. Our personal care and household product portfolio includes baby diapers, wipes, feminine pads, paper towels, bath tissue, adult incontinence products, laundry detergents, fabric finishers, and dishwash solutions. In addition, we manufacture certain raw materials and components used in the manufacturing of these products, including flexible print and packaging solutions.

Guided by our values of humility, unity, and integrity, we leverage advanced technology and innovation to drive growth and create new opportunities. At First Quality, you’ll find a collaborative environment focused on continuous learning, professional development, and our mission to Make Things Better®.

We are seeking an IT Project Manager for our First Quality Enterprise company working remotely.

This position accomplishes project objectives by evaluating requirements and  outcomes needed from the project as well as planning, executing, monitoring/controlling and closing project activities.  In addition, the position will ensure change is introduced efficiently and effectively in the organization by leading, directing, coordinating and providing visibility into the organization’s change management efforts. The role creates change management strategies and develops change workstreams that maximize employees’ change readiness and adoption.

Primary responsibilities include:

• Employs structured project management methodologies (e.g. PMI) to deliver successful business outcomes through expertly managed projects at the IT or enterprise level.

• Develops detailed project plans, deliverables, milestones, goals and inter/intra project dependency maps that ensure all required project work is executed completely, correctly and timely.

• Works with project sponsors and stakeholders to define the appropriate resource requirements in terms of skills, knowledge, availability and capacity to successfully conduct project work.  Ensures that any gap is identified and addressed at the proper time within the project timeline to maximize project efficiency and efficacy.

• Assembles and coordinates project team members and assignments across individuals maintaining balanced workloads.

• Creates comprehensive communications plans that identify the level, type, format and style of communications for the project team, stakeholders, and sponsors. Utilizes standard tools (e.g. RACI) to define roles and responsibilities at all times within the project lifecycle.

• Prepares requests for proposals (RFPs) for external services and conducts all necessary meetings to facilitate selection. Monitors contracts and maintains regular communication with service providers.

• Develops proper risk management strategies that focus on risk identification and proactive response/mitigation.  Ensures that issue management is comprehensive, visible and timely to minimize impact to the project.  Educates team members in risk/issue management and ensure that the discipline is built into the DNA of the project team and its operations.

• Develops, maintains and communicates detailed project financial budgets and forecast status.  Ensure project financials are managed proactively and provides visibility at required levels of the organization.  Works closely with Sourcing and Vendor Management to ensure supplier engagements meet the project requirements and benefit the organization.

• Complies with all policies and procedures and ensure the project teams are educated and follow them.

• Works with IT Leadership to continuously improve project and change management processes, tools, knowledge and capability across the organization.

• Employs a structured change management methodology (e.g. ADKAR) to facilitate change and promote commitment to adapt to the change. Knows how to tailor this methodology to be culturally appropriate for the enterprise.

• Prepares for change by assessing the magnitude of change and the organization’s change readiness. Identifies pitfalls and potential points of challenge or change aversion. Develops counterstrategies to mitigate or minimize potential issues. Assesses impact to stakeholders affected by the change and regularly reviews the community for potential change fatigue.

• Tailors change management plans (training and orientation) to accommodate the needs of the different stakeholder groups impacted.

• Works with HR and other stakeholders to create a communications strategy and plan to ensure all employees are fully aware of impending changes.  Creates mechanisms to de-emphasize old behaviors and encourage new desired ones.

• Identifies, educates and provides leadership for change agents and change advocates within the stakeholder, executive and trusted informal leaders to create employee understanding and influence successful organizational change.

• Performs quantitative assessment of change success and change adoption. Solicits feedback from stakeholders to determine the success of change management activities and ensure that behavioral changes align with strategic objectives.

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.

• Strong organization, presentation and customer service skills.

• Ability to manage multiple concurrent priorities/projects and deliver results with limited resources.

• Ability and desire to be hands on with applications and technology tools to deliver solutions

• Demonstrated leadership to project teams across matrix organization.

• Proven project and process management skills.

• Strong problem solving and decision making skills.

The ideal candidate should possess the following:

• Bachelor’s Degree in Technology, Engineering, or related field. Advanced business degree preferred.

• Minimum of 5 years of project management experience in an Information Technology environment

• Minimum of 3 years of experience participating in cross-functional project experience, or leading cross-functional organizational projects

• 2-3 years organizational change management experience preferred

• Multi-plant manufacturing industry experience preferred

• PMP (Project Management Professional) Certification or equivalent preferred. Change Management professional certification desired.

• Financial knowledge to ensure organizational change efforts are aligned with the financial perspective of the desired business benefits

• Experience with MS Project, Monday.com, Jira, Asana or other relevant project management system required

• Experience utilizing AI tools for project management preferred

• Highly collaborative

• A problem solver

• Superb organizational skills

• Excellent communication skills – written & oral

Minimal travel required for IT team meetings and visits to our various sites for key project milestone meetings.

What We Offer You

We believe that by continuously improving the quality of our benefits, we can help to raise the quality of life for our team members and their families. At First Quality you will receive:

• Competitive base salary and bonus opportunities

• Paid time off (three-week minimum)

• Medical, dental and vision starting day one

• 401(k) with employer match

• Paid parental leave

• Child and family care assistance (dependent care FSA with employer match up to $2500)

• Bundle of joy benefit (year's worth of free diapers to all team members with a new baby)

• Tuition assistance

• Wellness program with savings of up to $4,000 per year on insurance premiums

• ...and more!