Job Description
This is an exciting new opportunity in the Bank’s People Directorate as part of a major strategic change programme to maintain the modern and professional provision of the Bank’s central services – CS 2025. We are hiring a Director of our new People Strategy & Insights Division. You will be at the forefront of building this new function and strengthening the ability of the People Directorate and the Bank to develop and execute its People Strategy.
As a new role and function, it brings together existing functions and, reflecting our on-going focus on people in the achievement of the Bank’s mission, it introduces new roles and capabilities to strengthen the People function. It is an outward-facing role across the Bank and externally, meaning that you keep your finger on the pulse of business needs and employment and workforce trends, working with the People Leadership Team and professionals across the People Directorate and Central Services to ensure that the right people are focusing on the right things at the right time to develop and deliver our People Strategy.
Your key responsibilities and scope of the role include:
- Developing, embedding, and measuring the success of the Bank’s People Strategy, ensuring it remains relevant to the Bank’s vision to be ‘human and humble and in step with the changing world’; working with specialist People Directorate leads and the Bank’s most senior leaders to ensure the Bank’s People Strategy is joined up and coherent.
- Providing inclusive leadership to a team of people professionals, and role model the expectations of leaders at the Bank: Leads Change – ensuring we are in step with a changing world; Engages with Impact by communicating with purpose; and Assures Quality by enabling technical delivery of high-quality outputs.
- Leading and developing a team of People Strategy Partners, who are the People Directorate’s relationship link with the Deputy Governorships across the Bank; and collaborate with other business partnering functions across other central functions.
- Establishing and leading a People Insights function, to build a rich and insightful picture of the strength of our workforce and effectiveness of our employee value proposition (EVP), drawing on both quantitative and qualitative sources (including employee engagement insights); and leading the adoption of the Bank’s data strategy in relation to people data.
- Leading and driving the Bank’s leadership development agenda, to develop our current and future leadership cohort to meet future business needs.
- Providing oversight of the Bank’s talent strategy and agenda, with a dotted reporting line from the Talent division to ensure plans are aligned.
- Leading and maintaining the People Directorate’s book of work, including responsibility for a People Planning function to co-ordinate and deliver projects, manage the portfolio of work, source the right expertise from across the relevant functions and communicate plans to the wider Bank. As part of this work closely with the Executive Director, Change and Planning and Communications colleagues to ensure strategies and plans align.
- Leading the directorate’s professional development plans, engaging with third party professional networks and organisations as appropriate, to ensure the right capabilities are developed to support the needs of the Bank in delivering its People Strategy and services.
- Deputising for the Executive Director, People across Bank governance committees and internal and external commitments; and acting as the lead for major Bank wide programmes with significant people implications e.g. UK Resourcing Strategy.
As a role model for being ‘human and humble and in step with the changing world’, you will work in partnership with the Senior Leadership Team across the Bank to ensure that the People Strategy is embedded and evolves to reflect business needs. This means working closely with that cohort, using your expertise and commercial insights to deploy different methods and approaches to secure that engagement and bring about consistency. Your external network will help you keep in step with the changing world, meaning that you can keep the People Strategy relevant.
Number of direct reports: 8
Role Requirements
Essential Criteria
- Strong working background in professional HR leadership and employment practice, including specialist experience in setting HR-related strategic priorities.
- Strong business sense and cultural awareness, with the ability to understand the immediate and longer-term business priorities and those of the wider financial services and economic environment.
- Strong analytical skills, with the ability to take on exciting challenges and mitigate emerging risks.
Minimum Criteria
- Specialist knowledge and experience of driving, embedding and measuring organisational and people strategies across organisations, including behavioural and cultural change, acquired in an HR role.
- Extensive knowledge of up-to-date external practice, supported by an established professional network.
- Well-developed inclusive leadership skills and dedication to developing your team.
- Experience of building productive relationships with and influencing multiple stakeholders both internally and externally up to board level and with unions/staff representatives.
- Excellent analytical skills, with the ability to demonstrate creative problem solving and influencing through analysis. You have used data insights to support the argument for strategic change.
Desirable Criteria
- Relevant professional qualifications.
- Experience of working in both the private and public sector.
You should not be put off from applying if you do not meet or do not have all of these criteria – we would actively encourage you to get in touch to discuss what support you might need to close any gaps and/or any other skills you might have which you think could be effective in this role.