Role purpose

• Leading and delivering a range of innovative people strategies to achieve Society goals.
• Leading the development of an open and inclusive culture where colleagues feel valued and able to contribute freely.
• Providing visible, credible, and effective leadership to ensure continued progress in colleague engagement, culture and values through the effective utilisation of OD techniques.
• Lead on the development of the Society’s learning & development offer to the Society the best place develop and build a career.
• To ensure the Society has a high quality, affordable workforce that is organised effectively to achieve Society objectives.
• To deliver robust workforce planning aligned to quality and financial imperatives.

Key Accountabilities

• Create the strategy and vision that help the Society achieve long-term success.
• The architect for the Society’s talent strategy and corporate-culture initiatives.
• Provide leadership, vision and direction for the People functions and manage the provision of high quality services through the Society.
• Evaluate the overall performance against agreed Society objectives and advise the Executive of any action necessary with regard to HR/L&D/OD issues.
• Lead a diverse team of people and L&D professionals to ensure that operational HR tasks are carried out to a high standard and in line with employment law.
• Develop the Society’s learning culture, leading on learning and development and related

activities to enhance capability, strengthen governance and ensure continuous

improvement through a flexible, competent, motivated and member focused workforce.

• Be a champion for diversity and inclusion within the Society
• Drive a high-performance culture where colleagues are performance managed and rewarded appropriately for their achievements.
• Develop innovative new roles to meet business needs including maximising the use of apprentices and university schemes within the Society
• Develop and implement strategies which maximise the health and well-being of colleagues within the Society
• Manage the design and implementation of HR policies, practices and strategic initiatives to ensure the Society recruits, retains and promotes highly skilled and motivated people in every area of our work.
• Identify, onboard and manage relevant third parties in line with Society’s Procurement and TPRM Framework
• Identification of regulatory updates, assessing their impact on the business and implementing any required changes to policy and procedures.
• Monitoring and compliance with the Enterprise Risk Management Framework to manage all risks within their area of responsibility.
• To build and maintain a total reward approach that recognises high performance, supports the attraction and retention of talented colleagues and is inclusive to all.

Key Responsibilities

Delivery of HR Services

• Business partner with Executives and Senior Managers to provide people related support to help them reach their strategic objectives and provide confidential advice and assistance in relation to organisation design, complex employee performance, conduct and absence management issues.
• Ensure the Society’s HR policies are kept up to date and are legally compliant.
• Assisting and dealing with complex grievances and implementing disciplinary procedures, overseeing lower level employment relations cases.
• Ensure the Society is compliant with Equal Opportunity and Diversity legislation and lead on the Society’s equality and diversity agenda to ensure the workforce reflects the community it serves.

Delivery of L&D Services

• Responsible for education, training and organisational development across the Society
• Devise and implement robust measures that identify the return on investment from critical colleague development initiatives
• Ensure that appropriate learning solutions are identified, including the use of in-house expertise versus external outsourcing for learning.

Operational Responsibilities

• Monitors the performance of the department against KPI’s and takes action when required to include (2nd Level) discipline issues.
• Creates, owns and reports on departmental deliverables and Key Performance Indicators.
• Develops and implements standards and procedures that support existing and new work practices within the team.
• Reviews and approves any initiatives or recommendations regarding decisions to systems, operations and procedures as they arise.
• Ensures statistical, management and statutory information required from the department is accurate and reported on time.

Leadership Responsibilities

• Drives accountability throughout all levels of the department through the communication of expectations and cascading of top-level objectives that support the overall vision of the society and drive customer service excellence.
• Create a positive working environment and culture to drive performance management and delivery against department objectives
• Ensures effective communication with direct reports by carrying out team meetings, one to ones, mid-year reviews, annual appraisals and general communications of any pertinent information.
• Ensure the department has adequate resources to cover the expected work activity along with overseeing the recruitment process and approving training programmes.
• Encourages colleagues to review and improve their working practices as well as driving improvements in their own working practices that meet or exceed customer expectations.
• Maintain a good understanding of industry issues and regulatory requirements which relate to HR and assess impact of industry sector issues on Society policies and practices.

Qualifications, skills and experience

Essential

• Graduate CIPD or equivalent
• Experience of leading a HR and L&D function
• Evidence of on-going professional updating and development
• Substantial experience of delivering an efficient & effective generalist HR service
• Strong written skills with proven ability to draft policies, procedures and reports
• Delivery focused with the ability to prioritise and organise workload within agreed deadlines
• Significant experience of developing and implementing HR policies
• Excellent up to date knowledge and application of employment law
• Excellent IT and keyboard skills, including Word and Excel, Outlook and PowerPoint
• Excellent presentation skills both formally and informally
• Strong project management skills
• Budget Management

Desirable

• Relevant development qualifications such as project management qualification or Supervisory/management qualification
• Experience in financial/banking services
• Building Society/Mutual Experience
• Experience of developing and implementing learning and Development policies.