People Director - Operations

Are you an inspirational HR leader ready to take on a pivotal role in a large, fast-paced, multi-site organisation? Do you thrive on translating strategy into action and modernising people operations through digital tools and data led insight? If so, our People Director (Operations) position could be the perfect next career move for you.

The People Director (Operations) will bring our people agenda to life across an organisation with thousands of colleagues in hundreds of locations. You'll ensure a consistent, engaging, and future ready colleague experience and position us as a benchmark for people first operations in our sector.

Reporting to the Chief Operating Officer and working closely with the People Director (Strategy), this role is a blend of operational excellence and forward looking influence. You won't just be an enabler-you'll be a catalyst for engagement, retention, productivity, and long term business success.

Specifically this role will cover:

• People Leadership & Stakeholder Engagement: Lead, coach, and develop a large, multi skilled team. You'll be acting as a trusted advisor to the Executive Committee on people operations and succession planning.
• Workforce Planning & Talent Development: Lead strategic workforce planning, ensuring the right capability and capacity for business needs. You'll oversee the Talent Delivery team to build strong talent pipelines, succession plans, and learning interventions.
• Recruitment & Onboarding: Oversee timely, cost effective, and high quality recruitment. Develop a multi channel attraction strategy and lead the design of a seamless onboarding process to improve early retention and performance.
• Employee Relations & Compliance: Lead the business through a period of legislative change through the consistent application and continual review of policies and procedures.
• People Systems & Reporting: Own the day to day service of people related systems including our HRIS, LMS and ATS, ensuring data accuracy and integrity.
• Employee Experience & Engagement: Embed Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion into every stage of the colleague lifecycle.

We believe in creating an inclusive workplace where everyone can be their true self and belong. We work hard to improve the diversity of our teams and celebrate our differences. And we care about our colleagues' wellbeing, so we ensure there are plenty of resources available so everyone can look after their emotional, physical, financial and work wellbeing. We call this "Better Me".

You will be a passionate and seasoned leader with substantial experience of leading large scale people teams in a centralised support model. Ideally from a multi site, customer facing environment, you will be comfortable working at a strategic level whilst having the agility to get hands on when required.

The ability to operate with credibility and integrity with senior stakeholders is essential.

You will be a self starting, confident, articulate communicator with experience of managing budgets. You will demonstrate adaptability and innovation and understand the benefits of digital transformation.

• Competitive Salary c £140,000
• Contributory pension scheme
• Annual bonus (discretionary)
• Car Allowance
• Hybrid working - a minimum of 60% of your time should be spent in our office in Thame, but you're welcome to come in every day if you prefer!
• 50% personal discount for hotel bookings and great friends and family discounts!
• 25 days holiday increasing with length of service + Bank Holidays