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⚡ Source: ReedRef: 57031987

Head of HR Strategic Partnering

The Guardian·Liverpool·Posted 8h ago
👑 Executive
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Job description

Original text imported from Reed

Head of HR Strategic Partnering

Grade 7 , Perm

Liverpool, Newport

Job summary:

  • Are you excited by the opportunity to shape organisational strategy by partnering with leaders and ensure people decisions drive business success?
  • Do you thrive on developing and leading a high performing HR Partnering team, coaching others to become trusted strategic advisors across the organisation?
  • Are you motivated by driving transformational change, influencing culture and delivering innovative people solutions that create lasting organisational impact?

Job purpose:

Your role is to lead the delivery of strategic HR partnering across the Charity Commission.

This role leads the areas of People Performance, Strategic Capability and Employee Experience as well as being responsible for delivering against the strategic HR objectives outlined in the organisational Business Plan. You will proactively seek opportunities for continuous improvement in our people practices, using data and evidence to determine the priority areas. You will act as a trusted advisor to senior leaders on HR matters, and represent the People and Development function in projects and external networks.

Job description

Key Responsibilities:

  • Provide strategic oversight to all people practices within the organisation and ensure alignment with the organisational Business Plan.
  • Lead strategic workforce planning, producing consistent and reliable workforce planning tools and have regular workforce planning discussions with Directors and Assistant Directors.
  • Use data and evidence to monitor and drive people performance across the organisation.
  • Design and implement succession planning and talent management strategies with clear alignment between both areas.
  • Oversee the annual pay remit.
  • Implement capability interventions that meet the needs of the organisation, for example developing leadership skills, developing a 5-year training plan and career pathways for all roles, and leading a new Casework Academy programme to strengthen the skills and knowledge of new starters.
  • Lead the ongoing employee engagement cycle including gathering employee feedback in a variety of ways (for example, People Survey, exit interviews, stay interviews, pulse surveys, Time to Talk with CEO, etc). Turning this feedback into tangible actions and keeping employees regularly updated on progress.
  • Take responsibility for key factors that impact the employee experience including our overall employee offer, how we recognise and reward our employees, and seeking continuous feedback on improving the employee experience through our engagement events.
  • Regularly liaise with Directors and Assistant Directors to ensure they are engaged with all strategic people areas, positively and strategically influencing as necessary.
  • Regularly evaluate strategic HR workstreams and demonstrate value they are adding to the business.
  • Draft papers and reports for presenting to Executive Leadership Team, Remuneration and People Committee, and other boards when required.
  • Be an active member of the People and Development Senior Leadership Team, the Resources Directorate Leadership Team and other Boards as required.
  • Develop positive, collaborative working relationships with stakeholders and trade unions on HR matters.
  • Work across government through involvement with Communities of Practice and working groups informing future direction of Civil Service wide initiatives.

Person specification

Ability:

  • Identify people issues in a proactive way and communicate confidently and persuasively about solutions, constructively challenging and providing appropriate feedback with tenacity and ethical integrity.
  • Understand and implement people-related change and initiatives with evidence of the impact on the business through the analysis of appropriate metrics and insight.
  • Actively promote the reputation of P+D and the Organisation, both internally and externally, displaying enthusiasm for the work, helping to inspire colleagues and stakeholders to fully engage with the aims and long-term vision.
  • Seek out shared interests beyond own area of responsibility, understanding the extent of the impact actions have on an organisation, particularly in relation to people-management issues.

Experience:

  • Experience of developing and implementing HR strategy.
  • Experience of building strong, trust-based relationships with a range of diverse and demanding stakeholders (particularly in relation to people management issues and in an environment of organisational change).
  • Acting as a coach and trusted confidante for senior leaders across the directorates you partner.

Technical:

  • CIPD qualified at Chartered level, or equivalent qualifications and experience and actively demonstrating Continuous Professional Development.
  • Identification & analysis of HR metrics for reporting and decision making.
  • Strong understanding of the key drivers of employee engagement, clearly linking people activities and interventions to a business outcome.

Behaviours

We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:

  • Seeing the Big Picture
  • Changing and Improving
  • Leadership
  • Communicating and Influencing
SpeedCV AI

Key skills

AI-extracted from the job advert

Must-have skills
Strategic HR business partneringWorkforce planningSuccession planning and talent managementEmployee engagement programme designHR data analysis and reportingExecutive-level stakeholder managementBoard and committee report writingLeadership and capability development
Nice-to-have
Civil Service or public sector HR experienceCIPD Level 7 qualificationPay remit and reward strategyOrganisational development in a regulated environment
Soft skills
Strategic influencingTrusted advisoryLeadershipCoachingCommunicationContinuous improvement mindsetStakeholder management
SpeedCV AI

Application advice

5 AI-generated recommendations to maximise your chances.

1

⭐ Open your Personal Statement with explicit experience of leading an HR Partnering function at a strategic level, as the advert names 'lead the delivery of strategic HR partnering' as the core purpose.

2

📊 Quantify your workforce planning impact: e.g. 'Delivered workforce planning tools adopted by 8 Directors, reducing vacancy time-to-fill by 22%.'

3

🎯 Highlight any experience producing papers or reports for Executive Leadership Teams or Remuneration Committees, as the advert explicitly requires this skill.

4

🌐 Reference experience in the public sector, charity, or regulated environment to align with the Charity Commission context and Civil Service Grade 7 framework.

5

🤝 Demonstrate coaching outcomes: e.g. 'Coached 5 HR Business Partners to achieve CIPD Level 7, improving team capability scores by 30% in annual survey.'

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Suggested CV bullets

3 bullets our AI drafted for this specific advert, mirroring its ATS keywords.

How to tailor your CV

Add these 3 bullets under your most recent experience:

  • Led a strategic workforce planning programme across 9 business units, delivering quarterly planning tools adopted by 12 Directors and reducing time-to-fill for critical roles by 28% over 18 months.
  • Designed and launched a 5-year capability framework including 3 leadership development pathways, resulting in a 40% increase in internal promotion rates and a 15-point rise in employee engagement scores.
  • Produced and presented 6 HR strategy papers to the Executive Leadership Team and Remuneration Committee, securing board approval for a revised pay remit that improved retention by 19% in year one.

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Dear Hiring Manager,

The Charity Commission's Head of HR Strategic Partnering role is precisely where strategic workforce planning and evidence-led people performance converge — two areas I have spent over a decade developing at senior level. The requirement to lead a high-performing HR Partnering team whilst acting as a trusted advisor to Directors and presenting to the Remuneration and People Committee aligns directly with the work I do today.

My background in strategic HR leadership includes designing multi-year capability frameworks, running full employee engagement cycles from pulse surveys through to CEO-level Time to Talk sessions, and building succession pipelines that reduced critical role vacancy risk by 35% across a 1,200-person organisation. I have produced board-level papers on pay remit and workforce strategy, and coached HR Business Partners to operate as genuine strategic advisors rather than transactional HR contacts.

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Interview questions

10 questions generated from this advert.

Technical

  • How have you designed and implemented a workforce planning framework that provided reliable data to Directors and senior leaders?
  • Describe your approach to building a succession planning strategy — how did you ensure alignment with talent management processes?
  • What HR metrics and data sources have you used to monitor people performance, and how did you translate them into executive-level reports?
  • How have you structured a multi-year training plan or capability intervention programme, and how did you measure its effectiveness?
  • What tools or methodologies have you used to run employee engagement cycles, including pulse surveys and exit interviews, and how did you close the feedback loop?

Behavioural

  • Tell me about a time you influenced a senior leader to change a people decision that was misaligned with the organisation's HR strategy.
  • Describe a situation where you led a team of HR Business Partners through a significant organisational change — what was your approach and what was the outcome?
  • Give an example of when you used data and evidence to identify a critical gap in people practices and drove a solution that had measurable organisational impact.
  • Tell me about a time you had to present a complex HR paper to a board or committee — how did you prepare and how was it received?
  • Describe a moment when you had to balance competing priorities across workforce planning, employee engagement, and capability development simultaneously.
SpeedCV AINEW

STAR answer examples

Model answers using the Situation-Task-Action-Result framework. Adapt to your own experience.

1Question

Tell me about a time you influenced a senior leader to change a people decision that was misaligned with the organisation's HR strategy.

Situation: A Director at my previous organisation planned to restructure a 45-person team without a workforce plan, risking the loss of 8 specialist roles identified as critical in our succession pipeline. Task: I needed to influence the Director to pause and engage with the HR partnering process before announcing changes. Action: I prepared a data pack showing the 3-year cost of replacing those specialist roles — approximately £180,000 in recruitment and onboarding — and presented an alternative restructure model that retained the critical skills. I also facilitated a two-hour workshop with the Director and two Assistant Directors to co-design the revised approach. Result: The Director adopted the revised model, retained 7 of the 8 specialist roles, and the restructure was delivered on schedule with a 92% positive response in the follow-up pulse survey.
2Question

Describe a situation where you led a team of HR Business Partners through a significant organisational change — what was your approach and what was the outcome?

Situation: Following a merger of two government bodies, my team of 6 HR Business Partners needed to support 1,100 employees through a cultural integration programme whilst maintaining day-to-day HR operations. Task: I had to upskill the team from transactional HR delivery to strategic advisory roles within a 6-month window. Action: I introduced fortnightly coaching clinics, paired each HRBP with a senior leader as their dedicated partner, and created a shared evidence dashboard so the team could use people data in every leadership conversation. I also ran a 3-day capability sprint covering change management and influencing skills. Result: Within 6 months, Director satisfaction with HR partnering rose from 58% to 81% in our internal survey, and the team successfully delivered 14 change projects on time, with employee engagement holding steady at 74% throughout the integration.

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