People Strategy Director

Birmingham, Blackpool, Cardiff, Glasgow, Leeds, London, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Sheffield

Are you an established leader? Could you lead some of our most influential culture change elements – embedding our values, employee experience and Diversity and Inclusion?

The People Strategy Directorate brings together teams providing people and HR thought-leadership, consultancy, advice, guidance services and support. The Directorate is accountable for: 

• the design and development of the people layer of the Departmental Target Operating Model
• the people and workforce strategy underpinning it
• driving values-based and inclusive culture shift
• and for providing the expertise and interventions which help to create an operating environment where all colleagues feel that they belong, have voice and can thrive. 

In support of this work, the Directorate is also the hub for people insight, analytics and emerging enabling technologies that will enhance our ability to make decisions based on a rich and solid foundation of data, as well as enhance colleague user experience. ​This is vital work which will drive significant and long-lasting organisation transformation. The challenge is immense, and our small, professional and highly expert team is right at the heart of the action, partnering with leaders and across the Group to make it happen. ​

The post-holder will be responsible for:​

• Embedding the DWP People Strategy and delivering its ambition while defining the strategic people activity needed for DWP to meet its 2030 objectives and the programme of workforce and workplace activities that will enable departmental transformation; a roadmap to deliver and tracking against it
• Holding the holistic view of implementation progress across People and Capability to enable the People and Capability Executive to engage in agile prioritisation
• The direction and strategic coherence of the Organisation Design & Development work, ensuring interventions are aligned and generate most impact for the organisation. You will often work directly with the Department’s most senior teams, including the DWP Executive Team, as your “client”. Taking a whole system view you will advise them on the best approach to meet their goals, often helping them to get beyond the presenting issues
• Development and implementation of the strategy for Diversity, Inclusion and Wellbeing and leadership of the Centre of Expertise to create an inclusive organisation which reflects the communities we serve, and which colleagues feel valued. You will also be the SRO for the Race Programme Board
• Combining insight gained through business partnering and timely people data gathering and evidence to provoke and drive the right conversations, action and inquiry on all people-related issues, employee experience insight, data, and evaluation leading to activities to further improve in service of our aspiration to be an exemplar employer of choice and measure the impacts of implementation on end-users
• Reinvigorating and embedding our flagship People Performance approach – supporting a culture of high performance through person-centric interventions with a focus on wellbeing, talent and capability 
• Leading a team of 4 Deputy Directors with a wider team of circa 250. 

Essential Criteria for the role which will be used to assess your application:

You will need to give evidence and examples of proven experience of each of the following essential selection criteria: ​

Track record and experience of successful delivery in at least one of the key disciplines across the HR/people function, within a large scale and comparably complex organisation or operating environment:

• People Strategy 
• Diversity and Inclusion
• Employee Experience
• Organisation Design and Development 

A strategic leader with the ability to see and translate the ‘big picture’ to strengthen the strategic direction and outcome delivery focus of the organisation.

Highly effective track record of building strong stakeholder relationships internally, with the ability to influence effectively at board level and engage, collaborate and challenge to expose points of difference and build consensus to drive decision-making and action. ​Successful track record of translating strategy into action and outcomes with a people focus. 

​Experience and success of harnessing the potential and capability of an organisation of scale to deliver tangible outcomes that make a difference to customers and users.

Demonstrable experience of supporting an organisation to continuously improve and develop its approach to diversity and inclusion in all forms and presenting to a diverse workforce with credibility and impact.

A fully qualified member of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) or equivalent. Our expectation is for continued professional development once in post, and we are looking for the successful candidate to be a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development or prepared to work towards it.

Alongside your salary of £97,000, Department for Work and Pensions contributes
£26,190 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme.

Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides.

• Learning and development tailored to your role
• An environment with flexible working options
• A culture encouraging inclusion and diversity
• A Civil Service pension with an average employer contribution of 27%

This role has a minimum assignment duration of 3 years. An assignment duration
is the period of time a Senior Civil Servant is expected to remain in the same post to enable them
to deliver on the agreed key business outcomes. The assignment duration also supports your career through
building your depth of expertise.

As part of accepting this role you will be agreeing to the expected assignment duration set out above.
This will not result in a contractual change to your terms and conditions.
Please note this is an expectation only, it is not something which is written into your terms and
conditions or indeed which the employing organisation or you are bound by. It will depend on your
personal circumstances at a particular time and business needs, for example, would not preclude any
absence like family friendly leave. It is nonetheless an important expectation, which is why we ask you
to confirm you agree to the assignment duration set out above.

This vacancy is part of the Great Place to Work for Veterans (opens in a new window) initiative.

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Job contact :

• Name : michael.dobson@gatenbyanderson.com
• Email : julie.myers@gatenbysanderson.com

Recruitment team

• Email : julie.myers@gatenbysanderson.com