Deputy Director People and Capability, Defence Digital

Corsham, London

Defence is investing in digital transformation at an unprecedented scale and people are at the absolute heart of this. As Deputy Director People & Capability you will be critical in leading and shaping the digital people agenda and in particular shaping the core digital workforce and leading its ongoing transformation at pace, helping Defence Digital deliver its workforce priorities.

We are looking for an exceptional senior level HR leader who can add real value as part of the Defence Digital executive team. Someone with experience of leading change, confident in forging relationships with senior stakeholders within and beyond our organisation; and comfortable with both scale, complexity and working with some ambiguity. 

Defence Digital and the wider Digital Function, led by the Chief Information Officer (CIO), are critical enablers for almost all aspects of Defence activity. The Deputy Director People and Capability will be responsible for leading the cultural, organisational and systemic workforce changes in support of the full portfolio of the CIO’s transformation agenda and Defence’s Digital Strategy Delivery Plan.

In addition the Deputy Director will be responsible for supporting the ongoing transformation of Defence Digital, leading the People Strategy and Transformation Programme implementation and ensuring that the CIO’s people needs are addressed proactively through functional best practice workforce planning, organisation design and development, sourcing and upskilling strategies. 

They will lead and develop the Defence Digital People Team, building and delivering the people plan, acting as the Senior professional HR Partner to the CIO and their team.  

Essential Criteria:

• Track record of successfully designing, leading and driving people change within a complex environment from a people perspective and managing associated risks.
• Experience of influencing, consulting, and negotiating at a strategic level with senior stakeholders on workforce transformation and employment issues enabling you to contribute as an active and influential HR leader.
• An understanding and experience of creating and delivering quality HR services and strategic interventions in the face of complexities and diverse customer needs whilst managing the associated budgets.
• Proven ability to set strategic direction for HR teams and inspire them to deliver outcomes, leading a dispersed multi-disciplinary team.
• Demonstrable ability to build a strong network of collaborative relationships with stakeholders across business areas with the ability to build confidence.
• Chartered Fellow or fully qualified member (Level 7) of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), equivalent professional qualification or HR knowledge or willing to work towards accreditation.

Desirable criteria may be used in the event of a strong field of candidates when there is a need to distinguish between candidates. This will be as a second sift, after the essential criteria has been considered:​

• Experience of Digital workforce transformation and leading the People Agenda for a Digital Function.

• 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 : SCS Recruitment Team
• Email : People-CivHR-SCSCandidateSupport@mod.gov.uk

Recruitment team

• Email : People-CivHR-SCSRecruitment@mod.gov.uk