Are you a HR leader ready to shape the future of a major business unit? We’re looking for a Head of HR Partnering for our Retail division, a key role where you can influence and drive our workforce's capability, shape, and location. This is your opportunity to join our business leadership team, offer critical insights, and help us achieve outstanding business outcomes.

What you’ll be doing as a Head of HR
The Head of HR reports to the HR Director and supports the Retail Leadership Team, overseeing 1,300 employees. Retail is our key customer-facing division, responsible for customer services, financial care, billing, and wholesale services. This role is instrumental in driving the people agenda across Retail, including strategic resourcing, employee engagement, talent development, and organisational design.

As the Head of HR, you’ll act as a strategic advisor and coach to the Retail Leadership team, leading key HR projects and initiatives.

Your responsibilities will include:

• Guidance and Coaching: Be a trusted advisor and coach to our senior team, providing strategic HR guidance and objective insights to shape our business direction.
• Strategic Planning: Develop and implement long-term people strategies that align with our business goals, focusing on building capability, promoting diversity and inclusion, managing talent, and driving organisational change.
• Data Analytics: Leverage HR and business data to drive continuous improvement, enhance employee engagement, and link employee performance to business outcomes.
• Organisational Design: Ensure our business is structured effectively through strategic workforce planning, creating a people plan that aligns with both HR and business objectives.
• Capability Development: Challenge and coach leaders to improve team capability and capacity, offering constructive feedback to foster growth.
• Collaborative Execution: Work flexibly and collaboratively across HR functions to execute organisational and structural changes, ensuring the optimal deployment of HR resources.

Base Location: Reading/ Hybrid or Swindon/Hybrid
Working Pattern or hours: Full time (36 hours per week - Monday to Friday)

 What you should bring to the role

• Leadership Skills: Strong, adaptable leadership with resilience, tenacity, and ethical integrity.
• Communication Expertise: Excellent interpersonal skills, capable of building influential relationships with diverse and demanding senior stakeholders.
• Analytical Ability: Proficiency in analysing HR/business data to inform strategic workforce planning and business practices.
• Flexibility and Creativity: Ability to respond creatively to complex business challenges in a changing operational environment.
• Employee Relations Knowledge: Deep understanding of employee relations, with the ability to coach and influence business decisions.
• Legal Acumen: Awareness of the legal context in HR and its application to mitigate organisational risk.
• Strategic Value Creation: Experience in applying people strategies to create sustainable value and manage associated risks.
• Professional Qualifications: Chartered or fully qualified member (Level 5) of the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development (CIPD) or equivalent HR qualification is essential.

What’s in it for you?
Join us and make a significant impact on our organisation's success. Apply today to become our Head of HR and help lead our Retail division to new heights!

• Competitive salary from £65,000 - £80,000 per annum
• Annual Leave 26 days holiday per year increasing to 30 with the length of service (Plus bank holidays)
• Car Allowance
• Annual Bonus
• Private Medical Health Care
• Contributory pension – Defined Contribution - Maximum of 12% -2x employee contribution
• Personal Medical Assessments – Open to all once a year
• Wider benefits scheme including our benefits hub, which is packed full of offers and information to save you money and support your wellbeing

Who are we?
At Thames Water, our purpose is crystal clear - to deliver life’s essential service so our customers, communities and planet can thrive.

Water is life’s great leveller. Every living thing needs it, every single day. From people to plants, birds to bees, farms to factories, we all need it to thrive, and we’re committed to taking care of it for us all.

But keeping water flowing is becoming harder. From scorching summers to wetter winters, extreme weather affects everything from our pipes to our local rivers. We need to keep millions more kettles boiling, public services operating, washing machines spinning, showers running and more, so every drop is more precious than ever. Are you ready to play your part?

Working at Thames Water
At Thames Water we recognise that people are at the heart of our business. To help us succeed in providing life's essential service, we need a range of skills and capabilities, representative of society throughout our business.

We seek to attract and retain a cultural mix of people who can offer different but complementary attitudes, values, talents, and knowledge. We understand the importance of appreciating and harnessing the unique skills, experiences, background, and differences that each individual brings.

Our over-arching diversity and inclusion aim is to ensure Thames Water is a diverse and inclusive great place to work. We encourage applications from everyone and offer extra support for those who need it throughout the recruitment process.

Find out more about working at Thames Water.

When a crisis happens, we all rally around to support our customers. As part of Team Thames, you’ll have the opportunity to sign up to support our customers on the frontline as an ambassador. Full training will be given for what is undoubtedly an incredibly rewarding experience. It’s also a great opportunity to learn more about our business, meet colleagues and earn some extra money along the way.

Disclaimer: due to the high volume of applications we receive, we may close the advert earlier than the advertised date, so we encourage you to apply as soon as possible to avoid disappointment.