HR Director, BBC Studios

Human Resources

Permanent – Full Time

London, GB, W1A 1AA

Job Closing Date: 23:59, Sunday 26th Jan 2025

THE ROLE

Band: Senior Leader
Contract type: 1 x continuing (permanent) role
Location: London

The BBC has engaged an executive search firm, Egon Zehnder, to manage the selection process for this role. Please be aware that your application will be managed by Egon Zehnder, who will have access to your CV and personal details for the purpose of this vacancy only.

Job Introduction

Are you a visionary HR leader with a passion for nurturing talent? BBC Studios, the commercial arm of the BBC, is seeking a dynamic and strategic Human Resources Director to lead its HR function.

As the BBC Studios HR Director, you will have responsibility for a global HR team within commercial subsidiaries of the BBC, and lead and foster a best-in-class people function, ensuring optimal HR processes are well executed across talent acquisition and management, succession, reward, employee engagement, employee relations, learning and development, and diversity and inclusion. You will lead the global strategic people agenda across multiple commercial lines of business and markets/regions, to help deliver the BBC’s commercial goals with a particular focus on growth and ensuring that our diverse and talented workforce thrives.

Main Responsibilities

Key responsibilities will include:

• Act as a strategic partner to the CEO, Commercial Executive Committee(s), Commercial Board and BBC Chief People Officer to shape and develop HR strategy, initiatives, policies and processes delivering commercial growth through world-class organisation culture and employee engagement.
• Lead the development and delivery of the BBC Studios HR strategy grounded in the operational context and business objectives.
• Manage the relationship between the business and HR to ensure that there is a mutual understanding of needs, challenges and business plan objectives.
• Keep up to date with external trends and best practice, sharing knowledge and best practice with colleagues.
• Represent BBC Studios as needed at BBC Group Committees, and externally.
• Act as the conduit to effective communication and influence down the management hierarchy. Communicate frequently and personally through uncertainty.
• Provide professional HR leadership and support to optimise diverse critical talent attraction and retention, and support career development.
• Improve onboarding, training, and development practices to support and grow talent at all levels.
• Ensure teams feel supported and receive timely, honest and regular feedback via the MyConversation process.
• In conjunction with Group Reward Director, ensure data-driven, fair, and competitive compensation practices. Lead a structured annual compensation planning process with proper governance.
• Ensure HR policies and processes are fully communicated, understood and complied with and that all HR-related activity is legally compliant.
• Develop/manage relationships with recognised trade unions, employee representation groups, other external partners/professional organisations and networks.
• Act as a point of escalation for issues that cannot be resolved by the wider HR team, including disciplinary, grievance and dismissal processes to ensure compliance with legal requirements and BBC values.
• Develop HR analytics capability to deliver evidence-based people insights and research. Use this to develop and implement innovative people solutions that directly support the organisation to deliver its objectives.
• Accurate and timely mandatory reporting.
• Manage the HR budget and prudently control resources within that budget so that financial targets are met.
• Integrate BBC Values throughout the employee lifecycle.
• Build on reputation as a great place to work, further enhance the company brand and employee value proposition.
• Reinforce principles of accountability, integrity, and teamwork, shifting the mindset towards collective success.
• Create a culture and environment for teams to test, develop and innovate ideas, taking smart risks as appropriate.
• Champion employee engagement at all levels, increasing satisfaction, wellbeing and reducing unwanted turnover of top talent.
• Contribute to the wider development and leadership of BBC Studios, promoting and championing inclusion, collaboration, creativity, diversity and engagement.
• Ensure inclusivity and fairness in how we hire, manage, grow, celebrate and reward talent and everyone in the team feels equally and fairly treated.

Are You The Right Candidate?

The ideal candidate will have demonstrable experience in leading an HR organisation of scale and complexity and be an excellent communicator, with exceptional commercial acumen, and the emotional intelligence to operate successfully within a politically sensitive environment. In particular, they will evidence the following key skills and experience:

• Deep Human Resources experience, knowledge and insight including current trends and future developments and their contribution to business success.
• Experience working for an organisation with a large and diverse employee base, including significant UK presence.
• A proven track record of operating as part of a senior leadership team, across a global base.
• International and intercultural experience.
• Track record of leading and implementing change.
• Adept at managing numerous, senior and executive level stakeholders, often operating under tight timescales and managing numerous competing priorities.
• An inspiring communicator, required to influence beliefs and opinions of stakeholders and teams with emotional intelligence, empathy and understanding, and able to establish effective and collaborative relations across BBC departments, and external agencies/stakeholders where required.
• Extensive experience in managing significant budgets and understanding key financial drivers.
• Ability and resilience to operate in a politically sensitive environment open to public scrutiny.

About The BBC

We’re happy to discuss flexible working. Please indicate your choice under the flexible working question in the application. There is no obligation to raise this at the application stage but if you wish to do so, you are welcome to. Flexible working will be part of the discussion at offer stage.

• Excellent career progression – the BBC offers great opportunities for employees to seek new challenges and work in different areas of the organisation.
• Unrivalled training and development opportunities – our in-house Academy hosts a wide range of internal and external courses and certification.
• Benefits – we offer a competitive salary package, a flexible 35-hour working week for work-life balance and 26 days (1 of which is a corporation day) with the option to buy an extra 5 days, a pension scheme and discounted dental, health care, gym and much more.

Diversity matters at the BBC. We have a working environment where we value and respect every individual’s unique contribution, enabling all of our employees to thrive and achieve their full potential.

We want to attract the broadest range of talented people to be part of the BBC – whether that’s to contribute to our programming or our wide range of non-production roles. The more diverse our workforce, the better able we are to respond to and reflect our audiences in all their diversity.

We are committed to equality of opportunity and welcome applications from individuals, regardless of age, gender, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, socio-economic background, religion and/or belief. We will consider flexible working requests for all roles, unless operational requirements prevent otherwise.

This job description is a written statement of the essential characteristics of the job, with its principal accountabilities, incorporating a note of the skills, knowledge and experience required for a satisfactory level of performance. This is not intended to be a complete, detailed account of all aspects of the duties involved.

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