People & Culture Director, Digital

Location: London, One Braham

Hours: Full time - Mat Cover 12 month fixed-term secondment

Why BT Group?

BT Group was the world’s first telco and our heritage in the sector is unrivalled. As home to several of the UK’s most recognised and cherished brands – BT, EE, Openreach and Plusnet, we have always played a critical role in creating the future, and we have reached an inflection point in the transformation of our business. Over the next two years, we will complete the UK’s largest and most successful digital infrastructure project – connecting more than 25 million premises to full fibre broadband. Together with our heavy investment in 5G, we play a central role in revolutionising how people connect with each other.

While we are through the most capital-intensive phase of our fibre investment, meaning we can reward our shareholders for their commitment and patience, we are absolutely focused on how we organise ourselves in the best way to serve our customers in the years to come. This includes radical simplification of systems, structures, and processes on a huge scale. Together with our application of AI and technology, we are on a path to creating the UK’s best telco, reimagining the customer experience and relationship with one of this country’s biggest infrastructure companies.

Change on the scale we will all experience in the coming years is unprecedented. BT Group is committed to being the driving force behind improving connectivity for millions and there has never been a more exciting time to join a company and leadership team with the skills, experience, creativity, and passion to take this company into a new era.

Why this job matters

The People and Culture Director, Partnering role holder serves as a trusted advisor and strategic partner to their business’s Senior Leadership Team on all people-related matters. By leveraging their deep understanding of the strategy and associated commercial drivers unique to the business, they influence both business and people-related decisions.

They lead a team of People and Culture BPs, overseeing the development and implementation of the organisation's partnering strategy, ensuring it aligns with the overall business plan and strategic direction, with a focus on fostering a highly engaged and high-performing workforce. This role will work in close collaboration with their Transformation & Change team as well as Group’s Strategy, Portfolio & Performance and CoE Leadership teams to drive efficiency and cross-functional working across People and Culture.

What you’ll be doing - your accountabilities

• Shapes and aligns the people agenda with business strategy, providing strategic direction and thought leadership to senior leaders and working with Finance to deliver an effective organisation within the allocated cost envelope (TLR/TLC).
• Provides inspirational leadership to the People and Culture Business Partnering team, ensuring proactive support for organisational planning and development initiatives, and delivering measurable business value and strategic alignment to wider business and group-wide People and Culture plans.
• Drives and owns the pan digital People agenda, ensuring we are delivering against the agreed activity and we are actively reviewing people data to spot trends and insights to support the Business agenda.
• Leads on their client area’s organisational transformation and change agendas in collaboration with the Transformation & Change team, managing the people impacts of change and championing initiatives that support agility.
• Oversees the co-creation and execution of a transformational talent agenda in collaboration with the Talent COE to attract, develop, and retain top talent, including overseeing talent planning and addressing future skill needs.
• Oversees the execution of performance and Reward management processes governed by the Performance and Reward COE, consistently measuring the effectiveness of people initiatives and driving continuous improvement within and across BT.
• Builds, owns and directs strategic relationships with key stakeholders, fostering collaboration across People and Culture functions and ensuring effective information flow.
• Champions an inclusive culture for colleagues to thrive and provides regular progress updates to senior leaders on diversity and inclusion initiatives set up in collaboration with the IED CoE.
• Coaches senior leaders on people policies and processes, including talent planning, learning and development, and performance management, to promote engagement and a culture of continuous growth.
• Active leadership team member of the People and Culture, Networks, Digital, CU and India team: driving and inputting into programmes/activity across the team.

Agile Accountabilities:

• Ensures requested People and Culture initiatives deliver measurable business value, solve user needs, and have strategic alignment to overall business and People and Culture plans.
• Owns the prioritisation of the client area’s People and Culture needs and effectively allocates resources accordingly.
• Collaborates with People and Culture Leadership Team and Senior Management Team to resource agile squads with the right capabilities to deliver on its end-to-end mission.
• Drives the activation of existing People and Culture products and strategy within the Unit and guides business leaders towards understanding the People and Culture op model, self-service and automated UX solutions.

The skills you’ll need to succeed

• People Strategy / Strategic Planning: Drives priorities for people management and development aligned to local business strategy. Experience of formulating commercial vision, strategy and plans.
• Business Strategy / Decision making: Experience of taking accountability for outcomes across a large complex organisation and driving visibility and ownership of outcomes in an integrated business. A strategic thinker who is able to blend technical, operational and commercial strategic considerations in their decision making.
• Inclusive Leadership: An inclusive leader, valuing diverse perspectives and fostering a sense of belonging among colleagues.
• Communication / Stakeholder Management: Exemplary communication, influencing and leadership, with the gravitas and impact to develop and enable strategic relationships that add significant commercial value to its business.
• Commercial acumen: Outstanding commercial acumen, recognised as an intellectual thought leader with outside-in experience and mindset and a passion for innovation.
• Change Management: Designs and implements change management activities, managing those changes and developments to drive business value.
• Influencing: Experience of influencing in a matrix organisation and being accountable for outcomes with and without direct ownership of resources. Proven ability to create and articulate an inspiring people vision.
• Culture Building: Creates the values, expectations, and practices that guide and inform the actions of the organisation.
• Agile Methodologies / Problem Solving: Experience in taking an agile approach to problem solving, welcoming disruptive thinking and delivering pan BT market leading propositions with speed.
• Organisation Transformation / Design Thinking: An entrepreneurial and creative approach to developing new, innovative ideas that will stretch the organisation and push boundaries.
• Strategic Workforce Planning: Uses strategy and workforce insights to ensure People and Culture initiatives are aligned to future business demands and strategic goals.
• Talent Management: Inclusively identifies, develops, and retains talented employees to support the effectiveness of the organisation as a whole. Facilitating activities and opportunities that get the best out of talented employees.
• Performance Management: Creates the appropriate environment needed to maximise employee performance and ensure alignment with the organisation's strategy using regular discussions, feedback, and reviews.
• Growth mindset: Capacity for self-reflection; leading by example and driving the organisation's performance with an attitude of continuous improvement by being open to feedback and self-improvement.

Studies have shown that women and people who are disabled, LGBTQ+, neurodiverse or from ethnic minority backgrounds are less likely to apply for jobs unless they meet every single qualification and criteria. We’re committed to building a diverse, inclusive, and authentic workplace where everyone can be their best, so if you’re excited about this role but your past experience doesn’t align perfectly with every requirement on the Job Description, please apply anyway - you may just be the right candidate for this or other roles in our wider team.