Head of HR

Adapro Talent Partners are delighted to be exclusively partnering with a highly innovative, fast paced SME based in Milton Keynes, who are looking to recruit a Head of HR, on a permanent basis. The Head of HR will lead our Clients people strategy and deliver brilliant day to day HR. You'll partner closely with the HoD team and line managers to translate business goals into clear people plans, strong processes, and a standout employee experience - while building a high-performance, compliant, safe and inclusive workplace. If you love building structure without bureaucracy, coaching leaders, and using data to drive better outcomes for people and the business - this one's for you.

What you'll be responsible for:

• People Strategy & Leadership: Own and deliver the People Strategy aligned to the organisations growth plans. Set HR priorities, annual roadmap, budget, and measurable success metrics (e.g retention, engagement, time to hire). Provide pragmatic, data-led guidance on organisational design, change and capability building.
• Performance Management: Build and run a clear performance framework (goal setting, check-ins, reviews, reporting). Coach managers on feedback, performance improvement and difficult conversations. Own performance improvement processes with fairness, consistency and strong documentation.
• Compensation, Payroll & Benefits: Partner with Finance to ensure accurate payroll and smooth admin of pay changes, bonuses/commission and deductions. Own compensation principles: salary bands, benchmarking, pay reviews and promotions. Ensure benefits are fit for purpose, well communicated and well managed with providers.
• Learning & Development: Create a practical L&D plan for managers and employees (core skills, leadership, compliance). Support development planning, progression pathways and capability building across functions. Measure training impact and continuously improve learning offerings.
• Policy, HR Systems & Documentation: Maintain the employee handbook, contracts, templates and HR documentation standards. Keep policies current, legally compliant and consistently applied. Own HR systems and records management, ensuring confidentiality and GDPR compliance.
• Recruitment & Onboarding: Lead workforce plans with department heads and translate them into recruitment activity. Improve the end-to-end hiring process (role design, interviewing, decision-making, candidate experience). Deliver a high-quality onboarding experience that sets people up for success in their first 90 days.
• Employee relations: Lead ER cases (disciplinary, grievance, absence, capability) with pace, empathy and legal rigour. Reduce ER risk through coaching, early intervention and consistent processes. Manage external HR/legal support when required.
• Culture & employee experience: Be the custodian of the organisations culture: values, behaviours, ways of working and leadership standards. Run engagement listening (surveys, focus groups), build action plans and track follow-through. Drive initiatives that improve belonging, communication, recognition and retention.
• Workforce Planning: Build workforce plans (headcount, skills, capacity, succession, attrition risk). Use people metrics to inform decisions and prioritise interventions. Support organisational design and growth planning (including location/shift considerations where relevant).
• Health & Safety: Ensure the organisation meets H&S obligations appropriate to the workplace (office/warehouse/production as applicable). Maintain risk assessments, incident reporting, training and compliance documentation. Partner with internal owners and external specialists to continuously improve safety culture.

How we'll measure success:

• North Star KPI: Improved staff happiness (e.g. employee happiness score / eNPS / engagement index), with clear targets and measurable progress across the year.
• Counter KPI: Revenue ÷ headcount cost (ensuring people investment translates into business value).
• Supporting Measures: Performance framework adopted consistently; improved accountability and outcomes. Reduced regretted attrition; improved retention in critical roles/teams. Hiring plan delivered with improved time to hire, quality of hire and candidate experience. ER cases handled quickly, fairly and consistently, with strong documentation and reduced repeat issues. Payroll delivered on time and accurately; comp and policy frameworks understood and trusted. Strong L&D uptake and impact (manager capability, internal progression, skills coverage). H&S compliance was maintained with improved training completion and reduced incidents.

What we're looking for:

• Significant HR leadership experience (generalist) in a fast-paced, scaling business.
• Strong UK employment law knowledge and confident ER case management.
• Experience owning performance cycles, compensation frameworks and talent processes.
• Proven ability to influence leaders and coach managers; calm and credible under pressure.
• Strong operational discipline: process design, documentation, HRIS/data, confidentiality.
• Comfortable partnering cross-functionally with Finance, Ops and leadership.
• Qualifications CIPD Level 5/7 (or equivalent experience).

Our Client is offering a Salary of £55,000 - £60,000 + Benefits. This role will be 5 days onsite at the Milton Keynes HQ.