People and Culture Lead in Leeds

Answer Digital is an award-winning, employee-owned technology consultancy based in Leeds. As a people business, our culture and values are at the heart of everything we do and are key to our success. As an Employee Ownership Trust, every one of our people has a genuine stake in Answer's future — which makes the way we look after, develop and reward our people a direct driver of our success.

We're looking for a People and Culture Lead to own and evolve the people agenda at Answer. This is a senior, hands-on role that blends strategic people leadership with broader HR responsibility. Your role covers culture, engagement and wellbeing alongside employee relations, compliance, reward and policy ownership.

We want someone who can speak the language of the business as fluently as the language of people: connecting engagement, retention and culture initiatives to headcount cost, margin, utilisation and growth plans, and bringing commercial rigour to the decisions we make about our people.

You'll work closely with the Leadership Team and our Board, translating people insight into recommendations that our leaders can act on with confidence. You'll also lead and develop the wider People team, acting as a role model for ethical, considered decision-making and a champion for Answer's culture and values as we continue to scale.

What you’ll be doing

• People Strategy & Partnering
  • Own the development and delivery of Answer's people strategy, ensuring it evolves in step with the business and supports our growth plans.
  • Act as a trusted advisor to the Leadership Team and Operational Board, providing people insight, workforce planning and reporting.
  • Oversee people-related budgeting and forecasting (benefits, L&D spend, wellbeing, tooling), tracking against plan and flagging risk or opportunity to the business.
• Culture, Engagement & Employee Experience
  • Take ownership of employee engagement and satisfaction, leading on one-to-one check-ins, regular surveys and temperature checks, with reporting and recommendations to the Operational Board and Capability leadership teams.
  • Champion and evolve Answer's culture and values, ensuring they're embedded across the full employee lifecycle from onboarding to exit.
  • Lead internal communications on people, culture and values initiatives, including recognition and shout-outs for great work.
  • Lead the coordination of company quarterly events and all-staff updates with a focus on people, wellbeing and culture.
  • Design and deliver formal and informal initiatives around inclusivity and connection (e.g. team events, community initiatives, digital and tech community engagement).
  • Own Answer's continued commitment to DE&I, and support the evolution of people-related policies and social value initiatives.
  • Act as a champion for mental health and wellbeing, providing innovative leadership in the delivery of wellbeing initiatives.
• Employee Relations, Compliance & HR Operations
  • Provide senior-level guidance on complex employee relations matters, including performance management, grievances, disciplinaries and exits, ensuring procedural fairness and legal compliance.
  • Keep Answer's people policies and practices current with UK employment law, right-to-work requirements and sector-specific obligations.
  • Own and continuously improve core People Ops processes, keeping people data accurate in our HRIS (HiBob) and ensuring robust reporting on key people metrics.
  • Act as the escalation point for the People Partner team on complex or higher-risk cases.

What you’ll bring to Answer

• A fully qualified, senior HR/People professional (CIPD Chartered Member or working towards it) with proven experience leading a people function, ideally within a growing professional services, technology or consultancy environment.
• Strong commercial acumen is desirable, you’ll be comfortable working with budgets, headcount plans, utilisation and understanding margin.
• Solid working knowledge of UK employment law and employee relations best practice, with experience handling complex or sensitive cases.
• Strategic understanding and hands-on operational delivery across the full employee lifecycle - onboarding, engagement, reward, wellbeing, and offboarding.
• Experience supporting an organisation through a growth phase, including scaling processes, structures and teams.
• A confident, credible communicator who can influence senior leaders and hold their own in commercial conversations.
• Proven ability to challenge and do things differently, with positive, measurable business outcomes.
• Resilient and pragmatic, with the judgement to balance people-first values against commercial reality.

The perks of being at Answer

• We’re an Employee-Owned Company. After 12 months – through the Employee Ownership Trust you will be part of the ownership of Answer; a major factor in driving engagement, retention and growth for our people.
• Competitive salary.
• Flexible annual leave (buy/sell and carry forward).
• Twice a year income-tax free bonus based on company performance - it’s a reward for being a part of our EOT journey.
• Continuous training and development - if you want to learn, we’ll provide the support you need.
• Flexible Pension - we match your own contributions up to 5%.
• A flexible Healthcare cash plan so you can fund the care you value most.
• A packed social calendar including; end of year party (partners invited) and Summer away days, monthly and quarterly company team socials.
• Parking at Head Offices in central Leeds, plus Cycle2Work & Green Car Lease schemes to help get you here.
• The chance to give back – get involved nationally and regionally with partnerships to get people from different backgrounds into tech, as well as lots of charity and community events.

Diversity and Inclusion

At Answer we proudly embrace diversity and inclusion - we want to create a safe environment for everyone to bring their true selves to work.

We will do everything we can to support your application. If you require any adjustments to be made to your application (whether that’s support with our interview questions, adjusting how we interview, or financial support with our hiring process) then please speak to Jonny Hiles, TA Lead.

A bit more about us.

Answer Digital is a highly successful digital transformation consultancy headquartered in Leeds. We’re a company on a fast growth trajectory with a reputation of delivering large-scale, operational critical solutions. People are at the heart of everything we do - so much so we’re owned by our people. It sets us apart from most digital businesses you’ll meet and defines our culture and values. Our people are invested in everything we do, because we are invested in them.

Our Interview Process

We pride ourselves on having a fair but flexible recruitment process, we want to create a platform where you can show us your best. For us, keeping it simple means you can focus on understanding if our people, values and the work we do are right for you. Our typical process can be broken down into 3 stages:

• Recruiter call: This normally lasts 15-30 minutes. We will talk to you about Answer Digital, the type of work we do, and an overview of the role. We’ll ask you some questions about your current situation and why you’re interested in working here. Here, we’d advise asking any “people” questions, anything about our culture, career progression or approach to flexible working.
• Skills based interview: This interview will be with 2 people, normally from the team you’re applying to work with. We can do this stage remote or in person, whichever you’d prefer. This interview will involve questions around your experience, the skills you’ve gained and the work you’ve done. We’ll also ask questions about the role and challenges you might face and how you’d face them. Here, we’d recommend asking questions about the role, the day to day responsibilities and what life in the team is like.
• Cultural/Value interview: This interview will be with 2 of our Leadership team, either our Directors or Capability Leads. It will focus on our culture and values, talking about our values and what they mean to us as well as understanding what values are important to you and how you like to work. This interview is about making sure Answer is right for you, as much as the other way around. Here, we advise you to ask as many questions around our business model, our ambitious growth plans and anything to do with Answer as a business.