Senior HR Business Partner in Reading

AWE is recruiting a Senior HR Business Partner to play a crucial role in driving a high‐performance culture, leading organisational change, and enabling impactful leadership and talent management. The role operates as a strategic partner to senior leaders and is responsible for shaping and driving people plans that deliver business objectives in the short, medium and long‐term.

To be successful in this role, you will demonstrate building credible and trusted relationships with senior leaders quickly, work in a highly collaborative way, have strong generalist HR knowledge, and evidence that you can confidently deliver organisational change, and have a commercial and data‐led approach.

Location: Reading with free onsite parking. Regular travel to our Aldermaston and Burghfield sites (in Reading) may be required where this is relevant to your stakeholder group.

Package: From £61,040 (depending on your suitability, qualifications, and level of experience)

Working pattern: AWE operates a 9-day working fortnight. This role requires close working with the business stakeholders it is aligned to, whilst there is flexibility around working arrangements including hybrid working, this is agreed on an informal, non-contractual basis (typically 3 days onsite per week) and must meet the needs of your stakeholders.

As a Senior HR Business Partner, this highly visible, enterprise level role operating as a strategic partner to Function Executive Directors and Business Unit General Managers and/or Delivery Directors. You will partner at the most senior levels of the organisation to shape direction, influence decision-making and enable delivery of the business priorities through effective people strategy.

Working as a trusted and credible partner, you will co-create and lead the delivery of integrated, future-focused people strategies aligned to business milestones, long-term objectives and our Cultural Deal. You will provide strategic leadership across the full people agenda, ensuring the effectiveness of People Experience, Organisational Change, Talent, Leadership, Performance and Strategic Workforce Planning to drive sustainable organisational performance.

As a key strategic role within the People Function, you will work collaboratively across the enterprise, influencing senior leaders’ engagement with the People Service Operating Model and translating business needs into clear strategic and operational priorities. You will also act as a strong advocate for the customer voice, using insight and data to shape People strategies and continuous service improvement.

As part of the role, you will:

• Act as a strategic partner and trusted adviser to senior leaders, coaching leaders to achieve high-performance outcomes, and aligning people priorities with business strategy and enabling informed decision‐making.
• Develop, influence and deliver integrated, multi‐year people plans that support organisational objectives.
• Lead organisational design and organisational health activity, ensuring operating models, structures and capability are fit for future strategy.
• Shape and sponsor complex change initiatives, ensuring effective adoption and sustained outcomes.
• Champion business priorities within the People Function to influence strategy, service design and delivery.
• Drive senior‐level engagement with enterprise people programmes, operating models and cultural initiatives.
• Lead end‐to‐end talent and succession strategy, including capability building, skills planning and critical role coverage.
• Maximise talent brokerage, pipeline development and succession tools to build resilience and future capability.
• Own and evolve performance frameworks, embedding a high‐performance, outcome‐focused culture.
• Use insight, data and customer feedback to ensure the voice of the business informs People Function priorities and impact.

Who are we looking for? We’re seeking someone with strong Business Partnering expertise, with proven experience leading organisational change and working with senior leaders in an engaging, credible and influential way to achieve the best business outcome. You’ll bring expertise in coaching senior leaders to enhance performance, leading people change initiatives with a clear understanding of associated risks, and developing actionable people plans to address strategic workforce challenges. Strong understanding of reward and talent/succession planning methodologies is advantageous.

We do need you to have the following: We are looking for someone who is CIPD qualified, ideally to Level 7, or equivalent in experience and knowledge covering the full spectrum of the HR field. You’ll need to have the ability to work calmly and constructively in a priority changing environment, be able to manage your own workload using initiative, and have an enthusiasm and flexible approach when delivering HR expertise to our business.

Whilst not to be considered a tick list, we’d like you to have experience in some of the following:

• Strong technical knowledge in restructure, redundancy and TUPE.
• Experience driving effective talent management and succession activity.
• Experience working with Trade Unions.
• Able to present with confidence when information is ambiguous.
• Ability to work effectively as part of a team.
• Highly resilient and able to adapt to changing stakeholder needs.

Some reasons we think you’ll love it here: AWE has wide range of benefits to suit you. These include:

• 9-day working fortnight – meaning you get every other Friday off work, in addition to 270 hours of annual leave.
• Market leading contributory pension scheme (we will pay between 9% and 13% of your pensionable pay depending on your contributions).
• Family friendly policies: Maternity Leave - 39 Weeks Full Pay and Paternity Leave - 4 Weeks Full Pay.
• Opportunities for Professional Career Development including funding for annual membership of a relevant professional body.
• Employee Assistance Programme and Occupational Health Services.
• Life Assurance (4 x annual salary).
• Discounts – access to savings on a wide range of everyday spending.
• Special Leave Policy including paid time off for volunteering, public service (including reserve forces) and caring.

The 'Working at AWE' page on our website is where you can find full details in the 'AWE Benefits Guide'.

Next steps: Everyone who works at AWE brings unique skills and perspectives to the table. We recognise that great people don’t always ‘tick every box’. That’s why we focus on your potential, your fit with our values, your transferable skills as well as your experience. Even if you don’t meet every point above, but you feel that this role and AWE are a great fit for you, please go ahead and apply, we’d love to receive your application.

Important things you need to know:

• We encourage you to apply promptly to avoid disappointment if applications are high and the role therefore closes.
• You will need to obtain and maintain the necessary security clearance for the role. This will be funded by AWE. The nature of our work does mean you need to be a British Citizen who has been resident in the UK for the past 5 years in order to apply for SC clearance and 10 years for DV.
• We want you to feel comfortable and able to shine during our recruitment process. Please let us know on your application form if you need any adjustments/accommodations during the process.
• Our interviews typically take place over Teams and for most roles are a 1 stage process.

Our ambition is to create workplaces where we recognise and celebrate differences, encourage diverse contributions and our employees feel able to be themselves at work. We strive to create a genuine culture of openness and inclusion and encourage diverse applicants. Any inclusion information you provide will be stored in accordance with GDPR and kept separate from your application form and CV, and the information will not be shared with anyone involved in interviewing or making hiring decisions.

Please note that you must be a British Citizen to apply for a role with us.