People Integration & Project Manager

Job Title: People Integration & Project Manager
Location: Hybrid Working – London N3 / EC4M (Minimum 3 days in office – travel to other London offices may be required)
Working Hours: Monday to Friday, 35 hour week
Reporting to: M&A Director

Salary: £60,000 - £65,000

About BKL

BKL is a Top 40 accountancy and advisory business supporting a diverse client base, from entrepreneurs and high-net-worth individuals to ambitious owner-managed businesses and multinational groups. With a legacy spanning over 130 years, we’ve evolved into a modern, purpose-driven business that balances profit with impact.

We are proud to be a certified B Corp, reflecting our commitment to sustainability, transparency, and responsible governance. As a member of DFK International, we support clients locally and internationally with cutting-edge expertise and a personal touch.

We believe all clients deserve the same level of care, innovation, and excellence.

Your Opportunity

Work across two clear areas of focus: project-managing the People workstream through BKL's mergers and acquisitions, from due diligence through to full integration; and leading a focused portfolio of wider People & Culture projects. For M&A, the role manages the People due diligence process alongside the wider M&A team, coordinates specialist input and leads the translation of findings into action. It then project-manages the People integration plan through to effective business-as-usual handover.

Across both focus areas, you will bring structure, momentum and accountability to complex change without losing sight of the people experiencing it. You will turn ideas and decisions into practical delivery plans, bring the right people together, build relationships across the business and make change understandable, workable and sustainable for employees and managers.

This is not a transactional project-management role or a replacement for subject-matter expertise already held within the People team. You will own project management, coordination and follow-through, while People specialists and workstream leads retain accountability for specialist advice, decisions and functional delivery.

A core purpose of the role is to create capacity across the People team. You will own the programme infrastructure, coordination and follow-through that enables People leaders and specialists to focus on expertise, judgement, relationships and business outcomes across both M&A integration and wider People projects.

How You’ll Make a Difference

Focus area 1: People M&A integration

Project-manage the People due diligence workstream and turn findings into action

• Work with the M&A team to mobilise and manage the People due diligence process, clarifying scope, inputs, owners, milestones, dependencies and governance from a People workstream perspective.
• Coordinate contributions from People specialists, Corporate Development, Finance, Legal, external advisers and acquired‑business leaders, ensuring the right information is requested, reviewed and brought together at the right time.
• Maintain the People due diligence plan, tracker, risks, actions, questions and decision points, and provide clear progress reporting and escalation.
• Support People specialists to assess employment, workforce, organisational, reward, benefits, culture, employee‑experience and people‑cost matters. The role coordinates and challenges the process rather than acting as the sole subject‑matter expert.
• Consolidate the findings into a clear view of material risks, costs, dependencies and recommended mitigations for the M&A Director, deal team and relevant governance forums.
• Lead the translation of agreed findings into integration priorities, owners, costs, milestones and practical actions, maintaining traceability from due diligence through to delivery.

Project-manage People integration

• Mobilise and manage the People workstream from signing and completion through Day 1, Day 30, Day 100 and longer‑term integration.
• Build integrated People plans covering organisational design, role alignment, consultation, contracts, payroll, benefits, pensions, People systems, onboarding, communications, engagement, retention and employee experience.
• Establish proportionate integration governance, including RAID logs, action and decision logs, critical paths, costs and benefit tracking, and report progress clearly to the M&A Director and integration steering groups.
• Maintain alignment with the wider integration programme and actively manage dependencies with Corporate Development, Finance, Technology, Legal, Payroll and business leaders.
• Support the relevant People specialists and business owners to deliver their elements of the integration plan, while retaining accountability for People workstream coordination, pace, follow‑through and escalation.
• Track whether each integration has met its People objectives and ensure activities transfer cleanly into business‑as‑usual ownership, with outstanding actions, measures, documentation and accountabilities understood.

Focus area 2: People & Culture projects

Lead selected strategic People & Culture projects

• Own a portfolio view of significant People projects, creating clear visibility of scope, outcomes, milestones, owners, risks, dependencies, capacity and decisions alongside the M&A pipeline.
• Lead selected high‑priority People and organisational projects from definition and discovery through implementation, adoption, stabilisation and business‑as‑usual handover.
• Turn strategic priorities and ambiguous problems into clear scope, outcomes, plans, decision points, delivery pathways and success measures.
• Projects may cover the People operating model, organisational design, workforce change, employee experience, talent and career frameworks, reward and benefits, policy or regulatory change, data and reporting, manager or leadership initiatives, and People technology or process change.
• Balance the broader People project portfolio with M&A demand, identifying resource conflicts and sequencing issues early and bringing clear recommendations to the M&A Director, Chief People Officer and People Leadership Team.

Support the team to deliver specialist elements of strategic projects

• Coordinate contributions from People specialists, People Operations, Payroll, Technology, Information Security, Finance, Legal, business leaders, vendors and implementation partners, with each area retaining ownership of its specialist decisions and outputs.
• Support the team to shape employee experience, culture, communications, listening, consultation, manager support, training, readiness and adoption activity as part of the overall project plan.
• Support People Operations, Payroll, Technology and vendors with the project management of People technology, data, payroll, benefits and process change, ensuring requirements, testing, cutover, communications and stabilisation are visible and connected.
• Support People specialists and legal advisers to identify employment‑law, consultation, contractual and employee‑relations implications and build these into project plans, decisions, sequencing and governance.
• Maintain clear actions, evidence, dependencies and decisions across specialist workstreams without duplicating accountabilities already held elsewhere in the People team.
• Challenge whether proposed change genuinely improves the employee and manager experience and ensure launch is followed by adoption, measurement and appropriate action.

Build relationships, delivery capability and capacity across both focus areas

• Remove project‑management burden from the Chief People Officer, M&A Director, People leaders and specialists by owning planning, governance, coordination, reporting, dependency management and follow‑through.
• Build a broad, trusted network across BKL and acquired businesses, understanding how the organisation works and who needs to be involved to make progress.
• Facilitate workshops, working sessions and decision forums with confidence, including presenting to senior leaders and bringing difficult discussions to a conclusion.
• Create and maintain reusable M&A playbooks, project methods, templates, checklists, dashboards, decision logs and handover standards that improve future delivery.
• Complete post‑integration and post‑implementation reviews, capture lessons and use them to improve future projects and integrations.
• Clarify ownership and interfaces between project delivery, specialist teams, People partnering, People Services and business‑as‑usual operations.
• Create visibility of the combined portfolio, enabling realistic prioritisation, resource planning and escalation across the two focus areas.
• Test success by whether the role creates more capacity across the People function than it consumes.

You’ll Be Ideal for This Role If You Have:

Essential experience

• A strong record of project‑managing the People workstream on multiple acquisitions or mergers, from due diligence through completion, Day 1 and post‑merger integration.
• Experience integrating acquired employees onto payroll, benefits, pensions and People systems, working with the accountable specialists and providers.
• Experience leading complex People, organisational or HR technology projects alongside deal activity, from ambiguity through implementation and BAU handover.
• Practical understanding of how UK employment law applies to acquisitions and People change, including TUPE transfers, consultation, terms harmonisation and employee‑relations risk, with the judgement to engage specialists when required.
• Experience coordinating cross‑functional teams and external partners where you do not have direct authority over contributors.
• Experience creating useful senior governance, project reporting, risk and dependency management, and clear recommendations for decision makers.
• Experience facilitating groups, presenting recommendations and building effective relationships across functions and levels.

Essential capabilities and approach

• Exceptional programme and project discipline, combined with the judgement to keep governance proportionate and practical.
• Human‑centred change leadership: you seek insight, listen well, explain clearly and consider how change feels and works for the people affected.
• Confidence and presence in a room. You can facilitate, present, challenge and create alignment with employees, specialists and senior leaders.
• Natural relationship‑building and networking. You are curious about the business and proactive about creating the connections that make delivery possible.
• Commercial judgement and the ability to balance value, cost, risk, legal context, pace and employee experience.
• The ability to move quickly between strategic context, detailed delivery, data and the human realities of change.
• Excellent written communication, including concise executive updates, decision papers and change communications.
• Comfort with technology, data, dashboards, budgets and delivery tools, without allowing the tool or tracker to become the work.
• A pragmatic, energetic and resilient approach. You create structure without unnecessary bureaucracy and follow through on commitments.

Desirable experience

• Professional‑services or similarly complex, multi‑site and fast‑growing organisational experience.
• Experience of acquisitions in professional services, accountancy or other partnership‑based firms, including partner or equity‑holder transitions.
• Experience with HRIS, payroll or talent platforms and their implementation partners.
• A recognised project, programme or change qualification such as APM PMQ, PRINCE2, MSP or Prosci.

This Role Will Suit You If

• You thrive on the pace and confidentiality of deal work, and enjoy taking something ambiguous, bringing the right people together and making it happen.
• You get energy from people and change, not simply from administering a project plan.
• You are comfortable standing up in a room, building relationships, networking across the organisation and helping groups reach decisions.
• You can build a detailed plan when it is needed, but you also know when progress requires a conversation, a workshop or a clear challenge.
• You care about delivery and about the experience of the people affected by it.

Our Values

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