Head of Support Services

About the Company

Bramley Health is a specialist health and social care provider, currently operating 8 care homes with 2 opening this year and a hospital around London and the Southeast of England. Our key focus is to provide quality care to men and women of a working age and older with a variety of complex and challenging needs, helping them to live a meaningful and fulfilling life. We are committed to providing a fulfilling working environment that encourages personal and professional development. Employees at Bramley Health are expected to demonstrate and deliver the highest standards of care, treatment, intervention, and education. We strive to support this by fostering a culture of transparency, evidence-based practice, and continuous improvement.

About The Role

The Head of Support Services provides strategic and operational leadership across the organisation’s Support Services functions: HR, Payroll, and Recruitment. The postholder ensures these services are compliant, efficient, data‑led, and aligned to the needs of a regulated healthcare environment – supporting safe staffing, strong colleague experience, and high‑performing services. This is a senior leadership role responsible for building a capable team, developing consistent policies and processes, driving continuous improvement, and advising the Board of Directors on workforce strategy, risk, and organisational capability.

Key Responsibilities

• Leadership & strategy: lead and develop the HR, Payroll, and Recruitment teams, setting clear objectives, standards, and service levels. Create and deliver a people operations strategy aligned to business goals (growth, occupancy, quality, workforce stability). Act as senior advisor to leaders on workforce planning, organisational change and people risk.
• HR operations & employee relations: own and maintain HR policies, procedures, and toolkits ensuring best practice and legal compliance (e.g., contracts, disciplinary, grievance, absence management, flexible working). Oversee complex employee relations cases (disciplinary, grievance, capability, sickness absence, investigations) and coach managers to improve confidence and consistency. Ensure robust onboarding, probation, and performance management processes across all sites.
• Recruitment & resourcing (regulated healthcare): lead end‑to‑end recruitment strategy (workforce planning, attraction, selection, offer/onboarding), ensuring safe recruitment and strong candidate experience. Ensure compliance with sector‑specific pre‑employment checks (e.g., DBS, Right to Work, references, professional registrations) and audit readiness. Deliver retention initiatives and interventions based on workforce data and feedback.
• Payroll & people data governance: provide senior oversight of payroll operations (accuracy, controls, cut‑offs, reconciliations, statutory obligations), working closely with the Finance Department. Ensure effective payroll governance around starters/leavers, pay changes, sickness/maternity, overtime/allowances, and deductions. Establish and maintain accurate people data, dashboards, and reporting cadence (turnover, vacancy, time‑to‑hire, absence, ER trends, training compliance). Align with the Financial Controller on a monthly basis to ensure that Payroll Data supplied for MI purposes is accurate. Work with external auditors, when required, to ensure requested Payroll information is supplied in a timely manner.
• Systems, process improvement & compliance: lead continuous improvement and standardisation across multi‑site processes, reducing risk and improving colleague and manager experience; oversee system effectiveness; ensure documented processes, audit trails, and reporting systems are in place.
• Stakeholder management: build strong relationships with the Finance Department, Service Managers, Regional Clinical Operations Managers and the Board of Directors; support organisational change programmes (restructures, TUPE, acquisitions, harmonisation) with clear risk management and communications.

Key Performance Indicators

• Time‑to‑hire, offer acceptance rate, agency usage reduction.
• Turnover and retention improvement (overall and critical roles).
• Payroll accuracy (error rate), payroll timeliness, audit outcomes.
• Absence rates.
• Compliance metrics (checks completed, training/mandatory docs up to date).
• Manager satisfaction / service‑level performance for HR & recruitment.

Person Specification

Essential

• HR qualification: CIPD Level 5 minimum (Level 7 desirable depending on scope).
• Significant HR leadership experience (multi‑site, operationally).
• Proven people‑management experience (leading and developing teams).
• Strong working knowledge of UK employment law, ER case management, and HR governance.
• Demonstrable experience partnering with senior operational leaders in a fast‑paced environment.
• Strong analytical capability: turning people data into actions and measurable outcomes.

Desirable

• Experience in healthcare / social care (care homes, hospitals, or similarly regulated settings).
• Experience overseeing payroll (or strong interface management with Finance/payroll provider).

Skills & Behaviours

• High integrity, calm judgement, and discretion.
• Influential communicator who can coach leaders and challenge appropriately.
• Operational and strategic thinking.
• Strong prioritisation and service mindset.

General Statement

Make the care and safety of patients and service users their first concern and act to protect them from risk. Respect the public, patients and service users, relatives, carers, staff and partners. Honesty and act with integrity. Accept responsibility for their own work and the continuous professional development. Show a commitment to working as a great team player within the organisation and the wider community. Ensure that all actions undertaken have regard for the reputation of Bramley Health.

Corporate Governance

The post holder must, at all times, act honestly and openly with relevant corporate governance requirements, employment legislation and standards of business conduct.

Health and Safety

Under the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974, it is the responsibility of the post holder to take care of his/her own safety and that of others who may be affected by his/her acts at work.

Flexibility

The post holder is expected to work flexibly and be able to meet the challenges and opportunities of working for Bramley Health.

Knowledge

The post holder is expected to be familiar with and comply with the policies and procedures published by Bramley Health. The job description is not exhaustive and is subject to review at any time. The post holder will be required to undertake any other duties that may be required by the line manager, commensurate with the level of experience.

Rewards And Benefits

Being a part of the Bramley Health Group means you will get the opportunity to lead a pioneering service within a values‑driven organisation. Supportive leadership and access to industry‑leading ongoing professional development. A collaborative working environment where your ideas and expertise are valued. Further benefits include Perkbox membership which can provide:

• Retail discounts for food shopping, clothes, electronics.
• Travel discounts for holidays.
• Energy bill savings.
• Virtual, live and interactive online courses (outside of our training programme).
• Save the planet initiative.
• 24/7 counselling services that are fully confidential.
• Full access to our online health and wellness hub.
• Streaming sites discounts.
• Free coffees and more.

If you are interested in the role of Head of Support Services, click apply now!