People & Culture Portfolio Specialist in London

Location: Birmingham, Bristol, London or Manchester - hybrid working 3 days in the office, 2 wherever.

Why this job matters

The Specialist, Portfolio Management role partners with the Senior Manager, Portfolio Management and stakeholders across People & Culture to plan and deliver customer outcomes, drive high performance, and coordinate interdependencies across CoEs, HR Services, and business-aligned P&C teams. This role will play a key part in embedding portfolio management and leading initiatives that strengthen our ability to prioritise and deliver the strategic change required to support BT Group's ambitious transformation.

What You'll Be Doing

• Coordinates portfolio planning processes, including annual, quarterly, monthly, and ad-hoc planning and communications, working in collaboration with the Senior Manager, Portfolio Management.
• Delivers portfolio refinement, prioritisation, and governance processes against agreed evaluation criteria, identifying and escalating capacity impacts where required.
• Owns, defines, and delivers initiatives to improve portfolio management maturity (e.g. tooling such as Jira, capacity management, and agile delivery maturity), working autonomously while engaging subject matter experts to build buy-in.
• Builds strong stakeholder relationships across P&C and wider functions (e.g. Digital), supporting alignment on interdependencies, trade-offs, and preparation for ad-hoc portfolio reviews.
• Tracks and reports portfolio progress against OKRs and budgets to the People & Culture Leadership Team, Chief P&C Officer, and senior leaders.
• Uses data and analytics to support portfolio communications, improving storytelling, clarity, and transparency across the P&C function.
• Engages and excites the P&C function about the change journey, sharing progress, successes, and improvement opportunities aligned to the People Strategy.
• Identifies, analyses, and manages portfolio risks and opportunities, maintaining risk and issue logs and providing practical recommendations.
• Develops tools and automation to streamline portfolio workflows, analytics, and reporting across P&C.
• Maintains portfolio frameworks, methodologies, and tools (including Knowledge Hub administration) to enable consistent and sustainable ways of working.

Skills to Succeed

• Strong understanding of business strategy, performance drivers, and financial concepts.
• Proven ability to influence and advise senior stakeholders, building buy-in and shaping change to maximise value.
• Ability to connect complex initiatives into a coherent portfolio aligned to Business and People strategy.
• Uses insight to prioritise, make trade-offs, and provide clear, evidence-based recommendations.
• Applies a human-centred approach to diagnose problems and deliver value within constrained resources.
• Acts as a trusted advisor, applying commercial insight to drive business outcomes.
• Clearly communicates vision, expectations, and actions to engage and mobilise stakeholders.
• Synthesises costs and benefits to support prioritisation, funding decisions, and resource allocation.
• Identifies and assesses risks and opportunities, providing practical, forward-looking recommendations.
• Designs and improves scalable processes to increase efficiency and productivity.
• Champions continuous learning and leverages diverse thinking to improve outcomes.

Benefits

• 10% on target bonus
• BT Pension scheme, minimum 5% Employee contribution, BT contribution 10%
• From January 2025, equal family leave: receive 18 weeks at full pay, 8 weeks at half pay and 26 weeks at the statutory rate.
• Enhanced women's health support: including help with menopause symptoms, cancer screenings, period care and more.
• 25 days annual leave (not including bank holidays), increasing with service
• 24/7 private virtual GP appointments for UK colleagues
• 2 weeks carer's leave
• World-class training and development opportunities
• Option to join BT Shares Saving schemes.

About Us

BT Group was the world's first telco and our heritage in the sector is unrivalled. We have always played a critical role in creating the future, and we have reached an inflection point in the transformation of our business. Over the next two years, we will complete the UK's largest and most successful digital infrastructure project – connecting more than 25 million premises to full fibre broadband. Together with our heavy investment in 5G, we play a central role in revolutionising how people connect with each other.

Change on the scale we will all experience in the coming years is unprecedented. BT Group is committed to being the driving force behind improving connectivity for millions and there has never been a more exciting time to join a company and leadership team with the skills, experience, creativity, and passion to take this company into a new era.

A FEW POINTS TO NOTE: Although these roles are listed as full-time, if you’re a job share partnership, work reduced hours, or any other way of working flexibly, please still get in touch. We will also offer reasonable adjustments for the selection process if required, so please do not hesitate to inform us.

DON'T MEET EVERY SINGLE REQUIREMENT? Studies have shown that women and people who are disabled, LGBTQ+, neurodiverse or from ethnic minority backgrounds are less likely to apply for jobs unless they meet every single qualification and criteria. We’re committed to building a diverse, inclusive, and authentic workplace where everyone can be their best, so if you’re excited about this role but your past experience doesn’t align perfectly with every requirement on the Job Description, please apply anyway - you may just be the right candidate for this or other roles in our wider team.