People & Culture Partner in London

We are rebuilding the veterinary experience from the ground up, making access to care seamless, joyful, and genuinely personal for every pet and their owner. With beautifully designed clinics and purpose-built technology, we are transforming how veterinary care is accessed and delivered. Our clinics combine modern design with first-class clinical care, creating spaces that vet teams, clients, and pets genuinely want to be in. Our purpose is simple: healthier, happier pets and vets. We believe in a model that benefits everyone: our clinical teams, our members, our local communities, and our investors. That means competitive compensation, sensible caseloads, genuine career development, and a culture where people feel supported to do their best work. We are building the vet group of the future. If you share our passion for doing things differently, we would love to hear from you.

Role Overview

We're looking for an experienced People & Culture Partner to deliver and embed our People strategy across multiple locations. Working to the direction set by the Director of People & Culture, you'll turn our people strategy into consistent, practical action on the ground: aligning day-to-day people work with our business objectives. Your focus is training and upskilling managers, employee relations, performance, compliance and keeping our clinics running smoothly, partnering closely with leaders to drive a consistent, positive employee experience.

This isn't your average People & Culture role. We're going through a rapid period of growth, and we need someone who will help us embed and protect our culture, get new managers up to speed as clinics open, upskill our leaders, and crucially, be confident in designing and running training themselves. You'll be the bridge between central strategy and clinic-level reality: hands-on, visible, and trusted across every site. This is a mostly field-based role, you'll spend most of your week out in the clinics rather than behind a desk, so you must be willing and able to travel regularly across London and the Home Counties. Being physically present across our sites is how you'll build trust, spot what's really going on, and keep our culture consistent as we grow.

You'll work hand in hand with the Director of People & Culture, taking our people strategy and making it real and consistent in every clinic, then bringing what you learn on the ground back into those plans so they keep getting sharper. It's a role for someone who gets their energy from making things land and stick, and from seeing the difference it makes on the front line.

Key Responsibilities

• Training & Capability Building
  • Design and build practical people management training workshops for clinic leadership, and run them yourself.
  • Upskill clinic leaders so they feel genuinely confident handling issues linked to performance, sickness, team dynamics and communication, and know precisely when to lift.
  • Partner with the L&D Manager on training design and delivery, making sure what's taught is embedded and actually changes how leaders manage.
  • Make manager self-sufficiency the goal of everything you deliver - leaders who can handle more themselves, with less escalation over time.
• Employee Relations & Case Management
  • Manage ER casework- grievances, disciplinaries, absence and performance cases across every site, on-site or remotely.
  • Minimise risk to the business and advise on best practice throughout, championing early, proactive resolution.
  • Coach managers through live cases so they grow more confident and capable.
  • Keep clear, accurate case records, and spot where recurring issues point to a training or process fix.
• Performance & Probation
  • Champion our six-month probation journey, run monthly reports and dig into the detail to flag where early intervention is needed, working with managers on trigger points such as dips in happiness or belonging scores.
  • Embed our probation and performance management journeys so they're understood, valued and fully lived.
  • Support managers to see why probation and performance reviews matter, and how to get the best out of them.
  • Help managers hold honest, constructive performance conversations with confidence.
  • Ensure performance and probation are applied consistently and fairly, clinic to clinic.
• Culture & Consistency
  • Keep our culture consistent and recognisable across every clinic as the group grows.
  • Identify where clinics drift apart in process, standards or culture, and close the gap.
  • Champion our mission and values in how leaders manage and how teams experience work day to day.
  • Drive our Employee Value Proposition (EVP) and colleague experience, ensuring our culture and values are reflected throughout the employee lifecycle.
  • Be a visible and approachable people leader, proactively supporting colleagues and resolving issues early.
• Operational & Clinical Partnership
  • Partner closely with the Vet Ops team and clinical leadership to understand how the business really runs and what clinics actually need.
  • Embed our people strategy and best practice on the ground, translating central direction into what actually works in a busy clinical setting.
  • Build credible relationships with the clinic teams, helping clinics run smoothly and removing people-related blockers so teams can focus on caring for pets.
• New Clinics & Manager Onboarding
  • Get new and newly promoted managers up to speed quickly - confident in our processes, expectations and ways of working from day one.
  • Support new clinic openings and integrations on the ground, so new teams feel part of Creature Comforts fast.
  • Embed our people processes and standards consistently as we scale from 15 clinics toward 30–40 over the next few years.
  • Keep clinics running smoothly through change - people informed, supported and engaged throughout.
• Policy & Compliance
  • Provide HR policy guidance and interpretation across the business.
  • Maintain strong, current knowledge of UK employment law.
• Data & Insight
  • Leverage HR metrics: turnover, absence and capability, to spot trends and surface where the business can improve.
  • Give the Director and leadership clear, actionable insight to inform the people decisions they make.
  • Use data to target where training, coaching or process change will have the greatest impact.

Candidate Requirements

• 5+ years as an HR Business Partner, People Partner or Senior HR Advisor, ideally in a multi-site, fast-paced or matrix environment.
• Proven, hands-on employee relations experience — disciplinary, grievance, absence and performance cases.
• Confident and comfortable designing and running training yourself - this is central to the role, not an add-on.
• Genuinely energised by delivery — you love taking people plans and making them real, consistent and lasting in every clinic.
• Strong, current knowledge of UK employment law and HR best practice.
• Exceptional communication, coaching, influencing and conflict-resolution skills, with high emotional resilience.
• The credibility to build trusted relationships and challenge managers at all levels.
• Organised, proactive and able to manage a varied caseload across multiple sites.
• Happy to be out in the field most of the week — this is a mostly field-based role and being physically present across clinics is essential, not occasional.
• Willing and able to travel regularly across London and the Home Counties to reach our sites.

What We Offer

• 200 hours' annual leave plus bank holidays, and your birthday off after one year's service.
• Salary sacrifice pension scheme (5% employee, 3% employer contribution).
• Access to our healthcare incentive after one year of employment.
• Genuine career progression as we grow across London and beyond.
• A supportive, inclusive culture where your development is taken seriously.
• Regular team and company social events.
• The opportunity to be part of something genuinely different in veterinary care.
• Employee Assistance Programme and Mental Health First Aiders.

Equal Opportunities

At Creature Comforts, we believe the best teams are built from diverse perspectives, backgrounds, and experiences. We are committed to creating an environment where everyone feels genuinely welcome, respected, and able to do their best work, and we actively encourage applications from candidates of all backgrounds. We do not discriminate on the grounds of age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage or civil partnership, pregnancy or maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, or sexual orientation.