Associate Director - Professional People Managers

We are creating a Senior Associate Director role responsible for all Professional People Managers across Grant Thornton. The role leads a team of 20 Professional People Managers and sets strategy, standards, and culture for people management at firm scale, ensuring a high-performance, supportive environment for associates across all service lines.

Responsibilities

• Hold firmwide accountability for the Professional People Manager population, setting a clear vision, strategy and operating model that spans all service lines and teams.
• Define and embed what good looks like in professional people management – establishing clear expectations, standards and outcomes so that people experience high-quality, consistent support regardless of business area.
• Lead and develop the Professional People Manager community, building capability, confidence and consistency through targeted upskilling, structured development and strong senior leadership.
• Drive a high-performance culture by strengthening the quality of performance management, feedback, early intervention and accountability across the firm – ensuring issues are addressed fairly, confidently and at pace.
• Use insight, MI and themes from across the people manager population to identify improvement opportunities – translating this into tangible action.
• Lead change at pace, evolving existing models, resetting expectations where required, embedding improvements that simplify ways of working while maintaining high levels of quality, and introducing ownership of talent management.
• Partner closely with senior leaders, influencing at a senior level and ensuring people management priorities are aligned to the firm’s people strategy and future workforce needs.
• Ensure professional people management is delivered effectively so that there is less reliance on fee earners, allowing their time to be invested in high-value activity such as meaningful career conversations and development support.

Qualifications

• Strong people leadership experience with the ability to lead, coach and performance manage a large team.
• Experience leading and transforming people management capability at scale across multiple teams or business areas.
• Strong track record of driving a high-performance culture, including upskilling managers and embedding accountability.
• Confidence managing high volume operational activity with robust governance and prioritisation.
• Experience setting and enforcing clear standards – confident in resetting expectations, challenging inconsistency and holding others to account.
• Ability to handle sensitive issues with strong personal judgement in complex scenarios.
• Excellent stakeholder management with the ability to influence and operate credibly at senior level.
• Comfortable working with ambiguity, complexity and change, and able to turn strategic intent into practical, embedded ways of working.

Flexibility

We’re happy to talk flexible working and consider reduced hours and job shares; we’ll support you to balance your work and life. We’re looking for people who want to contribute, spark fresh ideas and go beyond expectations.