Resource Director in London

Havas London is on a transformation journey. This is not a maintenance role; it's an opportunity for someone whose ambition outstrips the brief and who brings real tenacity. Someone who wants to shape and define a new era for Havas London. Someone who matches our optimism, resilience and ambition, and is ready to push, challenge and lead with energy and vision.

About the Role

We are looking for an experienced Resource Director to design, implement and lead a modern resourcing function that provides real-time visibility of capacity, utilisation and skills across our creative, design and production teams. This is a hands-on leadership role for someone who combines operational rigour with excellent people skills. You'll be responsible for reviewing and redesigning our current resourcing processes, improving adoption of our resourcing systems, and building a flexible staffing model that enables us to scale efficiently through a blend of permanent and freelance talent.

Key Responsibilities

• Translate the confirmed and weighted new-business and client project pipeline into short-, medium- and longer-term resource demand, highlighting upcoming capacity gaps, surplus capacity and critical skill requirements.
• Work with Client Leadership, New Business, Finance and Department Heads to distinguish confirmed demand from probable or speculative requirements.
• Ensure resource allocation accurately reflects project requirements, skills needed and commercial realities.
• Identify resource constraints, skills gaps and opportunities to optimise utilisation.
• Establish and enforce minimum requirements for all resource requests, ensuring that each request includes an approved scope, project timeline, budget, required skillset, level of seniority and expected hours before resource is committed. Challenge, clarify or reject incomplete requests where necessary.
• Work with Talent Acquisition team to coordinate contract set up using internal freelance contract platform.
• Challenge resource requests constructively where requirements exceed agreed scope or commercial parameters.
• Provide insight into future hiring requirements and workforce planning.

Essential Experience

• Significant resource management leadership experience within a creative, advertising, branding, design or integrated agency.
• Experience managing both permanent and freelance talent models.
• Demonstrable experience improving resource management systems and processes.
• Strong commercial understanding and ability to balance creative ambition with business realities.
• Excellent stakeholder management and influencing skills.

Personal Attributes

• Resilient under pressure and capable of managing tight turnaround requirements.