Head of People in London

Role: Head of People

Platform: HSPG

Status: Full time, permanent

Base: London. We work 4 days in the office, 1 WFH

Start: ASAP

Working arrangement: We typically work 4 days in the office, 1 day from home.

Hours: 37.5 hours per week.

THE BENEFITS:

• 25 holiday days per year
• 4 ‘Me Days’ per year (take a Me Day – focus on you)
• Team social events and trips
• Wellness allowance of £70 per month to be used for gym, classes, physio or other wellness costs
• Private healthcare with Vitality
• Mintago financial platform
• Drive Electric salary sacrifice
• Enhanced maternity, paternity and parental leave
• Employee referral scheme: £2,000 towards a getaway of your choice

HSPG: A social impact real estate company. Our mission is simple: Building partnerships, creating homes, developing communities. There is a critical lack of affordable housing across the UK, affecting the most vulnerable people in our community. We build long-term partnerships with Local Authorities to acquire and manage demand-driven social and affordable housing across various tenures. Across HSPG’s Living Sector platforms, we are actively acquiring 2,500 high-quality homes from national housebuilders and developers by the end of 2025. These properties are managed by our experienced team, grouped into portfolios, and funded by our institutional investment partners. HSPG aims to positively impact our residents’ lives, while providing long-term, sustainable returns for our investment partners.

Core Behaviours:

Accountability

• You are accountable for:
• End-to-end recruitment and talent attraction.
• Onboarding and employee experience.
• People processes, systems and operational delivery.
• Supporting performance management processes.
• Internal events and people initiatives.
• Full employee lifecycle, from attraction through to development and retention.
• You are not accountable for:
• Final sign-off on hiring decisions.
• Ownership of core behaviours or company-wide strategy.
• Senior leadership development at Director level and above.

Core mission: Your core mission is to own and execute the full employee lifecycle at HSPG, ensuring we attract, hire, develop and retain high-performing individuals. You are responsible for building and running the systems, processes and experiences that underpin our people function, from hiring and onboarding through to development, retention and performance support. This is a hands-on, execution-focused role. You take ownership of the detail, follow-through and delivery across all people-related processes, ensuring nothing is dropped, delayed or inconsistent. You work closely with the Managing Director, taking significant operational load off their plate, while ensuring that standards remain high and the essence of what makes HSPG special is protected as we scale. You are not a recruiter. You are a people operator who builds and runs the systems that make great teams perform. Make it your mission to make it fun.

Obsess:

• You obsess over:
• Hiring quality and pace: attracting and securing high-calibre individuals quickly, without compromising on standards.
• Employee experience: ensuring every touchpoint, from first interaction to onboarding and beyond, is intentional, high-quality and aligned with who we are.
• Retention and development: understanding what drives performance and engagement, and continuously improving how we support and develop our people.
• Moments that matter: infusing ‘different’, ‘special’ and/or memorable moments in people’s day, life and job. The finer details matter, here.

Excel:

• You excel at:
• Execution: taking ownership of work and delivering it to a high standard without needing heavy direction.
• Emotional intelligence: building strong relationships, understanding what drives people and supporting them to perform at their best.
• Leadership: supporting and developing Heads of level to improve performance, clarity and accountability.
• Communication: clear, direct and effective communication across all levels of the business.

Specific experience:

• 5+ years experience in a people role
• Proven experience in a generalist people role, owning multiple aspects of the employee lifecycle, beyond recruitment.
• Strong experience in hiring and talent attraction, combined with broader responsibility across onboarding, development and people processes.
• Experience building and improving people processes and systems in a growing business.
• This role is not suited to candidates with a purely agency or recruitment-only background.

90-day wins:

• Early traction and strategic control.
• Strong relationships built across the whole business, with clear understanding of people, roles and priorities.
• Current hiring and people processes mapped, with clear improvements identified and implemented for active headhunting, not only inbound applicants.
• Full ownership of recruitment across key roles, with improved speed, structure and communication.
• A clear and structured onboarding experience in place, including defined first day, first week and first month plans, with strong input from line managers.
• Initial framework in place for goal setting, development conversations and regular and consistent check-ins across teams.

12-month impact outcomes:

• Material impact and results within first 12 months.
• Time to hire significantly reduced, while considering budget, with consistently strong hiring manager feedback on candidate quality.
• A clear, well-run employee lifecycle in place, from hiring through to development and retention.
• Improved leadership capability at Head of level through structured support and development.
• Key people processes running smoothly without reliance on the Managing Director.
• Clear and consistent approach to communication, development, goal setting and performance conversations across the business.