HR Planning Lead (18 month contract) in Harlow

Salary: £55,000 to £60,000 per annum

Hours: 37.5 hours per week, Monday to Friday.

Location: Harlow, Essex. Easily commutable from London Liverpool Street or Tottenham Hale Station. We offer a free minibus service to/from Harlow Town Train Station as well as free parking and EV charging on site.

Extra Information: Open to conversation on hybrid, flexible and compressed working arrangements.

About the role:

This is a hands-on position in which you’ll work closely with the Head of People and the wider HR team as we navigate a period of transformation. You’ll be instrumental in shaping and embedding effective working practices—such as routine planning meetings, transparent task management, and diligent progress tracking—ensuring that everything runs smoothly, even when urgent tasks arise. By collaborating across the HR function, you’ll help align our activities and drive efficient delivery. Your organisational expertise, together with your proficiency in Microsoft Planner and related tools, will guarantee that tasks are consistently recorded, prioritised, and accomplished. Ultimately, you’ll be a vital force in advancing our ways of working.

What you will be doing:

• Planning and Delivery Coordination
  • Develop and maintain a single, integrated plan covering HR transformation activity, BAU processes, cyclical people tasks, and cross‑team projects.
  • Track progress, risks, actions, dependencies and milestones, ensuring visibility across the People Team.
  • Proactively identify bottlenecks and risks to delivery, escalating where required.
  • Work closely with the Head of People ensuring all team members have clear expectations on what needs to happen, by when, and who is responsible.
• Ways of Working
  • Design and embed consistent ways of working across the HR function, including meetings, progress reviews, documentation standards, processes and reporting.
  • Support the team in adopting these new approaches by providing templates, guidance and ongoing coaching.
  • Help develop clarity of roles, responsibilities and handoffs between different HR sub‑teams.
• Tools, Data and Information Management
  • Lead the setup, maintenance and continuous improvement of Microsoft Planner boards, templates and dashboards.
  • Ensure data accuracy and integrity across all HR tools.
  • Use insights from feedback and dashboards to drive forward conversations, highlight risks and support decision‑making.
• Team Collaboration and Support
  • Build effective working relationships with team members across HR, supporting them to structure and deliver work efficiently.
  • Facilitate cross‑team coordination where activities require collaboration or dependency management.
  • Support the Head of People by ensuring they have timely, concise, meaningful information on progress, risks and priorities.
• HR Projects and Initiatives
  • Support the delivery of the HR transformation roadmap by providing clear planning, coordination and follow‑through.
  • Assist with the rollout and embedding of new policies, processes and people initiatives by coordinating actions and ensuring readiness.
  • Contribute to the HR annual business planning cycle with structured timelines and planning support.
• Other duties
  • To be a key contributor to People Team meetings and planning sessions.
  • Provide support and coaching to HR colleagues on planning and ways‑of‑working matters.
  • To provide cover for HR colleagues as and when required.

Your experience:

If you’re interested in applying and excited about working with us but are unsure if you have the right skills and experience, we’d still encourage you to apply.

Who are we?

We are building a future where all disabled people have the transport options to make the journeys they choose. We fund, support, research and innovate so that all disabled people can make the journeys they choose. We oversee the Motability Scheme and provide grants to help people use it, providing access to transport to hundreds of thousands of people a year. We award grants to charities and organisations who provide different types of transport, or work towards making transport accessible. We also carry out ongoing research, in partnership with disabled people and key stakeholders in the industry, to inspire innovations that continue to champion accessible transport for all.

Why choose us?

We want working for the Motability Foundation to be the best career move you’ve ever made. When you join the Motability Foundation you will join a group of people who are supportive, innovative and motivated to improve the lives of our beneficiaries. We value everyone’s unique qualities and celebrate having a diverse, equitable and inclusive culture where everyone feels safe to be their authentic selves. This is embedded into our values, Collaborative, Respectful and Evolving. We bring our people together through our People Forum, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Forum, Social Squad and our Wellbeing Champions and our employee Spotlight Awards help us recognise the excellence and dedication of our staff. We are proud to be recognised as Disability Confident Leader, have attained Platinum Level Award for Investors in People and are members of the Business Disability Forum.

A career with Motability Foundation can offer you so much more than earning potential, we pride ourselves in offering some fantastic benefits. Some of these include:

• 26 days annual leave, plus the option to buy/ sell up to five days.
• One wellbeing day for extra flexibility.
• Pension scheme - Up to 20%, including a 10% non-contributory contribution and matched contributions up to 5%.
• Life Assurance of four times your salary.
• Private healthcare through BUPA for you and your family, along with a Medicash Health Plan.
• Employee assistance programme: GP appointments, eye tests, flu vaccinations, sick pay and free gym and yoga sessions.
• Enhanced Parental Leave, including Adoption Pay.
• Free parking, EV charge points and a minibus service to/from the town centre and train station.
• Fresh fruit, breakfast snacks, and a Dress for Your Day dress code.
• Learning and development opportunities to help you grow.

Our vision is to create a charity where everyone feels like they belong, benefits from and participates in, the work we do. We actively encourage applications from people of all backgrounds and cultures, and we aim to be an employer of choice for candidates with disabilities. As a Disability Confident Leader, we have committed to ensuring that disabled people and those with long term health conditions have the opportunities to fulfil their potential. We want to ensure everyone has the opportunity to perform their best when interviewing and when working with us, so if you require any reasonable adjustments that would make you more comfortable, please let us know so that we can do our best to support you. To help us create an inclusive workplace we are committed to offering to interview every disabled applicant who meets the minimum criteria for the job.