Head of People and Culture in Watford

The opportunity

Northreach is partnering with a fast-growing business to appoint a Head of People & Culture.

This is an opportunity to take ownership of the People function and shape the culture, capability and organisational structure required to support the company’s next stage of growth.

Working closely with the senior management team, you will combine strategic leadership with hands-on delivery. You will be responsible for creating an engaging employee experience, strengthening recruitment and employer branding, managing employee relations and building clear development and progression frameworks.

Key responsibilities

People strategy and employee experience

• Develop and deliver a People and Culture strategy aligned with the organisation’s values and commercial objectives.
• Use employee feedback and People data to understand engagement, identify trends and improve the employee experience.
• Review and develop the company’s benefits offering.
• Oversee the working environment, ensuring employees have the equipment, support and space required to perform effectively.
• Lead the internal events calendar, including team activities, company meetings and strategy days.

Recruitment and employer brand

• Own the end-to-end recruitment process, from workforce planning and job descriptions through to offers and onboarding.
• Partner with hiring managers to improve hiring quality, candidate experience and time-to-hire.
• Develop a scalable recruitment playbook and build talent pipelines for future growth.
• Manage and support a Talent Acquisition team member.
• Strengthen the organisation’s employer brand and position it as an attractive place to build a career.

Employee relations and compliance

• Act as a trusted escalation point for complex and sensitive employee matters.
• Manage employee relations cases with consistency, empathy and sound commercial judgement.
• Own and continuously improve the employee handbook, People policies and HR processes.
• Ensure the business remains compliant with UK employment legislation as it grows.

Learning, performance and progression

• Design and deliver an effective learning and development programme.
• Build clear development pathways and progression frameworks across the organisation.
• Own probation and performance-review cycles from framework design through to delivery.
• Support managers with effective one-to-ones, feedback, performance conversations and development planning.
• Introduce succession planning to support retention and future leadership capability.

About you

We are looking for someone who ideally brings:

• Built broad HR expertise over several years, ideally within a scaling organisation.
• Led a People function or operated as a senior generalist with responsibility across the full employee lifecycle.
• Strong experience handling complex employee matters and advising managers on UK employment practices.
• Improved how an organisation attracts, recruits, onboards and retains its people.
• Introduced practical approaches to performance management, career development and succession planning.
• Designed learning initiatives that strengthen management capability and support employee progression.
• Managed, mentored or supported junior members of a People or Talent team.
• Worked closely with founders, executives or departmental leaders to turn business priorities into effective people initiatives.