Senior HR Business Partner in Leeds

At the National Wealth Fund, our mission is to swiftly and effectively mobilise trusted sector insights and investment expertise to unlock billions in private finance for projects across the United Kingdom. We are looking for skilled and results-oriented individuals who are motivated to help us build the National Wealth Fund into an industry-leading institution.

The Senior HR Business Partner is a pivotal member of the HR senior leadership team, providing high-impact strategic partnering to the Executive and senior leaders across the Fund. This is an exciting opportunity for a progressive, ambitious and forward-thinking HR professional to help shape how people strategy is delivered in a young, fast-evolving organisation.

Primarily, the successful candidate will partner closely with senior stakeholders, including Executive colleagues and third parties, to influence, challenge, coach and build constructive relationships that drive delivery of the Fund’s People Strategy and Business Plan. The role offers significant scope to make a personal mark by shaping practical, modern people solutions that support the organisation as it grows and matures.

As well as line managing a HR Business Partner, the Senior HR Business Partner will lead on people change, transformation, strategic people projects and organisation design. They will have the opportunity to build momentum, introduce fresh thinking and help create scalable people practices that enable the National Wealth Fund’s future success.

Location: Hybrid working with a minimum of 3 days per week in the Leeds office.

Core Responsibilities:

• Develop and nurture credible and trusted partnering relationships with Executive and senior leaders across the National Wealth Fund building high levels of professional credibility and mutual trust.
• Work alongside the HR senior leadership team to develop, evolve and deliver a progressive People Strategy that anticipates organisational needs and supports the National Wealth Fund as a young, ambitious organisation with significant opportunity ahead.
• Support, coach and advise senior management on organisational, talent and people priorities; enabling leaders to make confident, inclusive and forward-looking decisions and embedding a culture of continuous growth, performance and development.
• Lead the delivery of complex and high-profile people change initiatives across the Fund, including employee relations, organisational design and transformation change, bringing pace, structure and creativity to implementation while building strong collaboration across business leaders, programme leads and people services.
• Build people management capability within stakeholder groups through effectively embedding leadership and development initiatives, visibly championing the Fund’s behaviours, culture, diversity and inclusion initiatives, promoting self-service and coaching senior leaders.
• Lead and proactively manage employee relations cases, delegating casework to the HR Business Partner as appropriate, identify trends and mitigate risk to the Fund whilst supporting Executive and Senior Managers through complex case work and employee relations matters.
• Lead, motivate and engage the HR Business Partners, manage performance and development, providing expertise, coaching, and ensuring the delivery of a high-quality service to support the delivery of the Fund’s strategic objectives.
• Ensure that there is a consistent and quality approach in place for reporting and updating the business and for the development of People Plans.
• Oversee the deployment of reward, performance management, L&D and DE&I initiatives across the Fund, leading on translating policy and strategy into effective functional alignment and implementation.
• Maintain industry knowledge and expertise, keeping abreast of employment legislation, people change, strategic business partnering and talent acquisition best practice, identifying opportunities to contribute to and shape future decision making.
• Act as a visible catalyst for modern, high-quality HR practice, bringing ambition, energy and curiosity to help shape a people function that is fit for the future.

Knowledge, Skills & Experience:

• Extensive experience in a senior HR role, operating at a senior level within complex Financial or Professional Services or comparable environments.
• Substantial depth and range of understanding and experience of professional strategic and tactical issues in a complex context.
• A progressive and forward-thinking approach, with demonstrable experience of shaping organisational and functional thinking through horizon scanning, innovation, curiosity and pragmatic solutions that create lasting impact.
• Strong collaboration skills and experience of influencing senior and challenging stakeholders and decision makers.
• Significant experience of coaching and influencing peers and senior decision makers in ambiguous and challenging decisions.
• Significant experience operating in a senior role, providing and presenting information and data to C-Suite leaders in a consistent and concise format.
• Public sector experience is advantageous but not essential.
• Experience of working in a growing or evolving organisation would be advantageous.
• Strong communication skills (in writing, presentation etc.) and able to communicate complex information and arguments concisely.
• University degree / Post Graduate Master’s degree in HR or Organisation Development or equivalent relevant professional experience.
• CIPD membership (Chartered or Fellow) and/or equivalent relevant professional experience.
• Strong in MS Office applications: Outlook, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint and Workday.

A career with us offers a unique opportunity to make a lasting impact and work on cutting-edge technologies that will drive the UK’s future. We value diversity in our people and inclusion is at the heart of what we do.