Strategic HR Business Partner in Edinburgh

The Strategic HR Business Partner is a senior advisor to leaders at Wood Mackenzie, responsible for shaping and delivering people strategies that enable commercial success, transformation, and sustainable growth.

Responsibilities

• Delivers people and culture cyclical and one‐time initiatives aligned to business goals across the employee life‐cycle (e.g. workforce planning, performance cycles, and compensation).
• Collaborates with CoEs (Reward, Talent, ER, etc.) to develop and implement simple and effective solutions to address capability/skills gaps, engagement challenges and workforce needs; links initiatives to business performance, growth and competitive outcomes; embeds policy updates, new frameworks and capability‐building initiatives.
• Advises, leads and supports change programmes, restructures and organisation design activity using evidence‐based insights and strong business acumen.
• Facilitates the identification of emerging talent and future leaders early to build strong pipelines and succession strength.
• Uses employee relations, headcount movement, engagement, exit interviews, and Glassdoor insights, data and leader feedback to strengthen employee experience, performance and retention (Employee Value Proposition).
• Facilitates workforce, skills and capability planning to support Wood Mackenzie's strategic and profitability goals, balancing investment, productivity and capacity across regions and roles; contributes to risk management through proactive mitigation planning and data‐led insights.
• Acts as a trusted adviser to leaders across multiple sites, ensuring consistent application of people policies and best practice.
• Attends leadership and operational meetings providing informed challenge, strategic insight and clear guidance.
• Works closely with FP&A to align headcount plans, cost forecasts and workforce decisions, providing insight and challenge to support informed resourcing decisions.
• Manages escalated and complex employee relations cases in collaboration with ER CoE and the Colleague Experience team.
• Coaches leaders to build capability and confidence in leading their teams; enables fair and courageous decisions on performance, potential and succession.
• Supports employee experience, talent, succession and retention initiatives.
• Collaborates across HR functions (Reward, Talent, ER, etc.) to deliver integrated, simple and effective people solutions.
• Aligns business priorities with key HR processes including workforce planning, performance cycles and compensation.
• Leads, delegates, mentors and coaches across the function, and supports and champions internal initiatives as required.

What Good Looks Like

• You build trusted relationships and act as a thought partner to leaders.
• You simplify complexity and bring clarity to decisions.
• You influence using insight and data.
• You connect the right people across HR to solve problems quickly.
• You stay connected to both the functions you partner with and the wider Wood Mackenzie environment.
• You help create an environment where people feel supported, accountable and able to grow.
• You manage your stakeholders effectively, including appropriate delegation and case management.

Skills & Qualities Needed

• Strong communicator who can coach, challenge and influence at senior levels.
• Ability to understand business strategy and translate it into people implications.
• Analytical thinker, confident using data and evidence.
• Skilled in relationship building, collaboration and navigating complex environments.
• Strong commercial acumen and awareness of industry trends and best practice.
• Comfort working across multiple priorities with a calm, solutions‐focused mindset.

Equal Opportunities

We are an equal opportunities employer. This means we are committed to recruiting the best people regardless of their race, colour, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability or protected veteran status.