Head of HR Operations

📋 Description

• • Own and execute the Group People Strategy end-to-end, translating board-level ambition into day-to-day excellence across 5,000 colleagues and 700,000+ social homes. You will be the architect of scalable, inclusive people practices that enable operational leaders to deliver safe, compliant, and customer-focused services.
• • Act as the senior HR Business Partner to executive and operational leaders, coaching them to build high-performing teams, reduce turnover, and create cultures where every employee feels safe, valued, and heard. Your influence will be felt in boardrooms, depots, care schemes, and construction sites alike.
• • Lead, mentor, and upskill a dispersed team of HR Business Partners and ER specialists, embedding a continuous-improvement mindset and ensuring consistent, commercially astute advice that balances risk, cost, and social value.
• • Drive complex, high-stakes employee relations casework—TUPE transfers, collective grievances, restructures, and union negotiations—delivering outcomes that protect Mears’ reputation and safeguard employee trust.
• • Build and sustain constructive relationships with recognised trade unions, negotiating change programmes that deliver £multi-million efficiencies while preserving engagement and minimising disruption.
• • Provide strategic HR input to bids and mobilisations, ensuring every new contract is staffed, compliant, and culturally aligned from day one. You will translate tender promises into robust resourcing, reward, and learning plans.
• • Chair the HR sub-committees for the Executive Board, Workforce Development Group, and ESG Board, translating data into compelling narratives that secure investment and demonstrate measurable progress on diversity, inclusion, and wellbeing.
• • Deputise for the Group HR Director on critical projects, including M&A due diligence, digital HR transformation, and crisis response, acting with autonomy and authority when the stakes are highest.
• • Champion equality, diversity, and inclusion in every policy, process, and conversation, ensuring Mears’ workforce mirrors the communities it serves and that social mobility is hard-wired into recruitment, progression, and reward.
• • Model agile, remote-first leadership while maintaining a visible on-site presence across England, Scotland, and Wales—regularly travelling to depots, prisons, military bases, and housing schemes to listen, learn, and lead.
• • Leverage HR analytics to spot trends in absence, turnover, and engagement, translating insight into targeted interventions that improve productivity and reduce cost.
• • Embed a culture of psychological safety and accountability, ensuring managers at every level feel equipped to have honest performance conversations and to act on feedback.
• • Oversee the annual HR calendar—pay reviews, engagement surveys, apprenticeship cohorts, and leadership development—delivering each milestone on time, on budget, and with measurable impact.
• • Collaborate with L&D, Reward, and Recruitment teams to design career pathways that retain critical trades and attract new talent into social housing, creating a sustainable pipeline for the next decade.
• • Represent Mears externally at sector forums, housing conferences, and government roundtables, positioning the Group as an employer of choice and a thought-leader in ethical, unionised people management.