Head of Human Resource

The Head of HR provides strategic leadership and direction for the trust’s people strategy, ensuring that HR drives organisational effectiveness, staff wellbeing and a high‑performance culture. The postholder leads the HR function across all schools and central teams, shaping workforce design, guiding senior leaders through organisational change, and ensuring that people practice is aligned to the trust’s long‑term mission, vision and values.

This role acts as the trust’s lead professional for HR, providing authoritative advice to the CEO, CFO, Headteachers and Executive Team, and ensuring consistent, legally compliant and values‑led decision‑making across the organisation.

Key Responsibilities

Strategic HR Leadership

• Lead the development and delivery of a trust-wide people strategy that strengthens organisational capability, culture and performance.
• Drive workforce planning, analysing staffing structures, demographic data, and future needs to ensure the trust remains sustainable and financially efficient.
• Lead strategic HR initiatives that support organisational development, talent management, leadership capacity building and succession planning.
• Act as the senior HR advisor to the CEO, Executive Team and Headteachers, ensuring people implications are fully considered in trust-wide planning and decision‑making.

Organisational Change and Workforce Efficiency

• Lead and manage organisational change projects, including restructures, staffing redesign, TUPE processes and transformation programmes.
• Ensure change management processes are fair, legally compliant and aligned with trust values.
• Identify and implement opportunities for workforce efficiencies, improved deployment of staff and strengthened financial stewardship of staffing budgets.
• Support leaders to communicate, implement and embed change in a way that maintains morale, clarity and operational continuity.

Leadership of HR Operations

• Oversee the delivery of a high‑quality, consistent HR service across all schools and central functions.
• Ensure efficient and compliant recruitment processes that attract, select and retain high‑quality staff, aligned with safer recruitment expectations.
• Ensure HR systems, data and reporting processes are robust, accurate and support strategic analysis and planning.
• Oversee high‑quality induction, onboarding and probation processes to strengthen early staff experience and retention.

Employee Relations and People Management

• Provide senior leadership to complex and sensitive ER casework, ensuring resolution is fair, timely and legally compliant.
• Build capability and confidence in leaders to manage people effectively, consistently and in line with trust values.
• Quality‑assure the application of HR policy across schools to ensure fairness, alignment and compliance.

Policy, Governance and Compliance

• Lead the development, review and implementation of trust-wide HR policies that reflect best practice and enable effective and consistent leadership.
• Ensure full compliance with employment law, safeguarding requirements, safer recruitment, GDPR and equality legislation.
• Provide strategic oversight of staff wellbeing, workload and culture, ensuring HR policies support a positive and healthy working environment.

Professional Leadership and Trust Wide Influence

• Build strong, open and effective working relationships with leaders across all schools.
• Provide training, coaching and guidance on HR leadership, organisational change, policy implementation and people management.
• Represent the trust at external networks, professional forums or regulatory interactions where HR expertise is required.
• Travel between trust schools as needed (mileage reimbursed in line with trust policy).

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