Senior People Partner - #1784643

Senior People Business Partner, North of England

Reports to People Director, Havas UK

About Us

Headquartered out of London’s King’s Cross – and along with offices in Leeds, Manchester and Edinburgh, 26 different agencies make up the Havas UK Village. As others attempt- and struggle – to integrate and simplify their offer, we continue to pioneer the UK’s only truly integrated model. We are the only UK communications network to share a single building with every other specialist business in our network, all under a single P&L, which means we can draw on broader expertise to create bespoke teams. Our overarching mission is to make a meaningful difference to the brands, businesses, and lives of the people we work with.

Our agencies are made up of three main groups, linking Creative, Media and Health services. We work with some of the most recognisable brands to form strategic and creative partnerships, guiding our clients towards their marketing and communication objectives. We are a bustling group of agencies filled with passionate individuals who all bring their own expertise and work together across varying teams and disciplines. We provide first class services for our clients through a whole spectrum of agencies and departments, including strategy, analytics, media planning, creative, design, UX&UI, social media, public relations, integrated marketing and much more.

The Senior People Business Partner exists to provide strategic HR support to our agencies in the North of England, including Havas Market, Havas Media and Additive. This is a leadership role where you’ll partner with the leaders and managers in the businesses you support to deliver a meaningful people experience. You’ll be supported by a 30 strong HR team of generalists and specialists.

Our People Team Standards

The Past is a Foreign Country, they do things differently there

We know that best practice may not be. We challenge sameness, looking for opportunities for new and better. We don’t dwell on the past; we learn from our mistakes.

Be a Queen

We leverage our ability to move freely through the business; we are curious, we ask the right questions and think several moves ahead.

Act like an Owner not a Renter

We take personal responsibility and pride in the quality of our work. We are motivated by doing a

good job. We set the standard high.

Evidence Based and Insight Driven

We use data and evidence to form insights, solving problems and creating opportunities for our business.

We are Strategic Thinkers

We look at the whole system, navigating connections to amplify our impact.

It’s a Human Experience

We think principles over policies to always remember the human at the centre of the experience.

The role

You are accountable for people strategy, processes and approaches across our Havas Market, Havas Media Manchester, DMPG and Additive agencies. This means having a core knowledge of the wide range of people processes across the whole employee lifecycle, and understanding how they work together and impact each other, as well as ensuring they are carried out to the highest standard. Either yourself, or by utilising the resources within the BP team and wider specialist teams.

Strategic Partnering

• Partner with relevant agency leaders, providing strategic insight and influence on people related matters.
• Develop and execute people plan aligned with business objectives for own areas, whilst also contributing to the overall Village people strategy
• Anticipate challenges, risks and opportunities and build solutions to those into your business partnering activity.
• Help to effectively manage change in a people-centred way that aligns with the agency culture and objectives.
• Data informed in your approach- using data to ensure you understand the “now” and to inform decision making.
• Develop a detailed understanding of your client groups, knowing how they do things (as per the people processes above) as well as commercially and structurally.
• Develop an understanding the culture of the agency/dept; what people think, what they want.
• Plan and deliver projects end to end, managing risk, resources and interdependencies to deliver outcomes.
  
  

Commerciality

• Demonstrate a commercial outlook, understanding your client group’s businesses; challenges, priorities, direction etc, how they fit within the wider group whilst also having knowledge of the market in which we operate.
  
  

Communication

• Manage communication between People leadership, direct and wider team to ensure understanding, delivery and follow up.
• Build trust and credibility with stakeholder group demonstrating progress with initiatives and projects and flagging if there are challenges.
• Communicate complex HR concepts in a people centred way.
• Proactively engage in difficult conversations with confidence.
• Work closely with the other BP’s to find out what is happening in their areas, how they are approaching rolling out Village initiatives (as we strive for a consistent employee experience) and to help problem solve.
  
  

ER

• Manage all ER cases across your client groups, delegating to Advisor where appropriate and keeping People Director informed.
• Ensure cases are tracked/fed into the wider team to ensure consistency in approach and trends/issues are spotted and solutions and steps are taken to proactively reduce ER cases.
• Keep up to date with current and future legislation and regulation and demonstrate how to assess the impact and risk.
  
  

Comp and bens

• Manage and coordinate key activity including the bonus and salary review processes. This would include working with the finance and commercial team as well as our own comp team.
• Manage pay band mapping process.
• Work towards consistency of benefits across Village.
  
  

Recruitment

• Working with TA partner, deliver an excellent recruitment experience, from vacancy through to hire/onboarding.
• Drive efficiencies in workforce planning and resource allocation
• Understand and contribute to decisions about structure.
  
  

Talent development

• Work with agency leads to establish effective performance management to ensure that all our people receive a meaningful performance review, as per the local and global expectations, and that robust development plans are in place for all employees.
• Use performance management data to drive improvements.
• Work with agency leads to determine current and future capability needs and partner with TD team to deliver those.
• Integrate wellbeing into our culture and strategy
  
  

Equity, Diversity & Inclusion

• Work with the DEI partners and agency leaders to build equality, diversity and inclusion approaches that positively impact your agency’s culture and performance.
  
  

Village People role

• Contribute to the wider people team community in projects, working groups, meetings etc.
• Build collaborative relationships with the specialist teams.
• Mentor and coach the junior members of the team.