Chief People Officer

Met Office; Reading; Hybrid; GBP 149,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading meteorological organization is seeking a Chief People Officer to provide strategic leadership on corporate reputation and develop effective people strategies. The ideal candidate will have extensive HR experience and a proven track record in leading transformation and change in complex environments. This role offers a salary of £149,000 along with a generous pension contribution.

Benefits

Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension

Competitive salary

Qualifications

• Experience in HR disciplines including workforce planning and employee relations.
• Track record in executive leadership and development.
• Experience managing significant budgets within agreed limits.

Responsibilities

• Act as a trusted adviser to the Chief Executive and Executive Board.
• Lead transformation and change management initiatives.
• Manage large, multi-disciplinary teams focusing on employee experience.

Skills

Leadership

Change Management

Organizational Development

Stakeholder Management

Budget Management

Education

Chartered Fellow of the CIPD or equivalent

Job description

We are pleased to bring to the market the role of Chief People Officer at the Met Office.

As our Chief People Officer, you will act as the trusted adviser to the Chief Executive and the Board on people, providing strategic direction and leadership on corporate reputation, and brand issues and to develop high quality people and communication structures to deliver the strategic long term aims of the Met Office.

Based in Exeter or Reading, with regular attendance at our Exeter Headquarters, you will be an integral member of our executive committee, directing on a broad range of people related workstreams to ensure the organisation has an engaged, skilled flexible workforce and the organisational capability to deliver its strategic objectives.

World changing work

As one of the world’s leading weather and climate organisations, the Met Office provides the most accurate weather forecasts, severe weather warnings and climate projections which are built on our deep scientific expertise. Our work supports everything from daily life and travel, to defence, agriculture, energy and emergency response.

Job description

Your world of expertise

As a member of the Met Office Executive Committee, reporting to Managing Director of Enabling Capabilities, you will be key in realising our new 2025-2030 strategic plan and helping the Met Office to deliver the most trusted weather and climate intelligence in a radically changing world. You will be accountable for developing the organisational capabilities we need to realise our ambitions and enable the organisation to be an inclusive and great place to work.

Your key duties:

• Act as a trusted adviser to Chief Executive and wider executive board on all people related issues, leading the People Strategy, Corporate Value Proposition and Engagement strategy.
• Leading transformation and change – successfully managing the delivery of people focused transformational change management programmes.
• Managing significant and successful cultural change through the use of organisational development, behavioural insight techniques and change management, in a complex and diverse multi-stakeholder environment.
• Leading a team of 130FTE with a £7.2m budget – who span a wide range of responsibilities across the employee lifecycle on resourcing, employee experience, strategic workforce planning, talent management, reward, designing and delivery of meteorological training and design and delivery of corporate learning, staff engagement, social media and content, culture, internal and external communications, the press office, health and safety professionals and change management.
• Responsible for delivering the People strategy, ED&I strategy, Employee Value Proposition, Health & Safety improvement plans, Wellbeing and engagement strategy.
• Act as chief negotiator on pay bargaining with trade union side, ensuring accuracy and compliance of pay remits and pay and reward policies.
• Continually improve staff engagement, measured through increasing engagement scores from the People survey, including through effective deployment of skilled and professional change management resources.
• Leadership of employer brand and values to attract, retain and develop our employees to build on the Employee annual survey (EAS) to implement change initiatives to ensure the Met Office is seen as a “great place to work”.
• Expected to play an effective role in Civil Service working with HR Directors across government.

Person specification

Essential Criteria, skills and experience:

We are seeking a permanent appointment for an exceptional leader whose experience aligns with our criteria:

• Chartered Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) or equivalent.
• Experience in depth across the full range of HR disciplines (Organisational Development, workforce planning and resourcing, people systems and technology, pay and reward, conduct and capability, learning, leadership and management, talent management, employee and industrial relations) in a senior leadership capacity.
• Experience of delivering in a high performing executive team with track record of using professional expertise in team development and in a coaching capacity successfully advise board members. Leading and delivering executive level relationships and stakeholder activity in a complex and constantly changing environment. Evidence of balancing both strategic thinking and horizon scanning with pragmatism, to deliver and embed people transformation and culture change.
• Proven track record of managing significant budget (£7.2 million) within agreed limits and extensive knowledge of corporate budgeting and financial processes.
• Demonstrable experience of leading large, multi-disciplinary People, Communications and Wellbeing teams, with a record of using innovation and creativity to solve people-related issues.
• Highly developed strategic thinking ability with proven track record in change management and capable of balancing both strategic, tactical and operational priorities; able to deliver strategy at pace, resilience to sustain the strategy, often through high levels of ambiguity and organisational change.

We would love to hear from you if you believe you meet the above criteria, but your skills and experience will be even better if you also possess any of the following qualities:

• Portfolio of commitment to professional development.
• Realising people benefits from use of data, analytics and AI.
• Experience of pay negotiations and successful, innovative approaches to pay flexibility in complex organisations.
• Experience of advising or sitting on Remuneration Committees.
• Establishing executive reward retention, recruitment and incentivisation schemes in a wide a variety of organisations.
• Working with a wide a variety of Trade unions.
• British Psychological Society (BPS) qualified.
• Coaching qualifications.

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £149,000, Met Office contributes £43,165 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides.

C1PO