People & Culture Manager

Fords Packaging Systems; England; Hybrid; GBP 50,000 - 70,000; Full time

Job summary

An engineering and manufacturing company in the UK seeks a People & Culture Manager to shape HR strategy in a growing environment. Responsibilities include delivering HR services from recruitment to performance management, driving leadership development, and enhancing workplace culture. This role requires strong emotional intelligence, coaching capabilities, and a solid understanding of UK employment law. With a competitive salary, additional benefits include a discretionary bonus, private health care, and a hybrid working model.

Benefits

Discretionary bonus

25 days + bank holidays

Private health care

Early Friday Finish

Qualifications

• Proven experience supporting managers across the full employee lifecycle.
• Demonstrated ability to coach and mentor leaders and hold people to account.
• Strong understanding of UK employment law and HR best practice.

Responsibilities

• Lead the delivery of HR strategy supporting sustainable growth.
• Deliver a complete generalist service including recruitment and performance.
• Drive leadership development programmes and manage performance review cycles.

Skills

Emotional intelligence

Stakeholder engagement

Analytical skills

Coaching and mentoring

Education

CIPD Level 5 or equivalent

Tools

HRIS systems (Cezanne)

Excel

Job description

We have an exciting opportunity for a high-caliber People & Culture Manager who thrives in a standalone role, works confidently at pace, and is passionate about delivering best-practice HR. Reporting to the Chief of Staff, this role offers the rare opportunity to shape the People agenda end to end within a growing 70-person engineering and manufacturing business with a global customer base. You will partner closely with the management team to drive high performance, build leadership capability, and ensure the organisation has the people foundations it needs for the future.

Responsibilities

• Lead the delivery of HR strategy, ensuring it supports sustainable growth and a high-performance culture.
• Deliver a complete generalist service – from recruitment, onboarding and ER, through to performance, wellbeing, engagement, and L&D.
• Own and run all HR processes with efficiency and confidence, maintaining high standards and legal compliance while staying calm, level-headed and solutions-focused.
• Use data, HRIS insights and workforce analytics to support decision making and provide People reporting to the Chief of Staff.
• Drive leadership development programmes and ensure managers have the tools, confidence and mindset to lead effectively.
• Build trusted relationships with leaders; challenging, mentoring and coaching where needed to ensure consistent standards of leadership capability.
• Manage annual performance review cycles, talent processes and capability development.
• Lead wellbeing, diversity and inclusion initiatives aligned to our values and culture.
• Design and deliver internal training and people-related presentations that build manager and employee capability and support continuous development.
• Partner with the QHSE Manager on People related H&S requirements.
• Able to move seamlessly between strategic priorities and practical, hands-on work with a calm, adaptable approach.
• Provide confident, end-to-end HR support while staying aligned to the wider organisational goals.
• Establish a clear rhythm and discipline for People activities across the business.
• Support leaders to raise expectations, performance and accountability.
• Strengthen culture, engagement, communication and collaboration.
• Operate with emotional maturity, calmness and commercial judgement.
• Become a trusted partner to the Chief of Staff.

This is an ideal role for a dynamic HR professional with strong emotional intelligence, exceptional stakeholder engagement skills, and the ability to manage multiple priorities with confidence.

This role requires someone who can operate confidently at both strategic and operational levels, switching between the two with ease. You will have access to a part-time administrative resource but should be comfortable owning the full People remit independently.

Qualifications

• CIPD Level 5 (minimum) or equivalent experience operating at HR Manager level.
• Strong generalist background with proven experience supporting managers across the full employee lifecycle.
• Demonstrated ability to coach and mentor leaders, challenge constructively, and hold people to account.
• Emotional intelligence, resilience and the ability to remain calm, objective and commercially minded in fast-moving situations.
• Excellent interpersonal skills, strong communication, presentation and report-writing skills.
• Robust understanding of UK employment law and HR best practice, with a pragmatic and solution-focused approach.
• Experienced driving cultural change, leadership development or organisational improvement.
• Comfortable managing multiple deadlines, priorities and stakeholders at pace.
• Strong analytical skills, using HRIS systems, Excel and data to support people decisions.
• Proven ability to deliver HR projects from design through to implementation.
• Confident in delivering training and coaching managers.
• Experience with HRIS (in-house system is Cezanne).

Benefits

• £competitive salary.
• Discretionary bonus.
• 25 days + bank holidays.
• Company life insurance x6 times.
• Pension 5%.
• 4 days on site with option for one day per week working from home.
• Early Friday Finish.
• 37 hours (Monday to Thursday 8:00am‑4:30pm, Friday 8:00am‑1:00pm).
• Income protection.
• Private health care.
• Access to Independent Financial Adviser.
• Tenure specific.