Location: Hounslow / Heathrow (5 days onsite)
Contract: 3-Month Contract
Start Date: Immediate
Overview
We are seeking an experienced Senior HR Business Partner to support a large-scale, complex operational workforce within a highly regulated, customer-focused environment. This role will partner closely with senior operational leaders to develop and deliver a strategic people agenda that supports workforce performance, leadership capability, organisational effectiveness, employee engagement, and operational excellence. Based onsite at Heathrow, this is a hands-on business partnering role requiring strong stakeholder management and experience operating within a fast-paced unionised environment.
Key Responsibilities
Strategic Business Partnering
- Develop and deliver a comprehensive people plan aligned to operational priorities and business objectives.
- Act as a trusted advisor to senior operational leadership, providing commercially focused HR guidance.
- Translate business requirements into actionable workforce, culture, and people initiatives.
- Identify and mitigate people-related risks impacting service delivery and business performance.
- Support governance activities and contribute to senior leadership decision-making.
Leadership & Stakeholder Management
- Coach and influence senior leaders to improve leadership capability and accountability.
- Drive people initiatives through collaboration and influence without direct line management responsibility.
- Coordinate support from specialist HR functions including Employee Relations, Talent Acquisition, Learning & Development, Engagement, and Organisational Development.
- Manage complex stakeholder relationships across operational and corporate teams.
Organisational Effectiveness & Workforce Planning
- Lead strategic workforce planning activities to ensure workforce capability and capacity align with operational demands.
- Support organisational design reviews, structural changes, and workforce optimisation initiatives.
- Identify succession risks, critical talent gaps, and opportunities to enhance leadership capability.
- Drive retention, engagement, and performance improvement strategies across the workforce.
Employee & Industrial Relations
- Provide expert guidance on complex employee relations cases and investigations.
- Build and maintain effective relationships with recognised trade unions and employee representatives.
- Support collective consultations, organisational change programmes, and industrial relations activity.
- Use ER trends and workforce data to identify and address recurring people challenges.
Change Management
- Lead the HR workstream for organisational change, transformation, TUPE, mobilisation and business improvement initiatives.
- Assess workforce risks and develop mitigation plans to ensure successful implementation of change.
- Support leaders through periods of transition while maintaining operational continuity.
- Utilise workforce and business data to identify trends, risks, and opportunities.
- Develop people metrics and reporting to measure the effectiveness of HR interventions.
- Drive continuous improvement initiatives that deliver measurable business outcomes.
- Present recommendations and updates to senior stakeholders.
- Significant experience operating as a Senior HR Business Partner within a large, complex organisation.
- Strong background supporting operational, customer-facing or regulated environments.
- Proven experience partnering with senior stakeholders and influencing at executive level.
- Extensive employee relations and industrial relations expertise.
- Experience working within unionised environments.
- CIPD qualified (Level 5 or above).
- Demonstrable success in workforce planning, organisational effectiveness, talent management, and leadership development.
- Experience supporting large-scale organisational change and transformation programmes.
- Strong analytical capability with experience using HR metrics and business data to drive decision-making.
- Excellent communication, coaching and stakeholder management skills.
- Ability to work at pace within a complex and demanding operational environment.
- Aviation, transport, logistics, facilities management, retail, engineering, or other large operational workforce experience.
- Experience supporting TUPE, mobilisation, and multi-site operations.
- Organisational design and workforce transformation experience.