About The Role
This is an integral leadership position where you'll drive the evolution and implementation of our people and culture strategy and serve as a trusted advisor to the CEO and Executive Team. As a member of the Place2Be Executive team, you will work strategically and collaboratively to drive our five year business plan to deliver the best possible outcomes for children and young people, deepen our work in communities, and demonstrate our impact.
You'll champion a values-led culture across the organisation, role modelling creative thinking, perseverance, integrity and compassion in your own leadership. You will lead a talented team to enhance our policies and practices, and ensure our people operations are aligned with our mission to improve children and young people's mental health.
You'll play a key role in shaping a workplace culture that is inclusive, values-driven, and high-performing—ensuring our people feel supported, empowered, and proud to be part of Place2Be.
To find out more about this exciting role, please read through our Director of People and Culture Recruitment Pack.
Key Responsibilities
* Evolve and lead the People & Culture strategy as a key enabler of our five year business plan
* Collaborative and visionary leadership as a member of the Place2Be Executive team
* Lead and strengthen the People & Culture team, fostering a collaborative and high-impact environment
* Advise and influence senior leadership and the CEO on strategic people matters and organisational culture
* Champion our values across all people policies, processes, and communications
* Drive operational excellence across recruitment, performance, reward, employee relations, and engagement
* Lead the implementation of our EDIB strategy and co-chair the EDIB Steering Group
* Oversee employee engagement programmes, including surveys and ongoing feedback dialogue
* Ensure compliance with HR policies, safeguarding, and legal obligations
* Manage the People & Culture budget and contribute to governance and risk management
What We're Looking For
* Proven experience leading a successful People & Culture function in a values-led organisation
* Proven experience of dealing with complex employee relations situations with compassion and confidence
* Flexible leadership approach spanning visionary and strategic to practical hands-on delivery
* Ability to work collaboratively at Executive level to deliver the five-year business plan
For a career with purpose, this is your place.
Recruitment Process:
As part of your application you will need to answer some shortlisting questions. Please answer these as fully as you can, we recommend using the STAR model. Situation, Task, Action Result.
Closing date for applications: Midnight on 15 March 2026
1st Interview date (via Teams) - Monday 23 March & Wednesday 25 March 2026
2nd Interview date (via Teams) interview with Chief Executives & Executive Director: W/C 13 April 2026
Final Interview - (In person at our London office): Friday 24 April 2026
Our Benefits
When you work at Place2Be –whether that's in a school, supporting families, providing clinical supervision, or in IT, Finance, or Fundraising –every role can make the difference to a young person. To achieve this, we ask that you bring your best self to your role and our commitment to you, is to welcome you into our community, and help you progress. Because we know that you being at your best, means the best outcomes for the children we support.
Here's just a few things we have on offer:
* Annual Leave that increases with service
* Comprehensive learning and development to enable you to progress your career
* 5% contributory pension scheme
* Life assurance of four times your annual salary
* A comprehensive employee assistance programme
* Mobile Phone Discounts (EE network)
* Wellbeing days to allow you some 'you' time
* Christmas holidays closure period in addition to your annual leave
We welcome applications from everyone regardless of age, gender, gender identity, gender expression, ethnicity, sexual orientation, faith or disability. We particularly encourage applications from Black, Asian and Minority ethnic candidates and disabled candidates who are currently underrepresented within our organisation.
We are proud to be a disability confident employer and will ask you during your application If you wish to be considered for a guaranteed interview under the disability confident scheme. Under the scheme we commit to offering an interview to disabled applicants that meet the minimum criteria as outlined in the job role.
If you have any questions about the scheme, or require any adjustments to help you complete an application then please contact the recruitment team on or email
We recognise that AI is becoming part of daily life and you may want to use it to help you format your CV, create responses to application questions or even help you prepare responses. AI can be a powerful enabler and we are open to you using it to apply for roles with us, but we ask you to ensure anything you submit truly represents your capabilities and viewpoint. We value honesty, integrity and creativity and want to understand what
you
will uniquely bring to our team.
We reserve the right to close this vacancy early if we receive sufficient applications for the role. Therefore, if you are interested, please submit your application as early as possible.