Senior People and Culture Lead (12-month Maternity Cover)
Join to apply for the Senior People and Culture Lead (12-month Maternity Cover) role at HCRG Care Group
Job Introduction
We’re sharing this opportunity across a number of job boards and in different locations to reach as many potential applicants as possible. However, this is one single position – so wherever you see it, it’s the same great role. At HCRG Care Group, we believe our people are at the heart of delivering excellent care and driving sustainable change. We’re proud to deliver vital health and care services across the country, and we’re looking for two exceptional Senior People & Culture Leads to join us at a pivotal time.
This opportunity is offered as a 12-month maternity cover, ideal for an experienced People & Culture professional who enjoys stepping into complex environments, making an immediate impact, and delivering meaningful change. You will work closely with our Regional Directors, building trusted partnerships, embedding recent transformation programmes, and helping managers develop the skills and confidence they need to deliver consistently high‑performing services.
No two days will look the same. One week you might be in Surrey, supporting leaders in our prison healthcare services; the next in Essex, helping managers make the link between absence management, agency use, and service performance. You’ll also play a key role in shaping the people strategy for our sexual health services, including the integration of SH24. Although the role is remote‑based, it will require regular travel and visibility across the regions. You’ll be the kind of person who thrives on variety, who enjoys being out in services, and who knows that real cultural change happens when leaders are supported, present, and accountable.
This is not about policy writing or transactional HR. It’s about influence, coaching, and impact. You’ll create people plans tailored to each region, use data and insights to shape decision‑making, and most importantly, ensure that change sticks long after the project team has moved on.
If you are a seasoned HR professional with the credibility to influence senior leaders, the resilience to navigate complex environments, and the drive to make a tangible difference, then this is your opportunity to join us and leave a lasting mark on colleagues, services, and communities.
Primary Responsibilities
* Act as a strategic partner to Regional Directors, building trusted relationships and ensuring people strategies directly support operational and service delivery goals.
* Develop and deliver tailored people plans for each region, aligned with organisational strategy, KPIs, and local priorities.
* Embed organisational change—ensuring that recent transformation programmes are sustained, capability is built, and managers feel confident in leading new ways of working.
* Coach and support managers to strengthen leadership capability, particularly in areas such as absence management, performance management, and employee engagement.
* Create clear links between people data and business outcomes, helping leaders understand how areas such as absence, agency usage, and retention impact both cost and service quality.
* Champion a positive and inclusive culture, using colleague voice, surveys, and engagement tools to identify issues and co‑create solutions with managers and teams.
* Provide visible presence across services, regularly travelling to sites and attending leadership and team meetings to offer hands‑on support and guidance.
* Use data and insights to inform decision‑making, identify people risks, and recommend pragmatic solutions that balance commercial and colleague needs.
* Work collaboratively with centres of excellence within the wider People team, ensuring policies, practices and initiatives are consistently applied and adapted for local needs.
* Promote equality, diversity, inclusion and wellbeing across all people practices, creating environments where colleagues feel supported, engaged, and able to thrive.
* Contribute to organisational performance by tracking ROI on people initiatives, ensuring people practices add value to both colleagues and service delivery.
The Ideal Candidate
We’re looking for someone who can bring both credibility and pragmatism—a trusted partner who can balance strategic thinking with a hands‑on approach to building capability and embedding change.
* Experienced Senior HR Business Partner / OD leader with a proven track record of partnering senior stakeholders to deliver people strategies that drive performance and culture.
* CIPD Level 7 qualified (or equivalent experience), with strong knowledge of employment legislation, organisational development and workforce planning.
* Skilled in embedding change— not just delivering transformation projects but ensuring changes are sustained through capability building, coaching and cultural alignment.
* Highly confident in building manager and leadership capability, particularly around absence management, performance, engagement and succession planning.
* Adroit at using people data and insights to influence decision‑making, spot risks and link people practices to service KPIs.
* Strong communicator and influencer, able to build trust quickly with Regional Directors and senior managers with very different leadership styles.
* Comfortable with regular national travel and maintaining a visible presence across services.
* Commercially astute, with the ability to balance organisational goals, colleague wellbeing and service user needs.
* Values‑driven leader who champions inclusion, wellbeing, and engagement, creating conditions where people can thrive.
* Resilient and adaptable, thriving in a complex and changing environment, able to “connect the dots” across multiple services and priorities.
Package Description
* £55,000 – £60,000 with group pension
* Private medical insurance with fast access to specialists across the country
* Membership of My Reward Hub, offering discounts, cashback and voucher offers
* Access to wages as you earn them to cover emergencies
* Online and face‑to‑face mental and physical wellbeing support, including career coaching and counselling
* Access to eLearning, bespoke career pathways and continuing professional development through our Learning Enterprise
* An open, just culture encouraging idea implementation to deliver our purpose of transforming health and care, backed by at least £100,000 annual innovation funding
* Working for an organisation committed to the highest clinical and quality standards, with majority services rated “good” or “outstanding” by the Care Quality Commission
About The Company
We change lives by transforming health and care. Established in 2006, we are one of the UK’s leading independent providers of community health and care services, working with health and care commissioners and communities to transform services with a focus on experience, efficiency and improved outcomes. We deliver and transform adult and children community health services, primary care services including urgent care, sexual health, dermatology and MSK services as well as adult social care and wellbeing services. Across England, we support communities of many millions and directly help more than half a million people each year—guided by our simple values: we care, we think, we do.
We’re committed to equal opportunities and welcome applications from a broad, diverse range of people. We’re a Disability Confident Committed company, working to provide facilities, work environment adjustments and technical solutions to be as inclusive of everyone.
While it doesn’t happen often, sometimes a role is very popular, and we’ll need to close it earlier than the date shown. If you’re keen to join our team, we’d love to hear from you so please apply as soon as you can.
Safeguarding and protecting the children, young people and vulnerable adults that we work with is of the utmost importance. We have policies and procedures in place to promote safeguarding and safer working practices and everyone who joins the team is subject to a safer recruitment process, including disclosure of criminal records and vetting checks.
Finally, we need to let you know that the company you’ll work for is part of HCRG Care Group Holdings Limited and by applying for this job we’ll need to process and hold information about you. If you would like to know more about how we use your information, please see our website's privacy policy.
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