Senior HR Business Partner

Senior HR Business Partner

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra)

London

Circa £68,000

We are immersed in an exciting period of change. At the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) our work ranges from supporting the UK’s world-leading food, farming and fishing industries to protecting the environment and providing robust defences against natural threats. Leaving the EU will fundamentally transform the work we do and how we deliver it. We are embracing this opportunity to become even more efficient, focused and innovative. Join us, and you will be at the heart of this change - helping us to secure a more sustainable future for the UK.

Leading a geographically-dispersed team to ensure your colleagues are delivering highly strategic business-partnering solutions, you will take responsibility for two key HR Business Partner teams. You will: 

•            Build trusted relationships with business leaders and other key stakeholders in order to help them anticipate and identify their needs for the future, ensuring a client-focussed approach at all times.

•            Take ownership for setting the strategic HR direction for Natural England (which is a non-departmental public body) at a pivotal moment in their history. Helping the organisation to deliver the Government’s 25-year environment plan, you will lead a programme of people interventions affecting the senior leadership team and the wider organisation. 

•            Offer comprehensive HR support to the Director General of Environment, Rural and Marine, and her senior leadership team. Working on sensitive and complex issues, you will use your HR expertise to contribute to future business direction and performance.

•            Influence other organisations who are working on environment, rural or marine issues within the Defra group. Specifically, you will support the HR teams within MMO, CEFAS, JNCC, Kew Gardens and Forestry Commission, ensuring they on board with group-wide approaches relating to important people issues.

•            Work with the senior leadership team to continue our ongoing ambitions to transform the way we deliver HR services to the thousands of people that make up the Defra group.

This is a role that has the scope to take your career to the next level. In Natural England alone, you will be supporting an organisation of 1,900 people, while core Defra will present you with a myriad of challenges that simply cannot be offered by other employers. As such, you will excel in this position if you are a highly organised individual with good multi-tasking skills. With a background of advising executive or board-level colleagues on sensitive people and organisational issues, you will have a proven track record of building senior stakeholder relationships within a complex organisation and across different workforces. A visionary leader with the capacity to engage on a full range of operational challenges, you will motivate your teams, and you will have exceptional communication, influencing and negotiation skills. We will expect you to deliver solutions to complex challenges, so you will need to enjoy analysing information – and you will be calm under pressure. You will also be a Chartered Member of CIPD.

We aim to support the professional and personal wellbeing of everyone in Defra. Our benefits include generous annual leave, a contributory pension, staff bonuses and recognition, salary sacrifice benefit options, and an employee discount scheme. We also offer flexible working and a variety of learning and development opportunities.