Lead People Partner

Job description

At McLaren Racing, we’re not just here to try to take the chequered flag. We’re here to excite our fans, inspire our people and deliver for our partners. And we’re also committed to evolving our sport, our industry, and our technology, too.

Purpose of the Role: 

The Lead, People Partner – Performance & Software will support the continued delivery of a progressive people agenda into these teams to drive performance & productivity.

Our Lead People Partners are the key to delivering and helping to support long-term business planning and developing – as well as providing – HR solutions to ensure a great employee experience. You will collaboratively craft the People Strategy with your senior leaders to help take our people partnering to the next level.

Creating an environment where winning becomes inevitable and for us to support a performance-led organisation directly supporting and enhancing the performance and productivity of the team and translates into on-track results.

Role Dimensions:

You’ll be collaborating widely across the People & Culture team. You’ll quickly discover it’s a pro-active team that thrives on working at pace, with agility and delivering meaningful change for McLaren Racing. Most of all we support each other and roll our sleeves up when it matters.

This role will be reporting to the Director, People F1 and will have no direct reports. Your main stakeholders will include our team members, senior leaders, managers, and Directors in the functional areas you support, collaborating closely with the relevant Finance Business Partners too. You will also work closely with our Advisors and People Partners within the People Team and both the Admin and Talent Team. As a commercial business-orientated HR practitioner, you will foster unshakeable relationships through strong understanding of the team’s operations and challenges and delivering no-nonsense, high-impact, agile solutions.

There will be a requirement to be flexible on working hours/days in the office as People Team presence is key for good working relationships and collaboration with the team that we support when they are travelling or at the McLaren Technology Centre. It is envisaged you would work Monday to Friday (3-4 days on site and 1-2 days WFH) demand dependant and ensuring cover on site. Co-location to be partnering directly in both the Performance & Software Teams areas is paramount when on site to ensure collaboration and close working relationships and understanding of operating models, processes and ways of working.

Principal Accountabilities:

• Partner all senior leaders across your function, building strong relationships and knowledge of your stakeholder group to be a true partner. Sitting alongside the leadership to pro-actively deliver a people strategy and also problem solve challenges that face the leadership team, as a subject matter expert in the People area.

• Feed into the ongoing development of the plan and operations strategy by working closely with the team stakeholders to identify the critical people priorities and feeding through.
• Respond and adapt to changing circumstances, contributing to the development of solutions to ensure they are fit for purpose within both the Performance and Software & Data Science Teams.
• Confidently influencing key stakeholders to gain buy-in and support for new ways of working, alternative solutions, and key projects.
• To front up the delivery of the Racing strategy within the teams you support, becoming the main point of contact for the leaders and People Director for all strategic and operational people matters.
• Ensuring lower levels of support are given below the leadership Team by you and with Advisor resources to hand.

Business partnering at a senior level.

• Building trust-based relationships with the senior leadership team, fostering close partnerships that get you ‘inside the tent’ and able to offer close quarter support.
• To take a mid to longer-term view of the business, anticipating future workforce demands before leaders even know they need something and proactively translating into solutions.
• To become a deep expert with a high level of technical understanding of the client groups, building credibility and enabling knowledge/insight based proactive recommendations to be made.
• Minimising involvement in lower level, lower value tactical matters, using all available resources across the People team to deal with these appropriately, or helping managers deal directly.
• Apply people analytics through data-driven conversations and initiatives to deliver against the people strategy.

Operational HR management

• Support and oversight of any ER issues ensuring managers are equipped to deal with them effectively and compliantly ensuring reliable and trusted employment law advice is given.
• Partner with the finance team to ensure a good understanding of local budgets & support leaders making right decisions and track accordingly.
• Ensure the teams you support are effectively resourced in line with budgets, cost cap compliant and overall business plan.
• Support the annual salary and bonus review process into the People Director and People Experience Team.
• Proactively gauge employee engagement in functional areas and work with the broader People team to provide solutions as required using specialist resources where needed.
• Utilise relevant data to support people and business plan implementation, spot trends and assist with decision making.

Organisational design and change management

• To work with the Leadership Teams and People Director to review the organisational design of the team to ensure they remain solutions-focused, relevant, efficient, agile and productive both short and longer term.
• Lead on the redesign of roles, teams or functions in line with identified needs using strong org design disciplines to maximise the effectiveness of structural changes fit for purpose.
• To apply best practice change management discipline to the delivery and implementation of changes minimising disruption and supporting any people impacted with dignity and respect.
• Considering organisational performance in the broadest sense of communication flows, process effectiveness, interdependencies and capability to seek opportunities to deliver optimised business models.

Workforce planning and talent management

• Work with the Team’s to understand their ambitions and plans. Use this insight to be inquisitive as to mid and long-term people requirements.
• In conjunction with the Talent Team, understand and help develop workforce plans that map out role and capability need over time and required resource levels.
• Work with the Talent Team to build talent attraction strategies that consider short- and long-term needs, thinking creatively about how future needs can start to be addressed immediately (grads, apprentices, internal talent fast tracking).
• Own the formal and informal talent and succession management processes for your functions, making this a live and ongoing conversation, not a paper activity, that has tangible outputs by way of retention, promotion and minimising risk, ensuring succession is well thought out and planned ahead.

Effective management of employee relations

• Maintain strong employee relations across the division through the pragmatic engagement of managers and team leaders to fulfil their legal obligations effectively.
• Use effective communications as a vehicle to maintain strong relations with employees, particularly where change is concerned.
• Actively engage with leaders to support development of a working environment that is conducive to safe practices and colleague welfare.
• Support development and delivery of an effective diversity and inclusion agenda with the Employee Experience & Talent Team that promotes a positive workplace that is broad and inclusive in its make-up.

Stakeholder relationships

• Promote a service mentality and partnership approach to developing strong and effective working relationships with key internal stakeholders to ensure their appropriate engagement and involvement.
• Confidently influence key stakeholders to gain buy-in and support to new ways of working, alternative solutions and key projects.
• Seamlessly act as the conduit between the Performance & Software teams Leadership and People Team to ensure successful implementation of initiatives which are fit for purpose and land well.

Communication

• Strong and professional communication across multiple stakeholder groups and channels with the ability to present and deliver compelling messages.
• Work with your Leadership Teams and internal comms to support the development and execution of appropriate communications campaigns to engage with audiences on the employee experience offer to ensure full engagement and understanding.

Development

• Ensure the development and growth of both our Performance, Software and Data Science teams by way of effective learning and development, individual performance development and succession plans.
• Support in the growth and development of both our Senior Specialists and People Advisors and Admin Assistants by mentoring, coaching, giving guidance and opportunities to support activities in your areas or on key shared projects across F1.

Job requirements

Knowledge, Skills and Experience:

• Wide ranging knowledge of value-creating generalist human resources at senior leader level ideally within an engineering or high-performance technology organisation.
• Previous experience in particular with culture and engagement, change management, organizational design, and talent & succession planning.
• Demonstrable experience of contributing to people strategy development, translation into pragmatic delivery plans and implementation through to conclusion.
• Ability to deliver high impact services in a fast paced and fluid working environment, bringing clarity and structure where appropriate.
• Strong communicator, able to influence senior leaders with a “how to”/” yes, if” rather than a “no” mentality.
• Experience of working with high performing teams in a fast-paced environment, comfortable with working independently, without close support or oversight.
• Ability to manage and plan own workload within a dynamic and time constrained environment.
• A focus on data-driven decision making.
• MS Office - proficient to at least intermediate level in Excel, Word, PowerPoint.
• Previous experience working with an HRIS and related employee platforms desirable.
• CIPD Level 5 or 7 qualified, or equivalent experience

Personal Attributes:

Winning Mindset – Always working and striving for the best, pushing the boundaries to world championship material on everything we do.

Problem solving – able to operate effectively with ambiguity, adopting an inquisitive style that understands the ‘why’ to determine the ‘how’ and applies extensive knowledge to develop creative solutions and workarounds for the team

Results – someone who is driven; who comes with an outstanding work ethic and expects the best from themselves and people around them.

Credible - Considered credible and has gravitas, acting as a role model for the McLaren values and our culture.

Challenges – challenges others to strive for more, both in innovation and meeting stakeholder needs.

Ownership - demonstrates behaviours that support a high-performance culture within and across teams.

Collaboration – Engages in partnerships, networks and alliances to support long term success and engages in partnerships for decision making to support the best interests of the business.

Driven – a track record of getting things done.

Role Model – Is a role model and champions best practice in diversity and inclusion.

What can McLaren offer?

We constantly strive to be better tomorrow than we are today. Our ambition is to be the most pioneering and exhilarating racing team in the world, and our collective task is to set the standards for high performance in sport. We show up every day with energy and enthusiasm, ready to play our part.

We encourage and support diversity, equity and inclusion. We will actively promote a culture that values difference and eliminates discrimination in our workplace.

McLaren Racing is based at the iconic McLaren Technology Centre (MTC) near Woking.

Our state of the art, sustainable campus offers many facilities including a gym, restaurant and indoor and outdoor break-out areas, as well as direct access to park and common land. The MTC is connected to Woking mainline station via regular shuttle buses, from which London Waterloo is a 30 minute train ride.

We offer a comprehensive package of benefits including private healthcare, car schemes, life insurance and generous pension contributions.