Director of People

About The Role

This is a integral leadership position where you'll drive the evolution and implementation of our people strategy, champion our Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) agenda, and serve as a trusted advisor to the CEO and Executive Team. You'll lead a talented team, enhance our policies and practices, and ensure our people operations are aligned with our mission to support children, schools, and communities across the UK.

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.

Key Responsibilities

• 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, employee relations, and engagement

• Lead the implementation of our EDI strategy and co-chair the EDI Steering Group

• Oversee employee engagement initiatives, including surveys and feedback forums

• 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

• Strategic thinker with a strong track record in policy development and team leadership

• Trusted advisor with the ability to influence senior stakeholders and drive cultural change

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 03/11/2025

1st Interview date: via Teams - W/C 17/11/2025

2nd Interview date: In person - W/C 24/11/2025

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.