People Consultant Lead
Permanent, Full Time
£56,722 to £66,732 per annum
Location: Chelmsford
Working Style: *
Closing Date: 17th July 2024
* The successful applicant w ill be required to attend the Chelmsford offices for collaboration on workstreams as well as for team meetings and casework, this typically averages 1 to 2 days per week.
The Opportunity
The People Consultant lead will play a crucial role in enabling the organisational strategy by ensuring that people policy, practices and interventions are embedded consistently across the organisation, coaching professional and leadership capability to increase competency, mitigate risk and create the right conditions which enable our employees to be their authentic self at work, achieve their potential and provide the best level of service to residents.
This role leads a team of People Consultants that provide expert HR support and advice to managers and leaders across the organisation on strategic and high risk issues, working with the People Business Partners to develop a deep understanding of the needs of our diverse services and employees. The People Consultant Lead is accountable for designing, delivering, assessing, and evolving people policies, practice, and interventions to enable ECC to deliver its ambitions and put its values into practice, maintaining professional standards, embedding ethical behaviour and delivering holistic interventions that drive transformational change and ensure it is successfully implemented and embedded.
This is an impactful role, requiring both HR expertise and thought leadership, responsible for allocating and managing complex cases across the People Consultant team, overseeing case progression and working with legal colleagues to ensure consistency and limit potential employment risks for ECC. This role also maintains a holistic view of core people activity aligned to strategic priorities, BAU and transformational programmes, allocating resource, tracking progress and measuring outcomes, ensuring professional application of the consultancy model is embedded, providing oversight and guidance on project requirements, to ensure a consistent approach. This ensures that we are delivering best value and impact over the medium to long term through effective programme management and embedding a culture of continuous improvement.
You will be responsible for:
1. Proactively support the design, implementation, evaluation and evolution of employment standards, people policies, practices and interventions, to ensure they are future-focused, relevant, innovative, cost effective and inclusive.,Aligned to the organisational strategy supporting the delivery of both organisational and functional priorities and enabling the organisations workforce strategy working collaboratively with a wide range of stakeholders across functional and organisational boundaries, ensuring effective communication and shared ownership.
2. Quality assure our employment standards, policies and practices, assessing how they work in practice to ensure that they are fit for purpose and forward focussed, providing feedback and proactively contributing to the ongoing development both as an individual and through team contributions.
3. Champion thought leadership through a blend of external market awareness and internal insights, blending external industry trends and internal knowledge to drive innovation and influence decision-making. Staying abreast of external benchmarking, emerging technologies, and internal expertise, this role will be responsible for the development of forward-thinking people strategies, frameworks, tools and solutions that shape behaviours, influence culture and drive tangible results
4. Manage highly complex and difficult conversations at a senior level; present, explain, motivate, engage influence, persuade and challenge up to corporate and political leadership level.
5. Lead, coach, develop and manage your team to ensure work is completed to the highest standard through professional use of the consultancy model, continually assessing the impact and contributing to the ongoing development and maturity of the consultancy model across People and Organisational Development.
6. Provide expertise and appropriate professional advice to resolve people issues and inform people strategy working collaboratively across the People and Organisational Development function and wider leadership and management population, inside and outside of ECC to develop capability and ensure an outside in approach.
7. Responsible for driving delivery through effective leadership and by efficiently allocating and commissioning resources from relevant teams, coordinating projects through cross-functional teams, securing subject matter expertise as required.
8. Work collaboratively with People Business Partners and People Leads colleagues in the advancement of the People & Organisation Development service, using insight and intelligence to deliver innovative solutions which support delivery of our Workforce Strategy and demonstrate professional expertise, drive continuous improvement and value add to the organisation.
9. Regularly update knowledge and skills to meet the evolving standards set by the Chartered Institute of Personnel & Development (CIPD) at standards level of Chartered Membership or above. Integrating the CIPD and its framework into all actions, including participation in continuous professional development activities and ensuring that ECC’s HR practices and strategies are in accordance with the CIPD's ethical guidelines.
Skills, Knowledge and Experience:
10. Educated to degree level in a relevant professional field such as Human Resources, employment law, business management, or equivalent by experience.
11. Professional membership of CIPD at Chartered Level or working towards this.
12. Evidence of continuing professional development with an expert understanding of employment law, a deep understanding of core HR and a broad understanding of all other HR specialisms with the ability to apply these at a tactical level.
13. Demonstrable experience of managing complex cultural, systems, process and behavioural change through professional application and proactive development of the consultancy model.
14. Extensive experience of working as a consultant in a large, complex, matrix environment with demonstrable evidence of developing, implementing and evaluating people policies, practices interventions aligned to organisational goals.
15. Evidence of using external insight, internal data and professional judgement to create, implement and assess the impact of human resources strategy aligned to organisational strategy and business plans to deliver tangible outcomes, enable data driven decision making and drive continuous improvement in a large, complex matrix organisation.
16. Demonstrable knowledge of the critical factors in planning change and practical experience of applying project and programme management approaches to deliver high quality results on time and to budget with the ability to identify risks and create mitigation plans.
17. Strong communication and report writing skills with the ability to influence internal and external stakeholders at all levels including the corporate leadership team, political leadership team and partners. Demonstrable evidence of coaching others to influence behaviours and improve performance.
18. Evidence of providing strong, adaptable leadership demonstrating resilience and tenacity in pursuing goals, delivering successful outcomes through others and role modelling ethical behaviours and professional integrity.
19. Strong working knowledge of business technologies and the benefits/limitations this provides to support the people agenda.
Why Essex?
Essex County Council has a location to be proud of. Our 1,300 square miles stretch from Constable Country to the Thames Estuary, from the dynamic M11 corridor to the traditional seaside resorts of Clacton and Walton. England’s oldest town, Colchester, and two of its newest – Basildon and Harlow – are right here. Along with the City of Chelmsford, the county town, they form our major population centres. It means real choice and makes Essex the ideal place for your career. Read more about us
Essex County Council is proud to be a Disability Confident Leader. We’re committed to interview all disabled applicants who choose to apply under our Job Interview Scheme if they meet the minimum requirements of the job. Please speak to our Recruiters if you require any reasonable adjustments during the process.
We’re also committed to interview all veterans and care leavers, who meet the minimum requirements of the role for which they are applying.