Head of Talent

Overview Application Deadline: 26 September 2025

Department: People Team

Employment Type: Full Time

Location: Birmingham/Leeds

Contract type: Permanent

Hours: 37.5

Salary: circa £95,000 depending on experience

Location: Birmingham or Leeds (near main train stations)

Travel: The postholder will be required to travel (expensed) to Canary Wharf once a month to attend a People team meeting. Occasional travel to other locations may also be required in line with business needs.

WFH policy: Employees are required to attend the office 2 days/week

Flexible working: Variety of flexible work patterns subject to line manager discretion e.g. Compressed 9-day fortnight.

Reports to: Chief People Officer

Deadline Note: We reserve the right to close the advert before the advertised deadline if there are a high volume of applications.

Description At LCCC we sit at the heart of accelerating net zero, and our people are at the heart of our success. The Head of Talent is responsible for the strategy for how we acquire, identify, develop and manage the talent we need to deliver our goals. They will ensure that we take an inclusive approach to everything we do, and that the Values are embedded in all of our ways of working to create a culture where our people can grow, succeed and thrive.

Reporting to the CPO, and partnering with the Head of People Partnering & Operations, and senior leaders, the Head of Talent will have responsibility for the following activities, and leadership of the teams that deliver them:

• Strategic workforce planning - enabling a longer-term view of capability needs and plans to build, borrow, buy and bot.
• Talent Acquisition - strategies for how we attract, select and secure talent.
• Learning & Development - approach to how we develop talent at all levels.
• Performance Management - framework to drive a high-performance culture.
• Talent Management - ensuring an action-oriented approach to talent and succession.
• Diversity, Equity & Inclusion - ensuring DEI is threaded through everything we do.
• Culture - embedding LCCC values in all of our ways of working.

Key Responsibilities Strategic Workforce Planning

• Lead on strategic workforce planning for LCCC, working closely with Head of People Partnering & Ops, Finance Team and senior leaders.
• Enable a longer-term view, rolling view of capability needs and plans to build, borrow, buy and bot.
• Ensure all Talent activities are integrated and synced up with the strategy planning cycle.
• Develop plans to ensure that the organisation has the change capability which will enable the organisation to evolve and adapt to internal and external developments.

Talent Acquisition

• Develop and deliver strategy that enables us to attract, select and secure talent.
• Partner with Finance to establish, review and manage the headcount plan.
• Oversee hiring performance ensuring roles are filled in line with the hiring plan, balancing time to hire with quality.
• Partner with TA Team and Internal and External Communications to ensure we have a strong and clearly articulated employer brand (external) and EVP (internal).
• Build hiring capability to ensure the bar continues to remain high as we scale.
• Direct management of director and non-executive director selection process.

Learning & Development

• Lead efforts to develop talent at all levels in the organisation.
• Ensure a robust learning offering for all and strong focus on the fundamentals, including good personal development discussions.
• Further embed the 70:20:10 approach to learning.
• Play a leading role in leadership and talent development and assessment.
• Enable deployment of a coaching framework and methodology.

Performance Management

• Owner of the framework to ensure we are driving a high-performance culture; enabling discerning performance assessments which rewards out-performance and addresses under-performance.
• Work closely with Head of People Partnering & Ops, People Business Partners and senior leaders to ensure we are deploying a robust and consistent approach to performance assessment.
• Working with the Reward Partner to ensure the right standards and behaviours are being rewarded and recognised.

Talent Management

• Drive an action-oriented approach to talent management and succession planning that enables talent retention and 'right person, right role, right time'.
• Directly lead on Talent Review process with Executive Team and oversee cascade through the organisation.
• Working closely with the Head of People Partnering & Ops and Reward Partner, lead the development and implementation of LCCC progression framework(s).
• Ensure a strong pipeline of future talent, including definition and delivery of early careers strategy.

Diversity, Equity & Inclusion

• Develop plans to ensure we take an inclusive approach to everything we do, and that DEI remains top of mind in the organisation.
• Ensure we are managing and maintaining the right external partners / accreditation processes, that enable us to further progress our DEI agenda.
• Partner with the broader People Team to ensure that we are viewing all our activity through the lens of inclusion.

Culture

• Ensure that our LCCC values are embedded in all of our ways of working, not only in the Talent space, but, in conjunction with the broader People Team, across the organisation.

Team

• Combine the hands-on approach needed in an organisation of our size and scale, with empowering a team of Talent professionals to own and deliver in their areas.
• Engender a strong end-to-end delivery mindset in the team - ensuring we are ambitious in plans and honour our commitments.
• Build and leverage highly effective peer relationships, for the benefit of the broader People team and organisation; pro-actively challenging and removing SILOs.
• Partner with the CPO and Head of People Partnering & Ops to ensure we are deploying strong talent management practices within the People Team and practice what we preach.

Stakeholder

• Build strong relationships with senior leaders (Executive Team and Heads of Teams) across the organisation to secure delivery of the Talent agenda.
• Act as 'trusted partner' to our leaders; balancing support and challenge effectively and building trust in the People Team.
• Work closely with Internal and External Communications to ensure we articulate a joined-up, compelling messages about our Talent agenda.

Skills Knowledge and Expertise Essential

• Demonstrable experience of operating at a strategic level across all aspects of the Talent agenda - from attraction, to management, development to retention, including performance management.
• Experience of strategic workforce planning in action.
• Strong track record in senior attraction and selection, including management of executive search provider relationships.
• Skilled in designing and delivering learning programmes, including leadership and talent development.
• Able to demonstrate how they have designed framework(s) that have delivered notable shifts in organisational performance.
• Able to evidence an action-oriented approach to talent management and succession; driving tangible activity to strengthen the future pipeline.
• Understanding of frameworks to enable career progression, whilst maintaining the principles of good organisation design (e.g. spans and layers).
• Has acted as 'Talent Scout' for the organisation; with a strong personal focus on identifying and nurturing talent - for today and tomorrow.
• Experience in designing and deploying strategy and plans for early careers talent.
• Exposure to how inclusive cultures work and feel - and experience in implementing interventions that drive meaningful change.
• Experienced in creating / leading interventions that contribute to the creation of positive, progressive organisational cultures, where company Values are lived and breathed and threaded through everything we do.
• Track record in leading large-scale change and transformation programmes and building change capability for the future.
• Highly skilled in leading and empowering a team of People professionals; balancing empathy with a strong delivery focus.
• Ability to 'zoom in and out' - developing strategy for tomorrow whilst enabling delivery today.
• Creative problem solver - proactively bringing solutions to address business challenges and enabling continuous improvement of our products and services.
• Confident analysis of data to demonstrate the return on investment of Talent activity.
• First-class stakeholder management skills, at all levels, driving a co-creation approach across the Talent agenda.
• Skilled in navigating ambiguity - thrives in an environment where not everything is in place / fixed.
• Results orientated, with good business acumen and strong commercial awareness.

Desirable

• Accredited user of psychometric tools for assessment and development.
• Executive coaching qualification and experience of deploying a coaching approach.
• Exposure to management of non-executive director hiring.
• Experience of working across the broader People agenda, e.g. as a generalist / business partner.
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