Senior HR Business Partner

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At the Government Commercial Agency, we know that high-performing people drive value for the nation. We need a Senior HR Business Partner who masters strategic influence over simple process management.

Ready to align your HR expertise with national priority? Join us to lead the people strategies that transform commercial potential into value for the nation.

Job Summary

This role acts as the strategic people link between HR and your assigned business directorate(s), providing the insight necessary to drive the people strategy to meet GCA objectives, this will include acting as a "critical friend" and coach to senior leadership teams.

Following the four core principles of the HRBP model, you will be responsible for:

• Strategic Partnering: Partnering with executive and senior management to ensure department goals are backed by the right talent and capability. Focus on building strong relationships to support how they shape and deliver GCA people strategies across the directorates to drive measurable business impact.

• Solving: Providing strategic input on people topics and developing pragmatic solutions for complex people challenges.

• Connecting: Designing or commissioning large scale projects led by HR centres of expertise, helping the organisation draw on appropriate centres of expertise and shared service support.

• Coaching: Empowering leaders to navigate ambiguity, develop capability, and sustain transformational change.

You will lead specific people projects and drive key agendas, including workforce planning, talent management, complex employee relations and organisational design to translate directly into commercial value.

To support team engagement, there is a minimum requirement of 2 days per week in a GCA office, along with adhoc travel to other GCA locations as and when required.

Key Accountabilities:

Strategy & Partnering

• Elevating business conversation by partnering with leaders to drive the people strategies that power organisational success.

• Translating business objectives and strategy into functional people plans, ensuring measurable, sustainable outcomes that add value to the business.

• Acting as a trusted advisor and providing expert advice to Senior Leadership Teams (SLTs), proactively offering high-level challenge and data driven insight on all people-related subjects

• Driving strategic workforce planning within directorates, ensuring they have the right capacity and capability to deliver their objectives

• Partnering with HR Centres of Excellence, providing feedback from the business, shaping organisational people strategy and effective change initiatives

• Building and maintaining strong relationships across the organisation with senior leaders, functional leads and staff networks, developing people plans to enable the business to achieve strategic objectives

Capability Development

• Coaching and influencing business leaders to optimise capability, accessing expertise from the L&D team to develop robust talent management, leadership pipeline and succession planning, and enhance line-manager performance across directorates

• Collaborating with the L&D Business Partners to drive a high performance learning culture within directorates.

Operations

• Providing directorate SLTs with insights into Business Partnering progress, trends, risks, and impact, moving beyond reporting to offer predictive analysis, diagnosis and mitigation strategies to support leadership decision making.

• Ensuring all directorate activity operates in alignment with policy, employment law, and Civil Service regulatory requirements

• Leading high-impact, enterprise-wide people projects by navigating complex risks and dependencies to drive systemic improvements in organisational health and performance.

• Driving strategic HR insights and accountability through the use and interpretation of HR analytics inform senior-level decision making and governance.

Reward

• Partner with senior leadership teams to provide strategic oversight and advice on reward and recognition frameworks, driving accountability for enhanced performance and critical capability development in alignment with Civil Service principles

Organisational Development

• Driving transformation and improving performance through collaborative leadership, people management, and OD&D expertise. Leading and overseeing the delivery of OD&D services, projects, and interventions to ensure impactful outcomes. Collaborate with colleagues to identify opportunities for improvement and support organisation development and design initiatives or programmes within teams and directorates.

• Acting as an enabler of change, working with the Change Business Partner to identify change readiness and establish initiatives to support organisational and directorate change.

• Applying deep expertise of behaviour, culture and people systems, collaborating with cross-functional leaders to drive performance, change and transformation.

Employee Relations & Governance

• Collaborating with HR Advisory and MOJ Casework team and provide high-level guidance and oversight on complex or high-risk employee relations cases, ensuring consistency and fairness across directorates

• Embedding effective governance controls and people risk management; proactively identifying mitigation strategies for systemic workforce risks, ensuring clear escalation pathways and leading the strategic response at a directorate level.

Essential Criteria (to be assessed at application stage):

• Professional Expertise: CIPD Level 7 accreditation (or equivalent professional experience), or a committed willingness to work toward it.

• Strategic Delivery: A proven track record of driving high-impact people initiatives and leading complex change programs.

• Data-Driven Insight: The ability to interpret workforce analytics to inform and validate strategic decision-making.

• Leadership Influence: Expert coaching skills with the ability to influence senior leaders across all HR domains, including engagement, talent, and capability.

• Relationship Management: Highly developed interpersonal skills to build credibility and influence at the most senior levels with both internal and external stakeholders.