Senior HR Business Partner

About HSO

HSO is a business transformation partner with deep industry expertise and global reach. HSO leverages the full power of the Microsoft Cloud to transform the way in which people work and engage customers, ultimately accelerating the impact of cloud transformation and improving overall business performance. By leveraging the power of Dynamics 365, Generative AI, Data, AI, Copilot capabilities and the full Microsoft Cloud; HSO helps companies innovate faster by modernising business operations, adopting data-driven intelligent automation, delivering real-time insights and connecting the enterprise. Founded in 1987, HSO has more than 2,500 professionals throughout Europe, North America, and Asia and is one of the world’s top business solution and implementation partners and a member of Microsoft’s elite Inner Circle, representing the top 1 percent of partners worldwide.

At HSO we take pride in being large enough to serve, but small enough to care. HSO UK has grown to more than 320 people and we expect over 100% organic growth in the next 4 years - with this comes an opportunity to create, deliver and evaluate our evolving business.

As an award-winning partner, HSO has been recognised as the global winner of the 2023 Partner of the Year Award for D365 Finance and as a Finalist for D365 Sales and Marketing. In addition to Best Tech Company 2021 to Work For and the 6th Best Large Company to Work For in 2022.

At HSO we transform the way in which people work and how businesses operate to get results for our clients. This takes exceptional cutting-edge technology, knowledge, talent, determination and entrepreneurial spirit. Our culture and values support entrepreneurial mindsets and attitudes where your voice will always be heard.

Purpose of the Role

This new generalist role bolsters the HR team by partnering with some of our Senior Leaders to define, develop and execute their people priorities addressing both tactical and strategic requirements, while also leading critical HR workstreams to ensure HSO are organisationally fit for growth.

We seek additional skills knowledge and experience in our team across Reward, Talent, Engagement, Employee Relations, Performance, Change Management and Organisational Development. By effectively managing these responsibilities and coaching others to develop their skills, you can help create a workplace where all our people feel valued, respected and empowered to contribute their unique perspectives and talents to HSO's success.

This business-critical role requires someone who has a strong grounding in HR best practice, good knowledge of the tech sector and project services, has successfully worked in a fast-paced environment and is looking to have a meaningful positive impact as part of an already successful team.

Overview of Experience and Key Responsibilities

Strategic Planning and Implementation

• Use commercial acumen to develop and execute organisational development strategies and initiatives which deliver HSO-UK's objectives and strategy. 

• Conduct organisational assessments to identify development needs and recommend solutions. 

• Partner with senior leadership to drive change management initiatives and foster a culture of continuous improvement. 

Talent Development 

• Support HSO Learning and Development in the design and implementation of comprehensive talent development programs, including leadership development, succession planning, and career pathing. 

• Facilitate workshops, training sessions, and coaching for employees at all levels. 

Performance Management 

• Oversee the continuous development and implementation of performance management systems. 

• Provide guidance on setting performance standards and evaluating employee performance. 

• Develop and update competency models, as required. 

• Communicate why this is important and how to best deliver outcomes with all stakeholders 

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion 

• Build a culture of trust which enables people to speak up, feel safe, and advocate for others. 

• Keep diversity, equity and inclusion at the forefront of choices HSO make, to ensure we support everyone equitably. 

• Stay informed about best practices and trends in DEI. 

Reward 

• Understand HSO’s pay, variable pay and benefits strategy. 

• Ensure that when reviewing reward, the end result aligns to HSO’s compensation strategy. 

• Support the implementation and education on our new approach to reward; linking pay to performance, communicating pay ranges, using compensation ratios and supporting cost modelling. 

• Support the implementation, communication, review and tracking of the HSO discretionary bonus scheme and all commission schemes. 

• Investigate job evaluation to facilitate HSO-UK contributing to and accessing independent salary and benefits surveys.  

• Present business case and cost effective options for moving to flexible benefits in time for 2026 implementation. 

• Market Analysis: Conduct market research to understand industry standards and ensure the company’s compensation is competitive. 

• Review external benefit providers including, pension, life assurance, healthcare, dental care, discount schemes, bike to work, charitable giving, etc to ensure HSO receive value for money and evaluate provider performance.  

• Use existing or best practice information to make informed choices about how and why HSO reward people. 

• Contribute data, insights and process flow for the annual pay and bonus review, ensuring it is delivered on time and under budget.

Engagement 

• Prepare HSO to enter Great Place to Work in the 2025 survey. 

• Design, implement and continuously improve HSO-UK’s engagement strategy. 

• Own submission and participation in the annual colleague engagement survey. 

• Teach HSO how to use focus groups and action plans directly resulting from the colleague engagement survey feedback, to make HSO a Great Place to Work.  

• Support and deliver information which can be used by different stakeholders to enable them to build understanding, buy-in and make actions happen. 

• Create and manage an Employee Recognition Scheme that is based on HSO values and desired behaviours. 

• Forge strong working relationships with colleagues outside of the UK to understand and contribute to the Global HSO community within the People function and others. 

Employee Relations 

• Foster a positive workplace culture by providing guidance and support to Line Managers and employees on all topics including absence, performance, conduct, conflict resolution, harassment, discrimination and company policies, ensuring compliance with legal and regulatory standards. 

Managing Risk 

• Provide planned and unplanned data and insights on HR key performance indicators to the HR Director and other colleagues.  Use this data to inform business choices.  

• Use storytelling approaches alongside data visualisations to influence decision-making on people issues. 

• Ensure robust management of all personal data handled by HR, adhering to HSO’s data protection policies and more broadly to GDPR legislation. 

• Ensure any matter is escalated at the most appropriate point to the people, for example to the wider HR Community, Line Managers and third parties. 

Stakeholder Engagement 

• Be able to identify and include all internal and external stakeholders with all pieces of work delivered, involving them in a timely way about the right topics. 

• Forge a positive working relationship with our external legal advisor, seeking advice as early as possible and ensuring we receive value for money from the service. 

Essential Behaviours   

• Demonstrates care with every interaction.   

• Integrity and ability to work with confidential information with discretion and sensitivity. 

• Friendly and approachable with high emotional intelligence. 

• Pragmatism and problem-solving skills and the ability to think creatively when faced with new problems, but also being pro-active in anticipating people concerns. 

• Comfortable to be in a difficult conversation.  

• Ability to work in a dynamic, fast-paced environment, adapting quickly to rapidly changing situations as well as being able to prioritise. 

• Excellent attention to detail and strong organisational skills. 

• Tenacious.  

• Able to influence others.  

• Able to say ‘no’ to someone, in the best way possible.   

• Uses relevant business acumen and facts to make informed choices.   

• Lateral thinker, who will actively listen and contribute to broader topics.  

• Ambitious both for personal development and success and ambitious for the success of HSO. 

Essential Experience

• Proven experience in leading and managing change projects in a maturing business.
• Designing, implementing and evaluating talent development and performance management programmes.
• Adding value to a business through HR practices, talent management and organisational development.
• Excellent communication, interpersonal, and leadership skills. • Ability to work effectively with cross-functional teams.
• Demonstrable impact on using different approaches to engagement that create organisation value and improve the colleague experience. For example building trust, colleague voice tools, colleague experience, employer brand, communication.
• Experience implementing a new reward approach to attract, motivate and retain people.
• Able to draw insights and intelligence about the external reward environment, including competitor reward.
• Worked with a flexible benefits scheme, including aligning benefits to create a total reward offering and how to protect the future financial security of the business.
• Able to curate data to give strategic advice which shapes solutions to people issues.
• Using business acumen to make informed choices about people.
• Confident to work with quantitative and qualitative data sources in excel, HR systems and Power BI, including creating reports, pivot tables and creating complex formulas.
• Able to flex communication skills for a positive interaction.
• Experience of working and serving a customer base remotely.
• Contributing to HR projects such as redundancy, reward reviews, HR system implementation, TUPE.
• Familiarity with expert people who engage with a business on different specialist areas including employment law, benefits providers, recruitment, L&D professionals.
• Worked successfully in an entrepreneurial medium sized business.

Location

This is a hybrid role, ideally based within a one hour commute of our Manchester office, however, strong candidates from outside of this distance will be considered. Regular, planned travel which will involve overnight stays near our Reading office, plus other UK locations for meetings, events and training. Occasional planned international travel.

We offer competitive and equal pay which reflects the skills, experience and performance of the individual. Any reward package will be discussed honestly during the interview process.

Our people can earn performance-based bonuses and everyone benefits from paid holiday, private healthcare, private dental care, life assurance, pension, retail discounts and monthly wellbeing activities