Strategic People and Talent Business Partner

TalkTalk is embarking on a large-scale cultural transformation, moving from a Telco to a Techco. To help shape our future, our People and Culture Team requires highly experienced Strategic People and Talent Business Partner with visionary minds to join our transformative journey.

These are senior, yet hands-on, high impact and influential roles, requiring proven experience in strategic people partnering, enabling you to help translate our overall people and culture strategy into actionable, business-aligned initiatives, to provide transformational outcomes.

As well as playing a critical role within the People and Culture Team, helping shape and deliver our People strategy and services to enhance our colleague and customer experiences, you will be a trusted and credible advisor to our Executive Committee members and their teams. Providing strategic thought leadership and challenge, you will proactively identify and deliver strategic people solutions that drive organisational effectiveness, in key areas such as simplifying our organisation, through effective end to end organisational design, manpower and talent planning. You will also help to power our leaders, acquire and grow our talent and build a high-performance accountable and engaged culture.

This requires a strong balance of strategic thinking, business and financial acumen as well as proactive solutions, and data and insight led operational delivery, in anticipating and meeting our ever-changing requirements and ensuring that People considerations are central to every decision; ultimately fuelling our sustainable growth.

Key to the role is establishing new and better ways of working for the business with the People team, focused prioritisation, and enabling self-serve capabilities in activities traditionally managed within the team.

Required Skills & Experience:

Strategic partner

• Trusted senior Strategic People and Talent Partner to Executives and their teams, who deeply understand how to translate strategic business priorities into simple, actionable People initiatives that deliver organisational effectiveness, aligned to organisational goals.
• Developing strong, credible proactive and valued relationships at all levels, championing inclusion and creating an engaged performance culture enhancing TalkTalk’s reputation.
• Elevating leadership impact by shaping & delivering key development initiatives that build capability, drive accountability, and support a high-performance, agile, can-do culture.
• Embedding an organisational rhythm where people initiatives are consistently prioritised.
• Strategic people leadership, managing legal and reputational risk in a dynamic environment. Identifying, mitigating and escalating people, financial and operational risks, ensuring compliance with legal, regulatory requirements and company policies.

Transformation leader

• Leading transformation initiatives, guiding leaders through key shifts to ensure smooth transitions, mitigate disruption and embed the right cultural behaviours.
• Organisational design expertise, utilising OD tools & methodology to deliver appropriate structures & roles to optimise organisational effectiveness.

Talent partner

• Executing Talent management strategies that identify and grow the right skills, behaviours and expertise, deepen the succession bench, promote Diversity, Equality Belonging and Inclusion, and ensure TalkTalk attracts, retains, and grows key talent.
• Informing and embedding appropriate talent, career development & succession frameworks that empower our people to achieve their goals.
• Developing & implementing robust workforce plans, ensuring the right talent capacity is in place at the right time to achieve our goals, carefully considering requirement/impact of contractor/outsourced resources, legal & best practice considerations and future growth.

Culture specialist

• Embedding performance metrics and frameworks that assess and enhance individual and organisational performance and promote a continuous improvement culture.
• Building a positive climate where concerns are addressed and conflicts are resolved in a timely and appropriate manner, in line with our policies, procedures, shared behaviours and values, utilising your proven depth of ER and IR experience.
• Driving engagement strategies that enable positive colleague experience.

Data-driven & CI

• Providing People Team thought leadership, delivering continuous operational excellence, toolset, mindset, and skillset to ensure consistent and timely high-quality support.
• Monitoring and analysing business performance, providing insights, regular reporting and recommendations to leaders to improve efficiency and profitability.
• Utilising people data, insights and external market trends to inform decision-making, recommended and implement opportunities and measure organisational effectiveness.
• Staying updated on industry trends and best practises, advising leaders and proactively updating services to reflect relevant changes in HR legislation and policies.

Success Criteria

We are looking for candidates who thrive in fast paced, change-oriented environments, are adept at operating strategically and operationally with ease, and bring the following essential criteria:

• MCIPD/FCIPD qualified HR professional with a significant portion of prior experience in Strategic Partnering/OE/Talent roles to Executive levels within multiple matrix, fast paced and agile organisations, ideally in product-led, technology environments and with strong understanding and expertise in organisation design.
• Strong generalist abilities coupled with experience operating in at least one specialist area across Talent, OD, or People Services leadership.
• Passionate about your ongoing CPD you will hold additional certifications such as psychometric assessment, coaching, OD or appropriate change/ agile methodologies.
• Strong experience leading organisational & cultural transformation in a programmatic way, guiding people through complex change & op model redesign with positive outcomes.
• Demonstrable ability in understanding complex business challenges, translating these to actionable people strategies, and driving impactful solutions for commercial success.
• Coaching leaders in creating, transitioning and embedding successful operating models, supporting change and capability development with confidence. Ensuring roles and structures are well defined, scalable & adaptable to support business agility and growth.
• Adept at designing and leading enterprise-wide talent strategies, including succession planning, performance management, talent reviews, skills mapping, & workforce planning.
• Building workforce agility and flexibility by identifying needs and supporting the design, implementation, and delivery of organisational development to drive cultural change, improving team dynamics, and build capabilities, optimising org effectiveness.
• Expertise in managing complex employee relations issues competently and confidently, providing strategic guidance, and fostering a positive employee relations environment.
• Simultaneously managing multiple projects successfully delivering impactful results.
• Fostering leadership maturity, strategic thinking, positive workplace culture and addressing people issues with authority, credibility & excellence, with minimal handholding.
• Constructively building positive, credible and collaborative relationships where listening, consulting, influencing, & proactively communicating is key.
• Ensuring all people initiatives deliver cultural change and enterprise-wide success.
• Proven ability to articulate complex insights clearly and persuasively, using data to build compelling narratives that influence stakeholders and drive action.
• Performance oriented, delivering against organisational goals & tracking business impact.
• Championing the TalkTalk culture with passion to drive transformational change.

Behaviours and Attributes

• Ability to think systemically and translate complex challenges into practical solutions.
• Adapt and respond positively to organisational change and ambiguity, making positive use of the opportunity change management creates and demonstrating growth mindset.
• A bias for action, laser focussed on timely delivery of milestones and positive outcomes.
• High self-awareness, empathy and ability to navigate complex interpersonal dynamics with composure and resilience.
• A proactive, problem-solving approach with excellent attention to detail and the ability to drive change effectively, handling unexpected challenges and complexity positively.
• A collaborative, curious mindset with a solutions-focus continuous improvement outlook.
• Willingness to question the status quo and offer alternative perspectives with tact and integrity, supported through appropriate data and insight.
• Confidence in facilitating workshops, engaging stakeholders, and navigating ambiguity.
• Passion for continuous learning, innovation, and driving improvement in self and others.

What We Offer

• Flexible hybrid working – with a minimum of 50% office (Manchester) presence to support teamwork and connection
• Collaborative office spaces designed for creative thinking and innovation
• Free on-site parking at our offices
• Generous holiday package – 25 days annual leave, 3 wellbeing days, and your birthday off (plus the option to buy up to 10 more days!)
• Private healthcare for all employees
• Competitive pension scheme and performance-related bonus opportunities
• Free broadband for all employees
• Life event gifts – celebrating milestones like marriages and births
• Inclusive employee networks – open to all, supporting peer connection and thought-provoking conversations
• Salary sacrifice scheme – save on dental, gym, and more
• Big retail and leisure discounts
• 3 paid volunteering days a year – because making a difference matters to us too