People Integration & Project Manager

Job Title: People Integration & Project Manager
Location: Hybrid Working – London N3 / EC4M (Minimum 3 days in office – travel to other London offices may be required)
Working Hours: Monday to Friday, 35 hour week
Reporting to: M&A Director

Salary: £60,000 - £65,000

About BKL

BKL is a Top 40 accountancy and advisory business supporting a diverse client base, from entrepreneurs and high-net-worth individuals to ambitious owner-managed businesses and multinational groups. With a legacy spanning over 130 years, we’ve evolved into a modern, purpose-driven business that balances profit with impact.

We are proud to be a certified B Corp, reflecting our commitment to sustainability, transparency, and responsible governance. As a member of DFK International, we support clients locally and internationally with cutting-edge expertise and a personal touch.

We believe all clients deserve the same level of care, innovation, and excellence.

Your Opportunity

Work across two clear areas of focus: project-managing the People workstream through BKL's mergers and acquisitions, from due diligence through to full integration; and leading a focused portfolio of wider People & Culture projects. For M&A, the role manages the People due diligence process alongside the wider M&A team, coordinates specialist input and leads the translation of findings into action. It then project-manages the People integration plan through to effective business-as-usual handover.

Across both focus areas, you will bring structure, momentum and accountability to complex change without losing sight of the people experiencing it. You will turn ideas and decisions into practical delivery plans, bring the right people together, build relationships across the business and make change understandable, workable and sustainable for employees and managers.

This is not a transactional project-management role or a replacement for subject-matter expertise already held within the People team. You will own project management, coordination and follow-through, while People specialists and workstream leads retain accountability for specialist advice, decisions and functional delivery.

A core purpose of the role is to create capacity across the People team. You will own the programme infrastructure, coordination and follow-through that enables People leaders and specialists to focus on expertise, judgement, relationships and business outcomes across both M&A integration and wider People projects.

How You’ll Make a Difference

Focus area 1: People M&A integration

The primary focus is to project-manage the People workstream across due diligence and post-deal integration. The role works closely with the wider M&A team and People specialists, manages the process, connects the activity and turns findings into an executable People plan. It does not replace the specialists who lead the underlying due diligence or functional delivery.

Project-manage the People due diligence workstream and turn findings into action

• Work with the M&A team to mobilise and manage the People due diligence process, clarifying scope, inputs, owners, milestones, dependencies and governance from a People workstream perspective.

• Coordinate contributions from People specialists, Corporate Development, Finance, Legal, external advisers and acquired-business leaders, ensuring the right information is requested, reviewed and brought together at the right time.

• Maintain the People due diligence plan, tracker, risks, actions, questions and decision points, and provide clear progress reporting and escalation.

• Support People specialists to assess employment, workforce, organisational, reward, benefits, culture, employee-experience and people-cost matters. The role coordinates and challenges the process rather than acting as the sole subject-matter expert.

• Consolidate the findings into a clear view of material risks, costs, dependencies and recommended mitigations for the M&A Director, deal team and relevant governance forums.

• Lead the translation of agreed findings into integration priorities, owners, costs, milestones and practical actions, maintaining traceability from due diligence through to delivery.

Project-manage People integration

• Mobilise and manage the People workstream from signing and completion through Day 1, Day 30, Day 100 and longer-term integration.

• Build integrated People plans covering organisational design, role alignment, consultation, contracts, payroll, benefits, pensions, People systems, onboarding, communications, engagement, retention and employee experience.

• Establish proportionate integration governance, including RAID logs, action and decision logs, critical paths, costs and benefit tracking, and report progress clearly to the M&A Director and integration steering groups.

• Maintain alignment with the wider integration programme and actively manage dependencies with Corporate Development, Finance, Technology, Legal, Payroll and business leaders.

• Support the relevant People specialists and business owners to deliver their elements of the integration plan, while retaining accountability for People workstream coordination, pace, follow-through and escalation.

• Track whether each integration has met its People objectives and ensure activities transfer cleanly into business-as-usual ownership, with outstanding actions, measures, documentation and accountabilities understood.

Focus area 2: People & Culture projects

The second focus is to lead or project-manage selected cross-functional People & Culture priorities. The role applies the same structure, pace and human-centred change discipline used in M&A, while functional and specialist teams retain ownership of their subject-matter decisions and deliverables.

Lead selected strategic People & Culture projects

• Own a portfolio view of significant People projects, creating clear visibility of scope, outcomes, milestones, owners, risks, dependencies, capacity and decisions alongside the M&A pipeline.

• Lead selected high-priority People and organisational projects from definition and discovery through implementation, adoption, stabilisation and business-as-usual handover.

• Turn strategic priorities and ambiguous problems into clear scope, outcomes, plans, decision points, delivery pathways and success measures.

• Projects may cover the People operating model, organisational design, workforce change, employee experience, talent and career frameworks, reward and benefits, policy or regulatory change, data and reporting, manager or leadership initiatives, and People technology or process change.

• Balance the broader People project portfolio with M&A demand, identifying resource conflicts and sequencing issues early and bringing clear recommendations to the M&A Director, Chief People Officer and People Leadership Team.

Support the team to deliver specialist elements of strategic projects

• Coordinate contributions from People specialists, People Operations, Payroll, Technology, Information Security, Finance, Legal, business leaders, vendors and implementation partners, with each area retaining ownership of its specialist decisions and outputs.

• Support the team to shape employee experience, culture, communications, listening, consultation, manager support, training, readiness and adoption activity as part of the overall project plan.

• Support People Operations, Payroll, Technology and vendors with the proj