Chief People Officer

Plenty of organisations say the customer comes first. Far fewer are built around it. Our client, an organisation with c.1,000 colleagues, is one of them: a values-led culture, a clear sense of why it exists, and a Chief Executive who treats employee experience as the engine behind customer experience rather than a side project. After a significant period of change, the leadership team has found its rhythm, and it now needs a new Chief People Officer to turn that momentum into sustained commercial performance.

This is a full Executive Committee role with real influence. You will be the person the Chief Executive wants in the room when strategy is being shaped and the financial plan is being delivered, working alongside a cohesive, collaborative Executive team that welcomes challenge. Your remit goes well beyond traditional HR, with a sizeable team behind you, and your decisions on talent, reward and structure will show up in the results. Communications is a strategic lever here, connecting every colleague to the customer journey and the part they play in it. With the culture still taking shape, there is ample scope for you to influence it from the front.

You will bring the outside world in, using insight, benchmarks and perspective from your career and networks to inform the Executive team and RemCo. AI will inevitably reshape how the organisation works too, and you will help the leadership turn it into a source of capability and productivity, with people, skills and ways of working evolving alongside it.

We would like to hear from senior people leaders; CPO’s or People Directors who have reported directly to a Chief Executive and worked at executive level as a commercially minded partner. You are a seasoned leader with clear ambition for the next stage of your career and a strong appetite for continued growth and development. You will have been accountable for the end-to-end people strategy and linked it to business outcomes, led complex organisational change, built robust succession pipelines, and gained practical exposure to introducing AI into business functions. Just as important is how you lead: you persuade through conviction and credibility, you are comfortable challenging at the top table, and you have the warmth and fairness to take colleagues with you. Experience in a regulated environment is essential.

The package is attractive, with meaningful bonus potential, a car allowance, enhanced pension and family private medical cover. The role is hybrid, based in the South West 2-3 days pw.  Preferred start date in Q1 2027.