Swydd wag: Director of People and Workplace, UK Health Security Agency, Birmingham, London, Leeds, Liverpool.

Crynodeb o'r swydd

Prif leoliad

Human Resources

Gradd

Civil Service: Senior Civil Servant (SCS) 2

Contract

Parhaol

Oriau

Llawnamser
Gweithio hyblyg

37 awr yr wythnos

Cyfeirnod y swydd

919-CP-305803-EXT

Cyflogwr: UK Health Security Agency
Math o gyflogwr: Public (Non NHS)
Gwefan: UKHSA Core Locations, Scientific campus', Regional offices
Tref: Birmingham, London, Leeds, Liverpool.
Cyflog: £100,000 - £125,000 per annum, pro rata
Cyfnod cyflog: Yn flynyddol
Yn cau: 08/09/2025 23:59

Director of People and Workplace

Civil Service: Senior Civil Servant (SCS) 2

The United Kingdom Health Security Agency (UKHSA) is a system leader for health security; taking action internationally to strengthen global health security, providing trusted advice to government and the public and reducing inequalities in the way different communities experience and are impacted by infectious disease, environmental hazards, and other threats to health.

UKHSA’s remit, as an agency with a global-to-local reach, is to protect the health of the nation from infectious diseases and other external threats to health. As the nation’s expert national health security agency UKHSA will:

Prevent: anticipate threats to health and help build the nation’s readiness, defences and health security
Detect: use cutting edge environmental and biological surveillance to proactively detect and monitor infectious diseases and threats to health
Analyse: use world-class science and data analytics to assess and continually monitor threats to health, identifying how best to control and mitigate the risks
Respond: take rapid, collaborative and effective actions nationally and locally to mitigate threats to health when they materialise
Lead: lead strong and sustainable global, national, regional and local partnerships designed to save lives, protect the nation from public health threats and reduce inequalities.

Swydd-ddisgrifiad a phrif gyfrifoldebau manwl

Leadership and Strategic Oversight

• Accountable for the development and delivery of the People and Workplace strategy for UKHSA, ensuring we provide a great people experience and a safe and compliant workplace. for the overall delivery of the People and Workplace function for UKHSA, serving as the
• Provide strategic oversight for workplace future strategy, facilities management, and workplace governance, including Health & Safety requirements.

Talent Management & Development

• Lead efforts to attract, retain, and develop top talent, ensuring a seamless onboarding process and effective succession planning.
• Oversee a well-functioning performance management system that fosters clear goal setting, constructive feedback, and forward-looking individual development plans.
• Ensure managers are trained and capable of conducting effective performance conversations, contributing to a high-performance culture aligned with core values.
• Head of Profession for HR and accountable for ensuring we have the appropriate leads in place for all the relevant streams of People and Workplace.

Reward Strategy & People Operations

• Develop and oversee a competitive reward and benefits program tailored to attract and retain top talent, ensuring alignment with public sector requirements and the organisation's purpose.
• Provide strategic oversight to ensure the competitiveness of the reward offering through research, benchmarking, and alignment with equality and diversity considerations.

Culture & Collaboration

• Shape and foster a collaborative, high-performance culture that reflects core values throughout the people team, its processes, policies, and practices, including recruitment and rewards.
• Build and model candid, respectful, and trusting relationships across the leadership team, promoting open communication and mutual respect working in partnership with our staff representatives.
• Lead the organisation in meeting D&I recruitment and retention targets, ensuring diverse talent is effectively integrated and retained across the organisation.
• Serve as a trusted coach and mentor on all D&I issues, driving initiatives that promote an inclusive workplace culture.
• transforming HR, by driving efficiencies into our processes, supporting the implementation technology enabling people processes for our employees, line managers and HR colleagues.
• Building the capability of the wider People and Workplace team by ensuring we have the right specialist expertise to lead and advise the business.

Workplace and Security

• Creating and leading on a Sustainability Strategy for the Agency and being accountable for sustainability reporting.
• Maximising the use of our estates, facilities and service management to ensure we provide engaging, fit for purpose workplaces that suit the diverse nature of our business activity and reflect future location strategies.
• Overseeing statutory compliance, contract management, procurement, and site access within our national office estate.
• Accountable for UKHSA's security ensuring everyone is responsible for taking preventative measures to protect our assets, people, information, and operations in line with the Gov007 functional standards (on GOV.UK).
• Promote a healthy security culture, whilst making UKHSA more resilient, and less vulnerable to security threats.
• Oversee security services including personnel and physical security, vetting, threat analysis, security risk management and security education and awareness.

Health and Safety

• Lead cross-organisational regulatory compliance and assurance activities, ensuring that the requirements of regulators such as the Health and Safety Executive are met.
• Ensuring our three lines of defence model is robust, providing advice and collaborating with colleagues managing our operational Health and Safety processes and risks.
• Lead the delivery of an organisation-wide incident and risk reporting, ensuring trends and themes are identified are acted on and lessons learnt disseminated to avoid future problems, and promote an open and transparent safety culture across the organisation.
• The postholder will lead on the development, implementation, and continuous improvement of Health & Safety polices and processes, driving a best practice culture for health, safety and wellbeing throughout the UKHSA estate.
• Ability to interpret human factors data and translate them into actionable strategies. Leading initiatives that incorporate human factors that enhance productivity, safety, and well-being.

Please see candidate pack for more details.

Person Specification:

Essential Criteria:

• Chartered Fellow/fully qualified member (Level 7) of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) or equivalent professional qualification or HR knowledge.
• A change-centric, innovative People leader with extensive experience driving transformational strategies across complex organisations, underpinned by strong financial acumen and budget management.
• Proven track record of aligning People and Workplace strategies to business priorities, leading high-performing teams, and delivering with excellence—even under sustained pressure, scrutiny, and ambiguity.
• Demonstrates significant leadership in Health & Safety, facilities, and security governance, with deep experience in organisational risk management, compliance, and incident response.
• Possesses a broad technical understanding of People and Workplace functions, using this knowledge to enhance organisational performance, culture, and long-term capability.
• A consistent advocate for equity, diversity, and inclusion, with a successful track record of fostering a cohesive, customer-focused, and values-led culture across diverse workforces.

Security Clearance Level Requirement

• If successful you must hold, or be willing and able to obtain, security clearance (SC) level.

For meaningful National Security Vetting checks to be carried out individuals need to have lived in the UK for a sufficient period of time. You should normally have been resident in the United Kingdom for the last 5 years as the role requires Security Check (SC) clearance. UK residency less than the outlined periods may not necessarily bar you from gaining national security vetting and applicants should contact the Vacancy Holder / Recruiting Manager listed in the advert for further advice. 

Stage 1: Application & Sift

This vacancy will use Success Profiles.

At sift stage you will be assessed against the essential criteria within the Person Specification section listed.

You will be required to complete the following:

An Application form setting out your career history, with key responsibilities and achievements and relevant professional qualifications. Please ensure you have provided reasons for any gaps within the last two years. The application form needs the same information as a standard CV.
A Supporting Statement (up to 1000 words) explaining how you consider your personal skills, qualities and experience provide evidence of your suitability for the role, with particular reference to the essential criteria in the person specification.

Please Note: Healthjobs UK has a word limit in the Supporting Statement section of 1500 words but we kindly ask you to remain with 1000 word limit.

You will receive a joint score for your application form and statement.

If we receive a large number of applications an initial sift, against the lead criteria Leadership, will be conducted.

Please note feedback will not be provided at this stage.

Stage 2: Assessments

If you are shortlisted, you will be asked to take part in an Independent Leadership Assessment (ILA) which will include psychometric tests. An ILA is a 90-minute session with an occupational psychologist aimed at gaining an understanding of your preferred behavioural style in the workplace. The assessment will be informed by online psychometric assessments you will have completed beforehand, the results of which will be explored as a part of the discussion during the session. After the ILA is completed, the assessor will formulate a narrative report which is given to the panel prior to your formal interview. The assessment will take place online between the sift stage and interview. These assessments will not result in a pass or fail decision. Rather, they are designed to support the panel’s decision making and highlight areas for the panel to explore further at interview.

Stage 3: Interview (Success Profiles)

You will be invited to a face-to-face interview.

Interviews to be held at UK Health Security Agency, 10 South Colonnade, London E14 4PU.

In exceptional circumstances, we may be able to offer a remote interview.

Interviews will be held week commencing the 20/10/2025 please note these dates are subject to change.

This vacancy is being assessed using Success Profiles. During the interview we will assess you against the below:

Behaviours:

Leadership – Lead Behaviour
Delivering at Pace
Managing a Quality Service
Communicating and Influencing

Candidates may be required to give a presentation at the interview as part of the assessment.

Once this job has closed, the job advert will no longer be available. You may want to save a copy for your records.

External 

Open to all external applicants (anyone) from outside the Civil Service (including by definition internal applicants).  

Manyleb y person

Experience

Meini prawf hanfodol

Application form and Statement of Suitability

Behaviours & experience

Meini prawf hanfodol

Leadership – Lead Behaviour
Delivering at Pace
Managing a Quality Service
Communicating and Influencing

IMPORTANT - PLEASE READ

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Artificial Intelligence can be a useful tool to support your application, however, all examples and statements provided must be truthful, factually accurate and taken directly from your own experience. Where plagiarism has been identified (presenting the ideas and experiences of others, or generated by artificial intelligence, as your own) applications may be withdrawn and internal candidates may be subject to disciplinary action. Please see our candidate guidance for more information on appropriate and inappropriate use.

Link below:

Artificial intelligence and recruitment | Civil Service Careers

This is a Non-Reserved post under the Civil Service Nationality Rules. To be eligible for employment in the UK Civil Service applicants must meet the Civil Service Nationality Rules (CSNRs) which operate independently of and additionally to the Immigration Rules. Applicants must also meet necessary security and vetting requirements, along with any other relevant pre-employment checks.

This job is broadly open to the following groups:

UK nationals
nationals of the Republic of Ireland
nationals of Commonwealth countries who have the right to work in the UK
nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities with settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS) (opens in a new window)
nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities who have made a valid application for settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS)
individuals with limited leave to remain or indefinite leave to remain who were eligible to apply for EUSS on or before 31 December 2020
Turkish nationals, and certain family members of Turkish nationals, who have accrued the right to work in the Civil Service

For more information on job nationality requirements and the right to work in the UK, see the Civil Service Nationality rules (opens in a new window) and the UK Visas and Immigration rules (opens in a new window)

For posts on UKHSA Civil Service terms and conditions, new entrants to the Civil Service are expected to start on the minimum of the pay band. For existing Civil Servants and roles advertised across government, the rules of transfer apply, i.e., level transfers move on current salary or the pay range minimum, transfers on promotion move to new pay range minimum or receive a 10% increase. Either case is determined by whichever is the highest.

The Civil Service pay structure and progression is different from NHS Agenda for Change (AfC), most local authority pay grades and other systems that have annual pay increments. For further details, please refer to the Information Sheet- Starting Salaries & Benefits attachment.

For AfC or Medical/Dental posts, you must have the correct professional registration to be appointed. The pay will follow the AfC or Medical & Dental terms & conditions. You may be asked to provide evidence of previous service whilst we are conducting pre-employment checks to determine your starting salary.

For Temporary Appointments, if you are not currently a civil servant, you will take up the post on a Fixed Term appointment.  You may be able to take this role up as a Secondment. If you are an existing Civil Servant, based outside of the UKHSA, you will take up the post as a loan which you will need your department to agree. You cannot take the post up as a fixed term. If you are an existing UKHSA member of staff, you will take up the post as either a level transfer or a temporary promotion as per the UKHSA’s Pay policy. 

Given the nature of the work of the UKHSA, as a Category 1 responder under the Civil Contingencies Act, you may be required in an emergency, if deemed a necessity, to redeploy to another role at short notice. You may also be required to work at any other location, within reasonable travelling distance of your permanent home address, in line with the provisions set out in your contract of employment.

Late Applications will unfortunately not be considered.

Working for the Civil Service

The Civil Service Code (opens in a new window) sets out the standards of behaviour expected of civil servants.

We recruit by merit on the basis of fair and open competition, as outlined in the Civil Service Commission's recruitment principles (opens in a new window).

The Civil Service embraces diversity and promotes equality of opportunity. The law requires that selection for appointment to the Civil Service is on merit on the basis of fair and open competition, as outlined in the Civil Service Commission's Recruitment Principles.

If you feel your application has not been treated in accordance with the Recruitment Principles, and you wish to make a complaint, in the first instance, you should contact UKHSA Public Accountability Unit via  email:  [email protected] If you are not satisfied with the response you receive from the Department, you can contact the Civil Service Commission: Visit the Civil Service Commission website here.

Reserve List - If more than the required number of suitable candidates pass the interview criteria, you may be kept on a reserve list for 12 months subject to your agreement. You may be contacted, in merit-order, if similar roles with closely matching essential criteria become available and the department choose to appoint from a reserve list.

The panel will assess if candidates meet the requirement of the role first, using a specific benchmark system. If you are interviewed for the post and do not meet the required threshold for the specified grade, your application may be assessed against a similar, lower grade role and you may be offered the post should one be available.

Interview expenses will not be reimbursed.

UKHSA is required to check employment and/or education history covering three consecutive years. Please ensure you give details of at least two different referees, even if you were employed in one company for three years or more.

If you are offered a job, information will also be transferred into the national NHS Electronic Staff Records system. Please note, all communication regarding your application will be made via email, please ensure you check your junk/spam folders as emails are sometimes filtered there.

Any move to UKHSA from another employer will mean you can no longer access childcare vouchers. This includes moves between government departments. You may however be eligible for other government schemes, including Tax-Free Childcare. Determine your eligibility at https://www.childcarechoices.gov.uk/.

 Benefits of working at UKHSA include:

Generous annual leave:
-26 days for the first 5 years of continuous service
-28 days after 5 years of continuous service
-32 days after 10 years of continuous service
-Plus public holidays and one privilege day for the King’s birthday
Access to a generous Defined Benefit pension scheme with employer contributions.
Access to a cycle-to-work salary sacrifice scheme, season ticket advances and payroll giving.
Access to a retail discounts and cashback site.
We also promote flexible working patterns (part-time, job-share, condensed hours). UKHSA views flexible working as essential in enabling us to recruit and retain talented people, ensuring that they are able to enjoy a long-lasting career with us. All employees have the right to apply for flexible working and there are a range of options available including working from home, compressed hours and job sharing.
We also offer a generous maternity/ paternity and adoption leave package.

Hybrid Working

UKHSA operates a hybrid working model where business needs allow. This provides us with greater flexibility about how and where we work, to get the best from our workforce.

As a hybrid worker, you will usually spend a minimum of 60% of your contracted hours (averaged over a month) working at one of UKHSA's locations (approximately 3 days a week pro rata) and the rest of your time working from home.

Disability Confident Scheme

The Civil Service embraces diversity and promotes equal opportunities. As such, we run a Disability Confident Scheme for candidates with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria at sift to ensure these candidates are invited to interview.   If you wish to be included in this scheme please tick the box on your application form.

Reasonable Adjustments

The Civil Service is committed to making sure that our selection methods are fair to everyone.

To help you during the recruitment process, we will take into account any reasonable adjustments that could help you.

An adjustment is a change to the recruitment process or an adjustment at work.

This is separate to the Disability Confident Scheme.

If you need an adjustment to be made at any point during the recruitment process you should:

Contact the recruitment team in confidence as soon as possible to discuss your needs.

You can find out more information about reasonable adjustments across the Civil Service here: https://www.civil-service-careers.gov.uk/reasonable-adjustments/

International Police Check

If you have spent more than 6 months abroad over the last 3 years you may need an International Police Check. This would not necessarily have to be in a single block, and could be time accrued over that period.

Internal Fraud check

If successful for this role as one aspect of pre-employment screening, applicant’s personal details – name, national insurance number and date of birth - will be checked against the Cabinet Office Internal Fraud Hub and anyone included on the database will be refused employment unless they can show exceptional circumstances. Currently this is only for External candidates to the Civil Service.

Security Vetting

Please check the Security Clearance needed for the role and follow the link for more information:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/united-kingdom-security-vetting-clearance-levels/national-security-vetting-clearance-levels

Future location

UKHSA is investing in a new state-of-the-art National Biosecurity Centre in Harlow, Essex, which will eventually bring together teams currently based at Canary Wharf, Colindale and Porton Down. For more details, please see: Huge biosecurity centre investment to boost pandemic protection - GOV.UK.

The new facilities will start becoming operational in the mid-2030s, with full completion by 2038. Staff will move in phases as facilities become available. If you're appointed to a role currently based at Canary Wharf, Colindale or Porton Down, please note that we'll continue investing in these sites for the next decade. As we get closer to the transition, we'll provide full information about relocation support available to staff.