Job summary
- Main area
- HR and OD
- Grade
- ESM1
- Contract
- 6 months (until 31 March 2027 - Secondment only for current NHS employees)
- Hours
- Full time
- Part time
- Job share
- Flexible working
- Job ref
- 990-EOE-EC4357-E
- Employer
- NHS England
- Employer type
- NHS
- Site
- Victoria House
- Town
- Fulbourn, Cambridge
- Salary
- £100,000 per annum
- Salary period
- Yearly
- Closing
- 26/08/2026 23:59
Employer heading
Director of People and Culture
ESM1
Our Organisation
We share the core values set out in the NHS Constitution, which all colleagues are expected to demonstrate.
We support you to work in a way that is best for the NHS, our patients and you and your colleagues. Talk to us about how we might be able to accommodate a flexible working arrangement, whether that’s a job share, part time, hybrid working or another flexible pattern.
Job overview
The Workforce, Training and Education (WT&E) directorate in the East of England (EoE) are recruiting to an exciting and vital post that forms a key part of the senior leadership team and will deputise for the Regional Director of WT&E as and when required.
The post-holder will be accountable for working collaboratively across the Directorate, with Executive Director regional colleagues including the System Co-ordination Director, and with Executive Director system colleagues, including Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) and Chief People Officers (CPOs). The work undertaken by the team will be done with and through the Integrated Care Boards (ICBs) and will enable a clear pathway to maturity of the 6 ICBs within the EoE region.
The post-holder will lead the People and Culture sub-directorate, working collaboratively with the other teams within the Directorate to create and maintain a fair and supportive working environment and culture where contributions are fully recognised and valued by all and where our people feel empowered to carry out their duties to the very best of their abilities.
The post-holder will have a key role in supporting the NHS with senior level employee relations, appointments at the Executive level in Trusts and ICBs and acts as a key contact with the regional HRD network, Regional SPF and NHS Employers. Given this we are looking for someone with current or recent experience at Executive or Deputy level within an NHS provider setting.
Main duties of the job
-
The main priorities of the role are to enable our systems via high accountability and responsibility partnerships to:
- Recruit and retain more people
- To enable those people to work differently and productively
- To ensure those people are working in a compassionate and inclusive culture
Key accountabilities of this role will be to lead staff to:
- Grow and reshape the workforce – educate and train more healthcare professionals and widen access routes into the NHS
- Optimise the use of international supply, ethically and in-line with service need
- Attract, recruit and retain more staff through improved work offers and culture
- Expand return to work practice to boost numbers, skills and experience
- Manage, reform and quality assure education and training - for the benefit of learners, educators and patients
- Integrate service, workforce and financial planning to support new ways of working and workforce redesign
- Optimise digital technology, research, knowledge and innovation to increase the time to care
- Maximise the potential of the health professions, support workforce, volunteers and carers
- Enhance staff engagement, experience and culture through the implementation of the People Promise, especially health and wellbeing activity
- Improve NHS leadership and talent management practices, implementing the findings of the Messenger and Hewitt Reviews
- Reduce health inequalities by widening access and participation and implementing the EDI Strategy
Working for our organisation
NHS England has a wide range of statutory functions, responsibilities and regulatory powers. These are focused on supporting the wider NHS to deliver high quality care, as well as doing those things that are best done once for the whole NHS.
Our staff bring expertise across clinical, operational, commissioning, technology, data science, cyber security, software engineering, education, and commercial specialisms — enabling us to design and deliver high-quality NHS services.
In March 2025, the Government announced that NHS England and the Department of Health and Social Care will increasingly merge functions, ultimately leading to NHS England being fully integrated into the department.
If you currently work within the NHS and if successful at interview, we will initiate an Inter Authority Transfer (IAT) via the Electronic Staff Record (ESR). This retrieves key data from your current or previous NHS employer to support onboarding, including competency status, Continuous Service Dates (CSD), and annual leave entitlement. You may opt out at any stage of the process.
Colleagues with a contractual office base are expected to spend, on average, at least 40% of their time working in our offices.
Staff recruited from outside the NHS will usually be appointed at the bottom of the pay band.
Detailed job description and main responsibilities
You can find further details about the role, including key responsibilities and accountabilities, alongside the organisational structure and person specification in the attached Job Description and other supporting documents.
Secondments
Applicants from within the NHS will be offered on a secondment basis only, agreement should be obtained from their employer prior to submitting the application.
Person specification
Qualifications
Essential criteria
- Chartered Fellow of CIPD and master’s level education (or equivalent experience)
- Evidence that the candidate meets the required professional qualification level
Desirable criteria
- Experience of project and programme management techniques and tools such as Prince 2 or Managing Successful Projects
Experience
Essential criteria
- Proven and significant leadership experience and/or formal management qualification
- Significant evidence of continued professional development
- Demonstrated expertise in a Healthcare environment
- Proven senior level experience of leading and delivering complex change and strategy development programmes in a politically sensitive and complex environment
- Significant management experience at senior level in the NHS or other public healthcare related industry
- Significant experience and understanding of proven implementation of project management methodologies or a Prince 2 or managing successful projects practitioner
- Experience and/or understanding of the UK health and education landscape
- Experience of successfully operating in and delivering priorities in a partnership environment
- Experience of leading major change initiatives with entrepreneurialism in a challenging organisational environment
- Significant experience of managing and prioritising a large budget with solid knowledge of financial process requirements
- Extensive experience of delivering presentations to large groups of stakeholders in often pressured and politically sensitive environments
- Member of a relevant professional body
Knowledge
Essential criteria
- In depth knowledge of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion
- In depth knowledge of Transformation and Innovation
- In depth knowledge of Human Resources
- In depth knowledge of Organisational Development
- In depth knowledge of Talent & Leadership
Skills
Essential criteria
- Ability to deal with challenging situations in a formal setting
- Strong external communications skills in a politically sensitive environment with knowledge of and experience in handling media relations
- Ability to prepare and produce concise yet insightful communications for dissemination to senior stakeholders and a broad range of stakeholders as required
- Ability to analyse highly complex issues where material is conflicting and drawn from multiple sources (verbal, written and numerical)
- Demonstrable ability to act upon incomplete information, using experience gained to make inferences and decision making
- Significant ability to analyse numerical and written data, assess options and draw appropriate initiatives
- Demonstrable leadership, vision, strategic thinking and planning with highly developed political skills
- Demonstrable ability to plan over short, medium and long-term timeframes and adjust plans and resource requirements accordingly
- Ability to provide informative reporting on finances and impact to Board management
- Demonstrable ability to work effectively between strategic and operational activities where required
- Demonstrable ability to manage own workload and make informed decisions in the absence of required information, working to tight and often changing timescales
- Ability to make decisions autonomously, when required, on difficult issues
- Demonstrable ability to use autonomy to undertake actions as a result of own interpretation of policy and guidance providing a source of expert advice to the organisation
Values & Behaviours
Essential criteria
- Commitment to and focused on quality, promotes high standards in all they do
- Able to make a connection between their work and the benefit to patients and the public
- Consistently thinks about how their work can help and support clinicians and frontline staff deliver better outcomes for patients
- Works well with others, is positive and helpful, listens, involves, respects and learns from the contribution of others
- Will consider the most effective way to promote equality of opportunity and good working relationships in employment and service delivery and has the ability to take actions which support and promote this agenda
- Demonstrable commitment to partnership working with a range of external organisations
- Consistently looks to improve what they do, looks for successful tried and tested ways of working, and also seeks out innovation
- Values diversity and difference operates with integrity and openness
- Self-awareness in terms of emotional intelligence, biases and personal triggers with cultural sensitivity and awareness
- Demonstrates honesty and integrity and promotes organisational values
Employer certification / accreditation badges
Applicant requirements
You must have appropriate UK professional registration.
Documents to download
Further details / informal visits contact
- Name
- Phil Carver
- Job title
- Director of Workforce Training and Education
- Email address
- [email protected]
List jobs with NHS England in Administrative Services or all sectors