Site Director of People

They will oversee a supporting team of People Business Partners that work with relevant divisions and act as a conduit between their sovereign organisation and the centralised Group People function. They will be integral to shaping local strategies to meet service needs and ensuring consistent application of workforce and organisational development improvements. A key focus will be partnering with the Group Executive Management team on workforce integration across the Group, bringing Epsom & St. Helier and St. George's Hospital together to improve patient care., Our aim is to drive transformation of our service offer, using process reviews and adoption of automation and AI to reduce our transactional profile and free up our professionals to focus on strategic and longer-term issues where they can add real value to business outcome.
The role will be a key member of the site-based executive team, sharing accountability for the hospital meeting its strategic and operational objectives. The post holder will ensure that site and corporate management teams put our people at the centre of everything they do, prioritising the need to harness the talents and commitment of all our people to deliver superb and constantly improving patient-centred services.
This is a direct report to the Group Chief People Officer with a strong dotted line relationship with the site managing director. The post holder will be expected to deputise for the CPO, meaning they will be a dynamic and proactive individual who has the confidence to challenge senior stakeholders and communicate at Board level.

Working for our organisation
St George's, Epsom and St Helier University Hospitals and Health Group cares for a population of four million people in South West London and North East Surrey. Our sites include St George's Hospital, one of 11 major trauma centres in the UK and the largest healthcare provider and major teaching hospital in the area; St Helier Hospital, home to the South West Thames Renal and Transplantation Unit and Queen Mary's Hospital for Children; and Epsom Hospital, home to the South West London Elective Orthopaedic Centre (SWLEOC).
After years of collaboration, our two Trusts became a hospitals group in 2021. While remaining as two separate Trusts, being a hospitals group will help us to collaborate more closely on research, and the development, education, and training of our 17,000-strong workforce.,

• Collaborate in the design, delivery and implementation of the Group People Strategy, contributing thought leadership, insight and compelling stakeholder engagement.


• Use data relating to services and employee / patient feedback to provide insights into people solutions, capitalising on opportunities and mitigating risks.


• Partner with leaders and our employees to understand their current and future needs and contract with them effectively through other SLT members.


• Integrate diversity and inclusion principles into all areas of our people practise


• Support the development of a continuous improvement approach to workforce transformation across site activities.


• Coach and lead by example, to resolve conflict and build trust within teams and functions, working as a unitary member of the SLT.


• Keep abreast of national developments in people practices and take a systemic system wide approach to understanding and framing emerging organisational and system issues.

Team management and development

• To directly manage the People Business Partner function.


• To provide ongoing guidance and managerial support to the team, leading by example and championing a learning culture.


• Undertake coaching and performance management activities with teams and individuals, modelling behaviours of a good leader and to be able to give constructive feedback.


• To ensure all team members are set objectives and KPI's, receive regular supervision, appraisals and updated personal development plans.


• To ensure the team is properly staffed to maintain a high level of service.

Leadership and Transformation

• Lead and manage the interface with Group shared services and specialist people management functions, ensuring there is clear hand-off and responsiveness to people related needs on the hospital sites.


• Build and manage the strategic capability of People Business Partners to enable and ensure the delivery of a high-quality service, with staff working to the top of their licence.


• Ensure the effective development of leadership and people management capability across the hospital site, so that staff are recruited, inducted, cared for, appropriately managed, effectively deployed, retained, developed professionally and their concerns elicited and resolved in a timely and effective manner.


• Inform, educate and engage the site executive team on workforce risks and opportunities and work with the SLT for People Services in the development of innovative solutions that keeps good staff experience at its heart.


• Support the business through change by understanding culture, capability, processes and structure, whilst mitigating people risks and maximising benefits.


• Understand the regulatory and legal environment in which services are delivered and managed, embedding the Just Culture principles in managing our wider workforce.


• Oversee all local organisational change, ensuring workforce change and transformation across the site is managed to a high standard.


• Deploy People strategies and plans locally to enable the Group to become an Outstanding Place to Work. These include enablers of the People, Wellbeing and Diversity & Inclusion strategies, with an emphasis on employee and patient led improvements for high engagement and sustainability.


• Lead the workforce aspects of key organisational changes including those impacting beyond their organisational boundaries, for example, partnering with the Group Executive Management team on workforce integration across the Group, bringing Epsom & St. Helier and St. George's Hospital together to provide better patient care.


• Contribute to all the Group's workforce policies and strategies, and advise on the workforce implications of any local Trust-owned policies and strategies.

Performance and Planning

• Implement systems of good governance to ensure that services are managed effectively.


• Contribute to business performance by being accountable for the effective review and management of People management budgets, demonstrating value for money in the way services are delivered.


• Use workforce planning data to improve people practices and inform resourcing approaches. Work closely with other Hospital Directors and Divisional leaders to design and introduce new roles and flexible approaches to succession and contingency planning, putting workforce redesign at the heart of service transformation.


• Lead on the resource planning of demand and supply of local Trust workforce, down to staff group and speciality levels. This will include short term operational planning and medium-term, role and skill mix changes to support developments in care provision.


• Lead and implement local recruitment and temporary resourcing management to deliver Group plans in the most cost-effective way.


• Interpret and use a range of data sources to make decisions and provide business insight and lead improvements to deliver upper quartile performance. Use evidence-based practice to challenge the status quo and to apply research and insights to deliver the local people strategy.


• Build a strong People Services community that delivers a high-quality service to clients.


• Continuously develop alongside the central team's workforce reporting systems and KPIs; ensuring effective use of workforce intelligence (including benchmark data) to identify trends, challenges and opportunities and to inform wise workforce decisions.


• Work collaboratively with site executives to generate insight into the performance of divisional teams, drawing on workforce, finance, operational, quality and risk data to design interventions.

Staff Experience and Culture

• Lead and encourage a positive organisational culture, with an emphasis on wellbeing improvement, staff experience and engagement.


• Lead the development and promotion of a culture which supports change, lifelong learning and continuous professional development to ensure that organisational learning is maximised in line with the workforce strategy.


• Lead, manage and provide appropriate facilitation and high-level specialist professional advice for the effective management of change and service redesign with a particular reference given to all aspects of service modernisation, organisational readiness for the development of new roles, responsibilities and development solutions to support new ways of working.


• To lead on assigned organisational development and change initiatives at site in partnership with organisational development colleagues, for change to be implemented effectively and proactively, in line with sound planning and engagement processes.


• Provide professional OD leadership, focus and direction for the behavioural and cultural aspects of integrated services, building strategic partnerships with other local organisations and specialist external partners in pursuit of shared strategic aims.

Other Responsibilities

• Engage as an effective member of the Hospital Site leadership Team and embody the Group's 'Outstanding Care, Together' values, role modelling good leadership and inclusion through own actions and challenging behaviours that fall short of those expected.


• To deputise for other Hospital Directors when required.


• To participate in the Hospital's Senior Management on-call rota as required.


• Build a strong People Services community that delivers a high-quality service to clients.


• Contribute to business performance by being accountable for the effective review and management of People management budgets, demonstrating value for money in the way services are delivered.


• Accountability for the effective management of pay and non-pay budgets.


• Senior leadership responsibility for identification of and delivery of cost improvement programmes.


• To receive and deal with any escalated complaints about relevant areas of the People Service.


• Overseeing the effective utilisation of all site-related workforce budgets, including around establishment control, apprenticeships and the delivery of staff-related cost improvement programmes.