Head of HR

Head of HR - Pensions & Savings

Help shape the future of retirement in the UK

Job type: Permanent 

Salary and benefits: Competitive salary plus an indicative bonus range of %, private medical cover, 38 days annual leave, excellent pension, 12x salary life assurance, career breaks, income protection, 3x volunteering days and much more.

Closing Date: 06/11/2026

Location: Birmingham, Bristol, London, Telford or Edinburgh, with hybrid working

Flexible working - These opportunities can be based in Birmingham, London, Bristol, Telford or Edinburgh, combining time in the office with working from home. All our roles are open to part-time working, job sharing and other forms of flexibility. During the recruitment process, we’ll discuss what’s important to you and how that can be balanced with the requirements of the role. You can read more about flexible working here.

Who are we?

We’re Standard Life, a retirement specialist focused entirely on retirement savings and income. We champion the belief that everyone’s journey to and through retirement can be better, and for more than 200 years, we’ve been helping our customers plan and prepare for their financial futures.

Life today is increasingly complicated, uncertain and unpredictable. People move through different careers, face unexpected moments and navigate important choices. We offer our colleagues flexibility, trust and benefits that work for whatever life brings. In return we expect curiosity, connection, accountability and high standards. We make room for what matters - so you can bring your best, every day.

The Role

We're looking for an exceptional Head of HR to partner the Pensions & Savings Executive Team and help shape the future of one of the UK's leading pensions, savings and retirement businesses.

As Pensions & Savings continues to evolve, transform and grow, we're looking for a strategic people leader to partner members of the Executive Team and help shape the future organisation. Reporting to the HR Director, Pensions & Savings, you'll be a trusted adviser, influencing business strategy and ensuring the organisation has the leadership, culture, capability and workforce needed to deliver its ambitions.

Operating at the intersection of business and people strategy, you'll help leaders navigate transformation, organisational redesign, digital and AI-enabled change, and the continued evolution towards more agile, customer-focused ways of working. You'll play a central role in building future capability, strengthening leadership effectiveness and ensuring colleague and customer outcomes remain at the heart of decision-making.

What you'll do

• Partner Executive Team members to shape and deliver people strategies aligned to business priorities, growth ambitions and customer outcomes.
• Provide strategic advice, challenge and coaching on organisational effectiveness, leadership, culture, talent and capability.
• Lead and develop HR Business Partners, ensuring high-quality support and delivery across your areas of responsibility.
• Shape organisation design, workforce planning, succession and leadership capability to build a future-ready organisation.
• Lead the people aspects of transformation, including digital change, AI adoption, operating model evolution and agile ways of working.
• Use workforce insights, external trends and data to influence decisions, identify risks and improve business performance.
• Partner with Centres of Excellence to deliver integrated talent, reward, learning and culture solutions.

What we're looking for

We're looking for a commercially minded HR leader who combines strategic thinking with deep organisational and transformation expertise.

You'll bring:

• Significant experience operating in a senior HR leadership role within a complex, fast-paced environment.
• A strong track record of partnering executive-level leaders to deliver transformation, organisational change and business growth.
• Expertise in organisation design, workforce planning, leadership effectiveness, succession and talent strategy.
• Experience helping organisations adapt to digital transformation, AI-enabled ways of working and evolving workforce requirements.
• Experience leading HR teams and building capability through others.
  Strong understanding of the opportunities and workforce implications of technology, data and AI.
• Exceptional influencing, coaching and stakeholder management skills, with the credibility to support and challenge Executive leaders.
• Strong commercial judgement and the ability to connect people decisions to business performance, customer outcomes and long-term value creation.

What success looks like

In this role you will:

• Help shape the leadership, workforce and culture needed to deliver the Pensions & Savings strategy.
• Build stronger organisational capability, succession pipelines and future workforce readiness.
• Enable successful digital transformation, AI adoption and agile ways of working across the business.
• Strengthen leadership effectiveness and organisational performance across your areas of responsibility.
• Deliver meaningful customer, colleague and commercial outcomes through effective people leadership.

We want to hire the whole version of you

We’re committed to ensuring that everyone feels accepted and welcome, and we encourage applications from people of all backgrounds.

We know that strong candidates don’t always follow the same career path or meet every requirement listed in an advert. If your experience looks different from what we’ve described, but you believe you can bring value to our team and ambition, we’d still love to hear from you.

If you require any adjustments during the recruitment process, please let us know so we can help you perform at your best.

We’ll review applications as they arrive and may close the campaign before the advertised date, so we encourage you to apply early.

Find out more about working at Standard Life

Guide for Candidates: standardlifeplc.pagetiger.com/guideforcandidates 

Find or get answers from our colleagues: www.standardlifeplc.com/careers/talk-to-us 

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