HR Business Partner

Job overview

Are you an experienced HR professional with a passion for driving workforce transformation, organisational development, and strategic planning? We are looking for a HR Business Partner to join the HR Business Partnering Team at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust.

This is a fantastic opportunity to play a key role in ensuring we have the right people, in the right place, at the right time.

About You

To succeed in this role, you will need:

Strong expertise in workforce planning, organisational development, and change management.

Knowledge of NHS policies and procedures, particularly in relation to workforce, employee relations, and organisational change.

CIPD Level 7 qualification (or equivalent experience).

Why Join Us?

Flexible working – We support work-life balance with hybrid and flexible working arrangements.

Main duties of the job

About the Role

As a HR Business Partner, you will:

Lead and contribute to Trust-wide workforce projects, shaping policies and strategies to align with business objectives.

Working for our organisation

Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust is one of England's top-performing and safest trusts. We operate two main acute hospital sites—Chelsea and Westminster Hospital and West Middlesex University Hospital—along with award-winning clinics across North West London.

Our nearly 7,500 staff care for a diverse population of 1.5 million, providing full clinical services, including maternity, A&E, and children’s services, plus specialist HIV and sexual health clinics. The Care Quality Commission rates us 'Good' in safety, effectiveness, care, and responsiveness, and 'Outstanding' in leadership and resource use.

We continually invest in our facilities, including a £30m expansion of critical care at Chelsea and Westminster and an £80m Ambulatory Diagnostic Centre at West Middlesex.

We value the unique perspectives and experiences that diverse teams bring and are committed to creating an environment where all voices are heard, respected, and empowered to succeed."

If you haven’t heard from us within three weeks of the closing date, your application was likely unsuccessful. Employment is subject to a six-month probationary period.

Some roles may require weekend shifts at multiple sites.

• Proactively contribute to the development of divisional workforce plans, ensuring that workforce plans are consistent with corporate workforce priorities and that financial, activity and HR metrics are aligned.
• Support the development of business cases and service development plans ensuring that productivity metrics, workforce and role redesign options are fully explored.
• Set and agree key workforce performance indicators for the division and clinical directorates, analysing data each reporting period and driving discussions with divisional management teams to ensure plans are put in place to resolve areas of concern.
• Lead organisational thinking regarding external changes and impact on the division’s workforce and work in collaboration with professional leads in the development of innovative workforce interventions, solutions and best practice ways of working.
• Proactively seeks to understand readiness for change plans across the division and develop and lead initiatives to ensure successful implementation with key stakeholders, including engaging and consulting with trade unions. Ensure structural change is well managed.
• Drive strategic discussions in the areas of people and succession planning to ensure the division has the right talent in the right place at the right time, forecasting people needs and ensuring that these are being met.
• Develop and monitor recruitment and retention strategies for hard to fill posts and ensure recruitment controls are in place
• Lead on the development of a climate of active staff engagement in support of the objectives of the Trust, in particular the delivery of exemplary patient safety and experience.
• Use the national staff survey and develop innovative ways of tracking and reporting on staff experience, to develop interventions to enhance engagement.
• Promote organisational development and change across the division by understanding and interpreting leadership issues and delivering innovative leadership development solutions that change behaviours.
• Champion the continuous development of leadership capability by:

o Leading the division’s talent management process and aggregate development requirements to inform training needs

o Ensuring line managers are trained and supported in dealing with staff management issues.

o Leading on the delivery of division wide coaching to build capability

• In conjunction with professional leads and the learning & development team, proactively lead the improvement of capability across the divisional teams at every level, ensuring performance is managed effectively and agreeing development activities through central programmes and division specific development activities.
• Provide advice on very complex people issues, coaching senior divisional managers to achieve sustainable solutions, ensuring managers seek appropriate advice on employee relations cases.
• Participate in the divisional budget setting process, advising on workforce numbers and the impact of planned service developments and cost improvements.
• Participate in Trust-wide workforce projects as agreed with the Chief People Officer and the Deputy Chief People Officer, contributing and leading on the development of policies, strategies and plans, ensuring their alignment with business objectives, Trust values and best practice.

Regularly research HR best practice and ensure that divisional organisational development processes are kept updated as appropriate.

This job description may be subject to change according to the varying needs of the service. Such changes will be made after discussion between the post holder and his/her manager.

All duties must be carried out under supervision or within Trust policy and procedure. You must never undertake any duties that are outside your area of skill or knowledge level. If you are unsure you must seek clarification from a more senior member of staff.

Person specification

Education

• Educated to Master’s degree level or equivalent. Significant active operational HR experience.
• Graduate of the CIPD
• MCIPD

• Recognised coaching qualification

Experience

• Successful track record of working as an HR Business Partner and delivering to agreed targets.
• Significant experience of facilitating and managing change
• Demonstrable success in delivering large scale change
• Evidence of effective working at a senior level in large, complex, high performing environments.
• Experience of developing workforce strategies and plans.
• Experience designing and delivering a range of workforce development initiatives designed to improve workforce KPIs or staff engagement.
• Experience in delivering range of training on HR issues.
• Experiences of line management.

• Experience of working in the NHS
• Experience of advising on medical staffing issues
• Successful track record of working as an HR Business Partner and delivering to agreed targets.

Skills and knowledge

• Specialist knowledge across a range of HR topics
• Able to work in unpredictable situations and under pressure and to tight deadlines
• Able to analyse, provide authoritative advice on and manage highly complex and sensitive situations where there is often conflict
• Ability to analyse and understand business, financial and workforce data
• Ability to interpret and apply HR knowledge to the Trust workforce strategy
• Sound, up to date knowledge of HR best practice
• Demonstrable coaching behaviours and ability to model these to managers and leaders at all levels
• Excellent interpersonal skills and ability to form productive collaborative working relationships
• Highly developed persuasive, motivational and negotiating skills
• Ability to write and present succinct reports, with data analysis, on complex workforce issues
• Works to deadlines.
• Excellent report writing skills
• Highly developed mediation skills

Personal qualities

• Self-awareness and willingness to be flexible.
• Belief in achievement through team work.
• Commitment to continuing professional development.
• Drive for performance and improvement, and flexibility in approach and attitude
• Decisive, professional, assertive, self-motivated
• Emotional resilience
• Integrity
• Commitment to promote equality and diversity

• The closing date given is a guide only. There may be some occasions when we have to close a vacancy once sufficient applications have been received. You are therefore advised to submit your application as early as possible to avoid disappointment.
• Please check your emails regularly as this is how we will communicate with you throughout the recruitment process.
• If you have not heard from us within 3 weeks after the closing date, we regret that this usually means your application was not successful.
• In submitting an application, you authorise the Trust to confirm any previous NHS service details via the Inter Authority Transfer (IAT) process, should you be appointed to the post.
• During the recruitment process your identity documentation (ie passport, driving licence, visa etc) will be scanned using a device which recognises UV, infrared and machine-readable zone security features of the documents provided.
• Employment at the Trust is offered subject to successful completion of a six month probationary period.