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Role : Head of People
Sector: Creative/Social Media Agency
Salary: £70k-100k pa FTE d.o.e. (pro rata for 2-3 days)
Reporting to: Leadership Team/CEO
Part-time : 2-3 days per week - Hybrid 2 days in the office
Contract: initial 6-9 mth term, possibly to extend beyond if it suits both parties
Location: Manchester
Reference: VisionFR3151
About the Company
Our client is a creative/social media marketing agency working with blue chip brands and with particular expertise in the Luxury/Beauty sectors.
At the heart of its success is its people. The business is now looking for a Head of People to take ownership of people planning, training, and development, ensuring they stay ahead of the curve and maintain theur unique edge. This will initially be on a fractional part-time basis 2-3 days per week for an initial 6-9 month term with scope to extend beyond that if it suits the business and candidate,
Role Overview
The Head of People will be responsible for ensuring that the business has the right people, in the right roles, with the right skills at the right time; proactively shaping its talent strategy, embedding best practices, and ensuring the team is continuously trained to be the best in the business.
The core focus will be on people planning, resource oversight, and training—building structured learning programmes that ensure every member of the team is up to date with industry best practices, internal processes
You won’t need to be the subject matter expert on everything yourself, but you’ll be the facilitator—working with team leads, external specialists, and industry experts to create and execute world-class training that keeps the team sharp.
Beyond training and development, you’ll also take on key Head of People responsibilities, ensuring team structure, recruitment, culture, and retention are all optimised for long-term growth.
Key Responsibilities
People Planning & Resource Oversight
- Own the people planning process, ensuring the right team structure is in place to deliver at a high level while maintaining balance and avoiding burnout.
- Work closely with leadership to forecast resourcing needs, proactively identifying gaps and planning ahead for recruitment or internal upskilling.
- Oversee career progression frameworks, ensuring clear pathways for development and growth across all roles.
- Monitor and improve workload management to ensure efficiency and prevent bottlenecks within teams.
Training & Development
- Design, implement, and oversee a structured training curriculum that ensures everyone in the business is continuously learning and evolving.
- Work with internal experts, department heads, and external specialists to build best-in-class training covering:
- Internal processes and systems
- Industry best practices and platform updates
- Leadership and management training
- The company’s unique approach to social-first marketing
- Host and deliver training sessions, ensuring sessions are engaging, practical, and actionable.
- Embed onboarding training that gets new hires up to speed quickly and ensures they’re aligned with ways of working.
- Ensure all training is tracked, measured, and continuously refined based on feedback and impact.
Culture & Employee Experience
- Champion a high-performance, learning-driven culture, ensuring development and growth are at the centre of operations.
- Ensure that the company remains an exciting, inspiring place to work, with clear career development opportunities.
- Work with leadership to ensure values and culture are embedded across everything.
- Oversee internal communication and knowledge-sharing, ensuring transparency and alignment across the business.
Recruitment & Retention
- Own talent acquisition strategy, ensuring they attract, hire, and retain top-tier social-first talent.
- Improve hiring processes, ensuring they find people who truly align with the agency’s culture and ambition.
- Embed structured career progression frameworks, making the company a place where people stay and grow.
- Work closely with leadership to identify flight risks early and put proactive retention strategies in place.
What We’re Looking For
- Experience in a Head of People, People Operations, or Learning & Development role, ideally within a high-growth agency, media, or creative business.
- A natural facilitator and organiser—someone who can take a vision and build structured, scalable training programmes around it.
- Strong experience in training and development, with a track record of building and delivering structured learning frameworks.
- Exceptional people planning and resource management skills, able to balance team growth with operational efficiency.
- A deep understanding of agency structures and creative teams, and what it takes to make them thrive.
- Experience in recruitment, retention, and career development, ensuring teams are built for long-term success.
- A proactive mindset—someone who constantly looks ahead and solves problems before they arise.
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VisionFR is committed to encouraging equality, diversity and inclusion among our workforce and recruitment and eliminating unlawful discrimination.
Due to the high level of applications being received if you do not hear from us within 5 working days, please assume your application has not been successful on this occasion, usually due to other candidates having more relevant sector exposure, qualifications or required skills. We thank you for your interest.
