People Management magazine
People Director
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Location: Birmingham
Salary: £75,000 – £100,000
Reports to: CEO
TeacherActive is a leading education recruitment agency, supporting schools and education settings across the UK. We are a fast-paced, ambitious and values-led business, with our people at the heart of everything we do.
Our values are Passion, Pride, Knowledge, Accountability, and Resilience. They shape how we work, how we lead, and how we deliver for our clients, candidates, and colleagues.
We are now looking for an experienced People Director to lead our HR, Learning & Development, and Talent Acquisition functions. This is a key senior leadership role, responsible for bringing our People teams together, strengthening operational delivery, and ensuring our people strategy supports business performance and long-term growth.
The Role
Reporting to the CEO, you will lead the operational delivery of TeacherActive’s People function across HR, L&D, and Talent Acquisition. You will create clear structure, expectations, and accountability across the team, while providing visible, supportive, and development-focused leadership.
You will work closely with senior leaders and managers across the business to ensure our People activity is commercially focused, pragmatic, and aligned to our culture and values.
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Key Responsibilities
You will:
- Lead and develop the HR, L&D, and Talent Acquisition teams.
- Build a more joined-up, collaborative, and high-performing People function.
- Create clear expectations, accountability, and development plans across the team.
- Drive consistency, pace, and operational excellence across all People activity.
- Improve People processes, systems, reporting, and ways of working.
- Use data and insight to support commercial decision-making.
- Oversee employee relations, compliance, performance management, recruitment, onboarding, engagement, and development activity.
- Ensure Talent Acquisition activity supports the attraction and retention of high-performing employees.
- Ensure L&D activity delivers meaningful value to the business.
- Build strong relationships with the CEO, Board, senior leaders, managers, and employees.
About You
You will be an experienced senior People leader with strong operational HR experience and a good understanding of Learning & Development and Talent Acquisition.
You will be commercially aware, data-confident, and comfortable working in a fast-paced environment. You will know how to create structure, improve processes, and bring teams together to deliver better outcomes.
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Just as importantly, you will be a visible and supportive leader who can coach, develop, and challenge others. You will balance empathy with accountability and bring the resilience, pace, and pragmatism needed to succeed in a growing commercial business.
Experience Required
You will bring:
- Senior experience in a HR, People, or Talent leadership role.
- Experience leading or working closely across HR, L&D, and Talent Acquisition.
- Strong commercial awareness and business focus.
- Experience developing high-performing teams.
- Strong employee relations knowledge and pragmatic employment law judgement.
- Confidence using people data, systems, and reporting to improve performance.
- Excellent communication, influencing, and stakeholder management skills.
- Strong planning, organization, and attention to detail.
- Experience in recruitment, sales, education, staffing, or another fast-paced service-led business would be advantageous.
This is an exciting opportunity to shape a connected, commercially focused, and values-led People function at a growing business where people, performance, and culture really matter.
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