Havas Group
Resource Director
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Agency
Havas London
Job Description
Havas London is Havas UK’s flagship creative agency. We’re the only major UK advertising agency to share a single building with every other specialist business in our network, all under a single P&L. Sitting within the Havas Village in King’s Cross affords us some clear advantages; none more so than our ability to build bespoke, multi-discipline teams around our clients, whatever their business need.
These are not teams that are together on paper alone, but teams physically, culturally, logistically and financially aligned. This set-up allows us to complement – not replicate – our specialisms.
Resource Director
Location: London
A word about our ambition
Havas London is on a transformation journey. This is not a maintenance role; it’s an opportunity for someone whose ambition outstrips the brief and who brings real tenacity. Someone who wants to shape and define a new era for Havas London. Someone who matches our optimism, resilience and ambition, and is ready to push, challenge and lead with energy and vision.
Our reason to exist is clear: to help brands grow by crafting ideas and systems that are ready for anything, and that deliver the scale, stretch and sharpness today’s landscape demands. Our mission is simple, to create work that is unignorable.
There’s no point rebuilding the agency we were ten years ago. That’s not how we will win.
About the Role
Havas London is transforming the way it plans, manages and deploys resource across the agency.
We are looking for an experienced Resource Director to design, implement and lead a modern resourcing function that provides real-time visibility of capacity, utilisation and skills across our creative, design and production teams.
This is a hands-on leadership role for someone who combines operational rigour with excellent people skills. You'll be responsible for reviewing and redesigning our current resourcing processes, improving adoption of our resourcing systems, and building a flexible staffing model that enables us to scale efficiently through a blend of permanent and freelance talent.
You will be equally comfortable challenging senior stakeholders, embedding new ways of working, and rolling up your sleeves to manage day-to-day resource allocation.
The successful candidate will become the agency's trusted source of truth on resource planning, helping leaders make informed decisions on staffing, freelance investment and future hiring needs.
Key Responsibilities
Resourcing Strategy & Transformation
- Review and improve resource management processes, tools and governance.
- Identify inefficiencies, gaps and risks within current planning practices.
- Drive consistent agency-wide adoption of new resourcing processes and standards.
- Define and report against key metrics including utilisation, capacity, forecast demand and freelance spend.
- Translate the confirmed and weighted new-business and client project pipeline into short-, medium- and longer-term resource demand, highlighting upcoming capacity gaps, surplus capacity and critical skill requirements.
- Work with Client Leadership, New Business, Finance and Department Heads to distinguish confirmed demand from probable or speculative requirements.
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Resource Planning & Allocation
- Own day-to-day resource management across Creative, Design, Production and other relevant disciplines.
- Ensure resource allocation accurately reflects project requirements, skills needed and commercial realities.
- Maintain complete visibility of who is working on what, when and at what level of capacity.
- Identify resource constraints, skills gaps and opportunities to optimise utilisation.
- Enable leadership teams to make proactive decisions around staffing and project delivery.
- Establish and enforce minimum requirements for all resource requests, ensuring that each request includes an approved scope, project timeline, budget, required skillset, level of seniority and expected hours before resource is committed. Challenge, clarify or reject incomplete requests where necessary.
Systems & Data
- Lead optimisation of the agency's resource management platform (Pronto)
- Improve data quality, reporting accuracy and user adoption.
- Own the accuracy and integrity of resourcing data, identifying discrepancies between planned resource, actual deployment, timesheets, scope and financial reporting, and ensuring that issues are corrected promptly.
- Move the agency towards more granular and actionable resource planning.
- Create dashboards and reporting that provide clear visibility of:
- Current utilisation
- Future demand
- Resource gaps
- Over-capacity risks
- Freelance requirements
- Commercial resource performance
Freelance Network Management
- Build and maintain a high-quality freelance network across Creative, Design, Production and specialist disciplines.
- Bring a trusted "black book" of proven freelancers who can be mobilised quickly.
- Develop and maintain an agreed freelance rate framework by discipline and seniority, negotiate preferred rates and monitor actual freelance expenditure against project budgets and agency forecasts.
- Escalate requests that fall outside agreed rate, scope or budget parameters before any commitment is made.
- Ensure freelancers are onboarded efficiently and integrated effectively into project teams.
- Balance permanent and freelance resource to maximise flexibility while maintaining quality and profitability.
- Work with Talent Acquisition team to coordinate contract set up using internal freelance contract platform.
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Stakeholder Management
- Partner closely with Creative Directors, Design Directors, Department Heads, Client Leadership, Production and Finance teams.
- Build credibility with creative teams through a strong understanding of creative and design disciplines.
- Challenge resource requests constructively where requirements exceed agreed scope or commercial parameters.
- Facilitate difficult conversations around priorities and conflicting demands.
- Act as the central point of ownership for resource-related decision making.
Commercial & Financial Contribution
- Ensure resource deployment aligns with agreed project scopes and budgets.
- Support the agency's move towards a more flexible operating model.
- Provide insight into future hiring requirements and workforce planning.
- Monitor freelancer expenditure and identify opportunities for efficiency.
- Work closely with Finance to improve profitability through better workforce planning and utilisation management.
About You
Essential Experience
- Significant resource management leadership experience within a creative, advertising, branding, design or integrated agency.
- Proven track record of implementing or transforming resourcing functions.
- Strong understanding of creative and design workflows and the specialist skillsets required at different levels.
- Experience managing both permanent and freelance talent models.
- Demonstrable experience improving resource management systems and processes.
- Strong commercial understanding and ability to balance creative ambition with business realities.
- Excellent stakeholder management and influencing skills.
- An understanding of IR35.
Personal Attributes
- Highly organised and detail oriented.
- Comfortable operating at both strategic and operational levels.
- Assertive but collaborative.
- Credible with senior leadership and creative teams alike.
- Able to thrive in fast-paced environments with changing priorities.
- Resilient under pressure and capable of managing tight turnaround requirements.
- Data-driven, analytical and solution focused.
- Willingness to be hands-on
Contract Type:
Permanent
Here at Havas across the group we pride ourselves on being committed to offering equal opportunities to all potential employees and have zero tolerance for discrimination. We are an equal opportunity employer and welcome applicants irrespective of age, sex, race, ethnicity, disability and other factors that have no bearing on an individual’s ability to perform their job.
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