Government Commercial Agency
Senior Human Resources Business Partner
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Senior HR Business Partner
Band: 5
Salary: £59,877 - £69,457
Location: Liverpool/Newport/Norwich & Birmingham - Hybrid
GCA operates a smarter working model that balances flexibility with collaboration. Successful candidates are expected to spend at least 26 days per quarter (approximately 2 days per week, pro-rata) at their contracted office, another GCA site, or off-site for meetings. For the remainder of the time, you may work from home or another suitable location that meets business needs.
Contract Type: Permanent
Hours: Full-time
Closing Date: 16/10/2026
Interview Date(s): 02/11/2026 (subject to change)
Job Summary
This role acts as the strategic people link between HR and your assigned business directorate(s), providing the insight necessary to drive the people strategy to meet GCA objectives, this will include acting as a "critical friend" and coach to senior leadership teams.
Following the four core principles of the HRBP model, you will be responsible for:
- Strategic Partnering: Partnering with executive and senior management to ensure department goals are backed by the right talent and capability. Focus on building strong relationships to support how they shape and deliver GCA people strategies across the directorates to drive measurable business impact.
- Solving: Providing strategic input on people topics and developing pragmatic solutions for complex people challenges.
- Connecting: Designing or commissioning large scale projects led by HR centres of expertise, helping the organisation draw on appropriate centres of expertise and shared service support.
- Coaching: Empowering leaders to navigate ambiguity, develop capability, and sustain transformational change.
You will lead specific people projects and drive key agendas, including workforce planning, talent management, complex employee relations and organisational design to translate directly into commercial value. To support team engagement, there is a minimum requirement of 2 days per week in a GCA office, along with adhoc travel to other GCA locations as and when required.
Key Accountabilities
Strategy & Partnering
- Elevating business conversation by partnering with leaders to drive the people strategies that power organisational success.
- Translating business objectives and strategy into functional people plans, ensuring measurable, sustainable outcomes that add value to the business.
- Acting as a trusted advisor and providing expert advice to Senior Leadership Teams (SLTs), proactively offering high-level challenge and data driven insight on all people-related subjects.
- Driving strategic workforce planning within directorates, ensuring they have the right capacity and capability to deliver their objectives.
- Partnering with HR Centres of Excellence, providing feedback from the business, shaping organisational people strategy and effective change initiatives.
- Building and maintaining strong relationships across the organisation with senior leaders, functional leads and staff networks, developing people plans to enable the business to achieve strategic objectives.
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Capability Development
- Coaching and influencing business leaders to optimise capability, accessing expertise from the L&D team to develop robust talent management, leadership pipeline and succession planning, and enhance line-manager performance across directorates.
- Collaborating with the L&D Business Partners to drive a high performance learning culture within directorates.
Operations
- Providing directorate SLTs with insights into Business Partnering progress, trends, risks, and impact, moving beyond reporting to offer predictive analysis, diagnosis and mitigation strategies to support leadership decision making.
- Ensuring all directorate activity operates in alignment with policy, employment law, and Civil Service regulatory requirements.
- Leading high-impact, enterprise-wide people projects by navigating complex risks and dependencies to drive systemic improvements in organisational health and performance.
- Driving strategic HR insights and accountability through the use and interpretation of HR analytics inform senior-level decision making and governance.
Reward
- Partner with senior leadership teams to provide strategic oversight and advice on reward and recognition frameworks, driving accountability for enhanced performance and critical capability development in alignment with Civil Service principles.
Organisational Development
- Driving transformation and improving performance through collaborative leadership, people management, and OD&D expertise. Leading and overseeing the delivery of OD&D services, projects, and interventions to ensure impactful outcomes. Collaborate with colleagues to identify opportunities for improvement and support organisation development and design initiatives or programmes within teams and directorates.
- Acting as an enabler of change, working with the Change Business Partner to identify change readiness and establish initiatives to support organisational and directorate change.
- Applying deep expertise of behaviour, culture and people systems, collaborating with cross-functional leaders to drive performance, change and transformation.
Employee Relations & Governance
- Collaborating with HR Advisory and MOJ Casework team and provide high-level guidance and oversight on complex or high-risk employee relations cases, ensuring consistency and fairness across directorates.
- Embedding effective governance controls and people risk management; proactively identifying mitigation strategies for systemic workforce risks, ensuring clear escalation pathways and leading the strategic response at a directorate level.
Essential Criteria (to be assessed at application stage)
- Professional Expertise: CIPD Level 7 accreditation (or equivalent professional experience), or a committed willingness to work toward it.
- Strategic Delivery: A proven track record of driving high-impact people initiatives and leading complex change programs.
- Data-Driven Insight: The ability to interpret workforce analytics to inform and validate strategic decision-making.
- Leadership Influence: Expert coaching skills with the ability to influence senior leaders across all HR domains, including engagement, talent, and capability.
- Relationship Management: Highly developed interpersonal skills to build credibility and influence at the most senior levels with both internal and external stakeholders.
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Success Profiles (to be assessed at interview)
Behaviours
- Leadership
- Changing and improving
- Making effective decisions
- Communicating and influencing
- Working together
Technical
- Working as a Strategic partner
- Strategic workforce planning
- Interpreting People Data
- Leading and Implementing Organisational Design
(A link to the Civil Service Success Profiles Framework is provided below)
Valuing our people
- Competitive salary
- Generous pension scheme
- A discretionary non-contractual performance related bonus
- Working remotely in addition to working in advertised office location
- Flexi time scheme (available for B1-B6)
- Minimum 25 days annual leave to a maximum service related 30 days excluding bank holidays
Want to make a difference? Find out more about the rewarding work that we do in our candidate pack.
The Civil Service is committed to attract, retain and invest in talent wherever it is found. To learn more please see the Civil Service People Plan and the Civil Service D&I Strategy.
We want to make our recruitment process accessible to everyone, so if there is any way that we can support you, please contact recruitment@gca.gov.uk
Working flexibly, delivering outcomes
GCA operates a smarter working model that balances flexibility with collaboration. Successful candidates are expected to spend at least 26 days per quarter (approximately 2 days per week, pro-rata) at their contracted office, another GCA site, or off-site for meetings. For the remainder of the time, you may work from home or another suitable location that meets business needs.
Artificial Intelligence
Artificial Intelligence can be a useful tool to support your application, however, all examples and statements provided must be truthful, factually accurate and taken directly from your own experience. Where plagiarism has been identified (presenting the ideas and experiences of others, or generated by artificial intelligence, as your own) applications may be withdrawn and internal candidates may be subject to disciplinary action. Please see our candidate guidance for more information on appropriate and inappropriate use.
Selection Process
A reserve list may be held for up to 12 months, which the Civil Service may use to fill future suitably similar vacancies across government for candidates who are considered appointable following interview. Should you be placed on a reserve list and want to be removed please contact recruitment@gca.gov.uk.
Please note that as part of this recruitment process, if you are unsuccessful at the interview stage but are close to the benchmark score you may be considered for and offered a role at a lower pay band within the same job family.
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