Chief People Officer

Grade: Leadership Tier 2, Spot Salary £100,000 per annum

Closing date: 9am on Monday 23 September 2024

Interview date: Friday 4 October 2024

Newham College London is a leading further education institution committed to providing high-quality education and training to a diverse community. With a focus on innovation and excellence, we aim to empower our students to achieve their full potential and contribute positively to society.

Dear colleague,

Many thanks for your interest in the role of Chief People Officer (CPO) at Newham College London. This newly created executive level role is being introduced at a very exciting time for the college. Our proposed merger with Newham Sixth Form College (NewVic) is progressing well and our Board have recently appointed our current Deputy CEO, Jamie Purser, as our new Principal and Chief Executive. More information on the proposed merger can be found on the FEA jobs page for this role.

Newham College is one of the top performing further education colleges in London and officially recognised as a ‘Good’ provider, with strong skills by Ofsted. Our students are at the heart of everything we do, and excellent leadership is essential to ensure we deliver the best outcomes for them, supporting them to develop the skills and gain qualifications that will help them progress onto their future career goals and ambitions.

Our new Chief People Officer will be responsible for driving all aspects of our people strategy across the newly merged college. We are very ambitious for the future of the organisation, and we recognise that positioning us as the leading employer in the London further education landscape is central to our ambitions.

Our new Chief People Officer will form part of the newly formed senior leadership team and will play a critical role in enabling us to achieve our strategic goals and operational objectives. We are looking for a highly experienced, innovative and inspiring senior leader of people and human resources to use their strategic leadership skills to deliver a refreshed people strategy that contributes to a culture rooted in high performance, empowerment and accountability.

Our new Chief People Officer will possess the skills to successfully integrate the two existing HR functions, creating a world class people service in the newly merged college. We recognise the current HR functions are disparate and have inconsistent foundations and therefore skill in scoping, delegating and overseeing delivery of the component parts of a strong people service will be critical in maintaining strategic focus on an inspiring and high performing organisational culture.

To succeed in this role, you will be comfortable working in a fast-paced environment, you will have extensive experience of successfully leading change programmes, and you will be able to demonstrate that you have built highly effective people and human resources teams. We see the people function as an enabler and you will bring an approach rooted in collaboration, ambition, integrity and professionalism, whilst ensuring that students are placed at the heart of everything we do.

Whilst your previous senior level experience may have been gained in sectors other than further education, you will have a deep commitment to meeting the needs of a very diverse staff and student body, and your personal values will align well with our shared social purpose of making a positive difference to the communities we serve.

We have appointed FE Associates to support us with this crucial appointment. Interested parties are advised to discuss the opportunity with Suzanne.Thurlow@fea.co.uk prior to making an application.

Once you have done your research on us and the role, I think you will be excited about our future and the role our people will play in shaping this. I very much look forward to considering your application.

Kind regards

Paul Stephen
Principal and Chief Executive

If you have the very special qualities and the passion to make a real a difference to the future of our students and business, then we would like to hear from you.

Please complete the registration form below to access the candidate information pack, application form and the equality and diversity form.

NB:  Please ensure you complete all fields and click on both the Terms and Conditions check box as well as the Consent check box to enable access to the documents.

We have appointed FE Associates to help us find the right person.  Prior to submitting an application, interested parties are advised to arrange an initial conversation with our FE Associates lead consultant, by emailing Suzanne.Thurlow@fea.co.uk to discuss the role before the closing date.

Closing date: 9am on Monday 23 September 2024

Interview date: Friday 4 October 2024

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