Head of People

Job title: Head of People

Location: UK, Remote

Reports to: Chief Operating Officer (COO)

Where you sit: On our Management Team, the tier below the Exec Team. You will be working directly with the CEO and Exec on our first strategic pillar ‘Attracting, developing and retaining Legends’

Salary: £80,000 – £95,000 DOE

About the Role

We've grown fast, from around 40 people to nearly 130 in three years and that pace has changed what our business needs from its People function. We're looking for a Head of People who can take real ownership of how we lead, develop and look after our people through the next stage of that journey, with more growth still to come.

This is a hands-on, build-and-deliver role, not a purely strategic one. You'll set direction, but you'll also be the person who gets the core programmes; onboarding, probation, performance, development and wellbeing, designed, live and genuinely used across the business. You'll be visible and accessible to everyone, not a name on an org chart people rarely see.

We believe that looking after people well and expecting them to do their best work are the same thing, not a trade-off. The person we're looking for holds both at once: they raise the bar on performance and management quality while making this a place where people feel supported, developed and genuinely cared about. If you see those as competing priorities, this won't be the right role for you. The same standard points outwards: people who are looked after and expected to excel are how we delight our customers – external and internal.

And it helps that this is a genuinely great place to work. Our people are exceptional, we're a certified Great Place to Work, and looking after people isn't an HR programme here; it's our first strategic pillar, owned from the top. You'd be joining a business that already deeply cares about this and wants someone to take it further. We operate as no ego, team first group of people who all have a desire to do their best work, day in, day out, all pushing for IMP to truly succeed.

We're a fully remote business, and we see that as a strength but we're honest that it makes connection, culture and visible leadership harder, not easier. A real part of this role is making remote work genuinely well for our people, and we'll want to understand how you'd approach that.

You'll own the full talent cycle, how candidates experience us, how we hire, and everything that happens once people are here. Our Talent Manager will report to you: a genuine talent expert to lean on, not a gap to fill.

What You'll Own

We've framed this around outcomes rather than activity what matters is that the work lands and that people feel the difference.

Legends — our standard, culture and engagement

Legends is IMP’s first strategic pillar: attract, develop and retain the people who make IMP exceptional. The Legend standard, what exceptional looks like here is being defined with the whole team this autumn. Your job is to take it and make it real: in how we hire, develop, review and reward, and in how it feels to work here.

• Take ownership of embedding our Legend standard — Strategic Pillar #1. You’ll inherit the framework, fresh engagement survey data and the behaviour definitions the whole team creates at our autumn meetup, and turn them into how we hire, develop, review and reward.

• Build the Legend employer brand with our Talent Manager — an EVP that makes the best people come to us and stay.

• Build a culture where people feel genuinely valued, energised and proud to work here — and make sure the way we talk about ourselves matches the way it feels to work here.

• Understand, honestly, what our people experience, and act on it — so people trust that raising something leads to real change.

• Create genuine connection and belonging across a fully remote, distributed team, where none of it can be left to chance.

Talent and hiring

• Own the end-to-end talent cycle: candidate experience, hiring standards, onboarding, growth and development, and promotion cycles — one owner, one bar, from first contact to Legend.

• Lead and develop our Talent Manager — they bring deep talent acquisition expertise; you bring the direction and the standard it all rolls up to.

• Embed bar-raiser hiring across every function, so every hire strengthens the team — measured by quality of hire, not speed to fill.

Manager and leadership capability

A big part of this role is elevating our managers — investing in their skills, growing their confidence, and equipping them to lead at their very best, so they can bring out the best in their teams.

• Design and personally deliver practical management development focused on real skills: motivating a team, communicating clearly, having honest conversations, and setting and holding a high bar.

• Coach managers day to day, including sitting alongside them in the difficult conversations — not running a workshop and stepping back.

• Make managers great hirers — build the practical interview capability and bar-raiser confidence for hiring to the Legend bar to be a skill every people leader owns, working hand in hand with our Talent Manager.

• Make people leadership something every manager owns, rather than something that gets escalated to People.

Performance

• Design and embed a clear, consistent approach to performance that both lifts high performers and deals fairly and promptly with underperformance.

• Give managers the tools and the confidence to manage performance well themselves, consistently.

• Make sure performance issues are addressed early and directly, and don't quietly disappear.

Core people programmes

• Take onboarding, probation, development and wellbeing from where they are today to live, embedded and used delivering at pace and to a standard people notice.

• Own wellbeing as something practical and preventative — early, everyday support that helps people stay well and do their best work.

AI fluency and the future of the People function

• Continue and accelerate the transformation of the People function itself into an AI-native operation — build and run our people processes the modern way and be a visible example of what AI-fluent working looks like.

• Take the whole team on that journey: lead our company-wide AI Fluency Programme and own the L&D piece that turns AI literacy into a core skill from workflow design to systems thinking.

Employee relations

• Own complex and sensitive employee relations cases end to end, handled with genuine care, fairness and legal rigour, and without letting process stall.

• Be the senior escalation point and build managers' confidence in handling day-to-day employee relations themselves.

Strategy, policy and compliance

• Sit on the management team as the senior voice for people, with a clear and well-argued point of view.

• Own our HR policies, keeping them current and fit for a remote-first, scaling business.

• Bring sound working knowledge of UK employment law, applied alongside our in-house legal expertise and external HR and legal advisors where needed.

• Own the People team's budget and resource planning with the COO.

What Success Looks Like in the First 12 Months

• Our people feel valued, energised and proud to work here — and it shows in how they talk about us and the energy they bring to their work and demonstrated through feedback mechanisms.

• Managers are visibly more confident and consistent as leaders, and performance is being managed directly across the business. Review processes hold the Legend bar, and managers can confidently identify Legends through them.

• The core people programmes — onboarding, probation, performance, development and wellbeing — are live, used and trusted.

• Hiring is deliberate and measured — a clear hiring strategy, bar-raiser standards in use across every function, and quality of hire visibly rising.

• People believe that someone owns how they're led and looked after, and that raising something leads to action.

• Complex and sensitive cases are being handled promptly, fairly and well.

• Teams and individuals work with real autonomy and ownership — and AI-fluent ways of working are visibly raising the bar on how we operate.

What We're Looking For

Essential

• Senior People/HR leadership experience, with a genuine track record of both driving high performance and looking after people well — and the judgement to hold both at once.

• Experience in tech/product organisations — you understand how product, engineering and commercial teams work and what they need from a People function. There are People leaders built in tech and People leaders built in traditional corporates; we’re looking for the first kind.

• Hands-on experience inside the 100–200 growth phase — a business where managers have been promoted from within and the structure needs to catch up with the scale. You've lived that transition, likely one level down from the top People role, and you're ready to own it.

• You’ve personally built and delivered core people programmes — onboarding, performance, development — not watched them being built. We’ll ask you to show us what you’ve built and how it held up as the business grew.

• A builder and a doer — someone who designs and then personally delivers, stays close to the detail, and is energised by rolling their sleeves up rather than overseeing from a distance.

• AI-native in how you work. You use AI daily to design, deliver and scale your own work — and you have the potential to lead a business-wide AI Fluency Programme with credibility.

• Strong, hands-on employee relations experience, handled fairly, lawfully and with genuine care.

• Demonstrated success elevating managers into more confident, high-impact leaders.

• A sound working knowledge of UK employment law, applied alongside our in-house legal expertise.

• A visible, accessible presence that builds trust — and a proven approach to creating connection, culture and manager visibility across a fully remote team. This is one of our real challenges, and we'll want to hear how you'd stop it becoming a barrier.

Desirable

• A coaching qualification, or demonstrable experience coaching managers and leaders (this matters more to us than an HR qualification).

• Experience leading a dedicated Talent/TA function or partnering closely with one.

Our Hiring Process

• CV & Cover letters will be reviewed by our Talent Manager

• Screen call with our Talent Manager [30 minutes]

• Competency based interview with our Fractional CPO [40 minutes]

• Task Stage [Leadership Team Members] [75 minutes]

• Final Stage – CEO values & culture fit [45 minutes]