Job title: Head of People
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
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.
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.
Understand, honestly, what our people experience, and act on it — so people trust that raising something leads to real change.
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.
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.
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.
AI fluency and the future of the People function
Own complex and sensitive employee relations cases end to end, handled with genuine care, fairness and legal rigour, and without letting process stall.
Strategy, policy and compliance
What Success Looks Like in the First 12 Months
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.
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 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.
