Lead People Partner

Job description

At Beam, we’re building AI that serves society. We're a global team of ambitious, hardworking problem solvers, applying fast-moving startup energy to work that makes the world a better place. If you want to apply your talent to the biggest problems society faces, Beam is the place for you. You’ll be part of a high-performance culture where you'll make a huge impact, rapidly progress your career, and truly enjoy your work. Over 100,000 frontline workers already use Beam to take notes, provide live interpretation and handle phone calls, so they can focus on the people who need them most. This is just the beginning. About the role As our Lead People Partner, you'll work closely with leaders to build a high-performance culture across Beam. You'll understand what's getting in the way of teams performing at their best, then help leaders take action, whether that's raising the bar on performance, coaching a manager, evolving a team structure or leading through complex organisational change. You'll bring strong judgement and a point of view. Using your understanding of the business, people data and what you're seeing across teams, you'll diagnose problems, challenge leaders when needed and turn insight into practical action. You'll also help turn our People strategy into reality, leading the implementation of key initiatives across the business and ensuring changes don't just launch, but genuinely stick. YOU WILL: Partner with leaders to improve team performance - Build trusted relationships with senior leaders, acting as a thought partner on the people and organisational challenges affecting their teams. - Diagnose what’s getting in the way of performance, using data, judgement and a strong understanding of the business to get to the root of problems. - Challenge leaders constructively on team effectiveness, organisational design, management quality and difficult people decisions. - Turn data, performance, attrition and ER insights into clear recommendations and action. - Own key strategic initiatives and drive organisational changes and ensure roles, structures and accountabilities are set up to deliver. Raise the quality of management - Coach managers and leaders to set clear expectations, give effective feedback and address underperformance early. - Build manager capability through practical interventions rather than heavy programmes or frameworks. - Help managers navigate difficult situations with confidence and good judgement, stepping in directly where the complexity or risk warrants it. - Identify recurring management challenges and work with the wider People team to address the underlying causes. Own performance and complex people matters - Own complex ER and performance casework across Beam, including investigations, grievances, disciplinaries, capability and complex absence. - Work directly with managers to resolve issues pragmatically, fairly and at the right level of formality. - Partner with the Associate Director of People on the highest-risk or legally complex decisions. - Maintain a strong view across individual cases, spotting patterns and turning them into improvements in management practice or People processes. - Embed Beam's approach to performance across probation, ongoing performance and formal capability. Strengthen how Beam operates as we grow - Embed clear levelling across teams, partnering with leaders on new roles, promotions and evolving organisational structures. - Hold leaders accountable for acting on engagement and organisational health issues within their teams. - Bring together insights across performance, engagement, ER, absence and attrition to identify emerging organisational risks. - Contribute to People strategy by bringing a close understanding of what's actually happening within teams and where Beam needs to change. YOU'LL HAVE: - Deep experience as a People/HR Business Partner in a high-growth, high-performance environment. You understand how the business works, speak the language of goals and metrics, and can connect people decisions to commercial outcomes. - The credibility to influence senior leaders. You build trust quickly, form a view and say it clearly. You're comfortable challenging leaders, navigating difficult decisions and holding your ground when it matters. - A strong performance and ER toolkit. You've raised the bar on performance, coached managers through underperformance, and independently handled complex grievances, disciplinaries, capability and absence cases. - Experience making change happen. You've led teams through organisational change and know how to take an initiative from a good idea to something managers actually understand, use and stick with. - An instinct for scale. You simplify rather than add process, build things that work without you in the room, and reach for data, technology and tooling before you reach for another meeting. - AI as part of how you work. You use it routinely to think, analyse, create and automate, and you're constantly looking for ways to increase the quality and scale of your impact without adding headcount. ABOUT BEAM Our team of 200+ embraces a hybrid working approach, enjoying 2-3 days of vibrant collaboration in our beautiful Shoreditch co-working space, fully equipped with rooftop views, an onsite barista and kitted out gym. We’ve picked up an armful of awards https://beam.org/awards for our work, including one from our former Queen. We've also been named by WIRED as one of London's 10 hottest startups https://www.wired.co.uk/article/london-hottest-startups-2021 and by LinkedIn as a Top 15 UK Startup https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/linkedin-top-startups-2022-15-uk-companies-rise-linkedin-news-uk/?trackingId=9TqxvkXTjF2HSPvSIWLczw%3D%3D. Meanwhile, we've been covered in the media literally thousands of times, including the likes of The FT, BBC, TechCrunch, Forbes and The Guardian https://beam.org/press. We’re also proud to be backed by some of the world's leading tech investors and entrepreneurs, including the founders of Booking.com http://Booking.com, Calm, Shazam and Dropbox. Start your journey to a more impactful career today. We're excited to hear from you. Reasonable adjustments: Beam is committed to fostering an inclusive, diverse, and supportive work environment for all employees. This policy extends to our hiring practices. We recognise that some candidates may need additional support during their hiring process to give them the best chance of being a success. To ensure that all candidates have an equitable opportunity during their process, we are committed to providing reasonable adjustments where required. If you require a reasonable adjustment to be made during your process, please let your Talent Partner know. We encourage you to share this information, but there is no obligation to do so. Please be reassured that any reasonable adjustment requests will not be taken into account when making a decision about your candidacy.