Director of HR

Are you a leader of HR, Organisational Development or People and Talent Engagement in a Higher Education setting, with a vision for delivering excellence at every stage of the employee lifecycle? We want to hear from you!

At Arden University, we believe in doing things differently. We are seeking an HR Director to game-change our talent attraction, management and development approaches and oversee HR operations across the University. We believe that employees should be partners in their own development – empowered, engaged, nurtured and constructively challenged to realise their potential. This will in turn help every member of the Arden team - whatever their role in the University - to deliver and support a fantastic learning experience for our students.  

You will be working with a talented and passionate team and a values-driven network of colleagues who are highly committed to the University and our mission – to make higher education more accessible, engaging and beneficial to people everywhere. The team have been working at pace to modernise the systems, processes and scale of our HR operations and the University now seeks a leader to take our people attraction, engagement and support practices to the next level, encompassing the full breadth of strategic employee engagement and development functions including talent pooling, compensation and benefits design, training and development strategies, equality, diversity and inclusion strategies.

Arden University: Who are we?

At Arden University our mission is to make education more accessible, engaging and beneficial to people everywhere. Since our launch in 2016, we have become a well-respected, multiple award nominated and ground-breaking new entrant to the University sector and have gone from being a well-established partner to traditional Universities, to a six-campus university in our own right, with online and blended learning modes leading the way in flexible Higher Education.

We recognise that the pressures of people’s hectic, modern lives often means our students are constrained - by location, cost, family/caring commitments or simply time. By making our degrees, masters and MBA programmes available through both online distance learning and flexible on-campus ‘blended’ study, we have been able to support students ranging from 18 to 80 years old to achieve their ambitions and benefit from Higher Education.

Director of HR

You will be an experienced HR professional who places employee wellbeing and performance at the heart of their approach. You will have a naturally engaging style and innovative outlook, with a well-developed leadership capability. You will listen and engage, using staff data and feedback to continuously improve employee satisfaction, engagement advocacy. You will be an inspiring communicator, strong project manager and have the credibility and clout to bring stakeholders across the organisation with you.

Our colleagues are distributed across two countries and 6 locations (spanning Berlin, Birmingham, Manchester and London), so your experience of supporting geographically dispersed colleagues will be helpful, as will solid experience of working with an academic community or within the Higher Education sector. Some travel will be required.

One of our core brand values is ‘Supportiveness’ and we pride ourselves on the supportive culture of the University and how engaged and passionate our employees are. This is an exciting time to join a University that represents the future of Higher Education – please get in touch to receive a fuller job specification.