As People Partner, you will provide generalist HR support to various stakeholders across the training ground, supporting colleagues within Men’s and Women’s First-Team and across the Academy. With high attention to detail, good employment law knowledge and a "hands on" approach, this position would be a best fit for an operational people specialist with strong stakeholder engagement skills and the ability to business partner cross functionally.
You will operate at the heart of the Training Ground’s People function – playing an integral role delivering a top-tier operational people service across all departments.
You will act as advisor and trusted partner, ensuring people solutions are aligned to business performance, talent needs, and the club’s strategic goals. You will blend data analytics, employee experience, operational effectiveness, and leadership development to deliver with impact across our people agenda.
This is a visible, influential role, designed for a proactive, client-focused specialist who thrives on partnering with diverse teams in a fast-paced, performance and winning environment.
Key Responsibilities
Business Partnering
- Deliver proactive and high-impact people services across the Men’s and Women’s first teams and Academies.
- Partnering with stakeholders across the Training Ground to provide professional advice on people best practice & employment law in all people related areas, consulting and coaching where appropriate and managing the risk within employee relations.
- Successfully advise and manage ER situations including grievance and disciplinary, performance, redundancy, restructures and TUPE.
- Ensuring policies and procedures are kept up to date in line with legal requirements and actively implement new policies & procedures/guidelines where required.
- Identify and analyse trends from the people dashboard reports and KPIs to proactively resolve issues and undertake ad-hoc people projects where required in line with the people strategy.
- Providing support to the People Operations team by responding to any escalated queries from the HR inbox and collaborating on any ad-hoc activities where required.
- Collaborate with colleagues across Talent Acquisition and Learning and Development to connect and contribute to projects and works including where appropriate delivering on initiatives, applying generalist people and talent expertise.
- Contributing to Equality, Diversity and Inclusion programmes and activities in line with the Premier League Equality Diversity and Inclusion Standard (PLEDIS) and actively promote diversity and inclusion across the business.
- Contribute to embedding a culture of strategic people business partnering, ensuring all people plans are aligned with business priorities and performance targets.
Client Focus & Relationship Management
- Build and maintain strong, trust-based relationships with business stakeholders, providing expert guidance on all people-related activities, challenges, and opportunities.
- Actively engage with business units to understand their operational needs, contributing and acting as a thought partner in the design and implementation of appropriate people solutions.
- Translate business insights into people initiatives and ensure seamless execution and follow-through.
Data Analytics & Strategic Workforce Insights
- Use people data and insights to identify trends, risks, and opportunities across departments.
- Develop and implement data-driven objectives that support business and people performance outcomes.
- Translate workforce analytics into strategic actions that drive engagement, performance, and retention.
HR Operations & Policy Implementation
- Work closely with People Operations to support the roll-out of policy updates, process changes, and compliance requirements.
- Provide operational input and ensure excellence in delivery across all people processes and employee life-cycle events.
- Support resolution of a variety of employee relations matters with a strategic and compliant approach.
Key Measures of Success
- Deliver a high-impact, people-first partnering service that enhances stakeholder trust and strengthens the credibility of the People Team, evidenced by engagement scores, feedback, and business alignment.
- Delivery of People Strategy aligned with organisational goals, including measurable progress
- on transformation, culture, and DEI initiatives.
- Successful relationships built and maintained with key stakeholders.
- Employee relations matters and projects managed effectively with minimal risk to the business.
- Insight-driven decision making using accurate people data and analytics to inform strategy, identify risks, and drive improvements.
- Foster the development of high-performing teams through cross-functional collaboration, with demonstrable outcomes in capability growth and talent retention.
Skills, Experience & Knowledge
Essential:
- Proven generalist people experience, preferably gained within mid to large and/or high profile organizations.
- Experience of managing ER cases, performance, redundancy, restructures and TUPE related change.
- Competence in employment tribunal case management
- Strong stakeholder relationship building skills
- Excellent communication skills and attention to detail, as well as a proactive team player
- Discreet with high integrity, emotional intelligence and decision-making ability
- Ability to progress project work while dealing efficiently with operational issues
- Highly skilled MS Office
Desirable:
- Experience in a sporting environment, entertainment or performance-focused industry.
- Highly skilled in people database management
- Experienced in Project Management
Qualifications:
- Essential: CIPD Level 5 or equivalent experience.
- Desirable: CIPD Level 7 Qualifications
- Enhanced DBS check
Core Competencies
- Strategic Mindset / Data-Literate and Insight-Driven / Discreet with High Integrity
- Collaborative Leadership / Client-Focused / Trusted Advisor & Influencer / Low Ego
- Inclusive & Engaging Communicator / Change Champion / Outcome-Oriented
The Executives in Sport Group are retained on behalf of Chelsea FC to appoint a People Partner. All direct applications and CV's will be forwarded to The Executives in Sport Group.
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