People Partners lead the implementation of the people agenda for their assigned business groups at Secret Escapes. They act as a “trusted advisor” to leaders, providing advice, guidance and challenge with a commercial viewpoint. They are accountable for driving employee engagement, performance and team effectiveness initiatives with their business partners across the relevant jurisdictions.

About Secret Escapes

Secret Escapes is the world’s leading members-only online travel deal company, offering inspiring travel experiences and hand-picked offers to over 75 million users worldwide across our family of brands.

Operating in 14 countries across Europe and Asia, Secret Escapes Group continues to grow and establish itself as a world-class business, dedicated to giving our members the best range and value in luxury travel deals at low prices. We have 5 operating companies, and around 1000 colleagues in our team.

Secret Escapes operates a flexible working policy and we are all in the office 1 day a week (minimum) and have core hours of 10am-4pm (you can make up the other hours to suit you). In keeping with being an inspirational travel brand, we also have a ‘Work from Anywhere’ policy, so you can work from anywhere in the world for up to a month each year!

We’re a diverse and inclusive bunch of individuals from different backgrounds and with varied interests, but the one thing we all have in common is that we’re good people (even if we do say so ourselves!).

Aim of our People Partners

• Lead the people partnering team and the implementation of the people agenda for the business areas you partner with at Secret Escapes.
• Act as a trusted advisor to leaders, providing advice, guidance and challenge
• Accountable for ensuring that employee engagement, performance and team effectiveness are well managed in the areas they work with.

Things you’ll be working on:

This role leads and develops the People Partnering team and provides commercial business partnering support for two of the businesses in the Secret Escapes Group - the Secret Escapes “Brand”, and Pigsback.ie (our business in Ireland).

The role partners with our Chief Customer, Marketing and Revenue Officers and their leadership teams, and will also have direct line management of 1 x People Partners in London and Berlin who partner with our Technology and Finance teams, along with EML, our business based in Ireland on business partnering and key projects. You will partner with leadership teams in the UK, Germany, the Netherlands and Ireland, which include 6 executive leaders and a headcount of around 450.

The Senior People Partner reports to the CPO and participates fully in the People Leads activity, contributing to OKR development, communicating and owning key projects as part of our People Strategy.

People are critical to Secret Escapes success, and we pride ourselves on that “we are good people.” You will play a key role in enabling leaders to maximise the performance and impact of their teams by:

• Leading and developing the People Partnering team
• Contributing to the People Lead group, contributing to activity on OKR’s, communication to business on key initiatives
• Partnering with business leaders and their teams to improve people and organisation and to establish strategic ways of working
• Partnering with business leaders to embed great performance conversations and to create an environment where managers can be great at what they do
• Supporting people managers to have engaging & effective performance conversations in their teams
• Ensuring high levels of employee engagement, as measured by our employee survey and resulting action plans
• Owning elements of the SE people roadmap, and take an active role in key projects
• Partner with the wider People team, across different jurisdictions to ensure ways of working are efficient and effective
• Partnering with the Employee Experience Partner to deliver regular talent reviews and implement development programmes
• Building a diverse leadership talent pipeline, and ensuring retention of critical talent
• Ensure employee relations matters are dealt with robustly and pragmatically, balancing risk effectively
• Ensuring effective implementation of the SE Reward approach with our Head of Reward and People Services
• Developing and championing a high-performance culture
• Working in partnership with Talent Acquisition to ensure effective hiring of talent against an agreed recruitment forecast
• Working in partnership with the Employee Experience Lead to deliver a positive employee experience
• Participate as an active member of the People leadership team to help shape and deliver the people strategy
• Act as the key facilitator/coordinator of key people processes in collaboration with our Central People services team

How the magic happens

Across the Secret Escapes group, there are around 30 of us in our people team, with 19 working with the Secret Escapes Brand and EML for some or all of their time. We are an international bunch - you will get to work with People Team colleagues based in London, Warsaw, Berlin, Bratislava and Prague, and we love having such a diverse team.

We work hard, understand our stakeholders and have the full support of our CEO (who is full of energy and competes in endurance sporting events when he isn’t working!)

The deal breakers:

To be successful in this role, you will have…

• Significant proven knowledge and application of org design, employment law, HR policies, principles and procedures
• The ability to use data to influence business decisions
• A good understanding of UK employment law, international employment law is a bonus
• Experience in a similar role with a track record of successful delivery and collaboration with the wider people team
• Experience of designing and managing business change projects through the application of strong project management skills
• A Professional HR Qualification – CIPD or equivalent

And you are…

• Strong in building relationships and influencing – comfortable coaching and challenging stakeholders where appropriate
• A strong communicator with everyone from executives through to new starters
• Committed with a high degree of integrity and confidentiality
• A critical thinker with strong numeracy and excel
• Resilient and resourceful with a 'can do' attitude
• Self- aware and proactive to collaborate with wider people team
• Able to use judgement and work with ambiguity distilling key priorities/focus areas for your business areas
• Commercially aware

Things you should know

This role will be based in our London office. As well as our work from anywhere policy and hybrid working, we are also open to offering this role on a part time contract (4 days a week). If this is of interest to you please let us know when you apply for the role!