Learning and Development Business Partner

Job description

Role purpose: 

Scope is a major pan-disability Charity. We aim to lead the field in attracting, developing and retaining a diverse team of Disability Gamechangers who are highly engaged and motivated to deliver our strategy of Everyday Equality;  who live into our values and put our customers at the heart of everything they do. This role is key to us achieving our aim.

You will work as part of the Talent Acquisition and Development team, managing the day-to-day co-ordination of our acquisition and development activities, to ensure all our colleagues are supported to develop their skills and knowledge, to flourish in their careers and to achieve their best as disability gamechangers.

Main responsibilities and accountabilities: 

• To help build and execute the Talent Acquisition and Development team’s strategy and to achieve our KPIs: Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, and People Engagement, and to be included in the Times 100 best not for profit organisations to work for.  
• To develop and promote our culture of continuous professional development, taking ownership of, analysing learning needs, identifying, designing and delivering accessible activities and programmes that help us achieve this.  Wherever possible, working in partnership with external organisations to increase the reach and impact of our efforts.    
• To drive engagement with our Executive Leadership team and senior managers to support them to build high performing teams.  Working across directorates, proactively, to ensure two-way communication is regular and meaningful and action is taken to drive engagement with their teams and development opportunities.  
• Leaning into and role modelling our values, at all times.  Role modelling our coaching approach to people development; coaching leaders and their teams as appropriate, and optimising and promoting ‘Grow our Gamechangers’, our people development process.   
• To own our apprenticeships programmes and identify and develop further apprenticeships, especially those that drive our mission to help disabled people get into, and stay in, meaningful work.  To promote apprenticeships across all Directorates and with our acquisition specialist to attract applicants.  
• To work closely with our Training Specialist to support all our programme participants, including Apprentices and Trainees, to succeed at Scope and on their programmes.   
• To explore and ensure we participate in further programmes, such as the government’s Kickstart programme and Traineeships.  Working collaboratively with stakeholders outside and inside Scope to ensure their success. 
• To partner with our Charities network to provide our cross organisations’ Charity Mentoring Scheme annually, and to build on opportunities to partner for further development programmes and activities, such as coaching, shadowing, and secondments.  
• To work collaboratively with our Head of Internal Comms and Engagement on accessible engagement projects, including Wellbeing activities, people events and recognition awards.  And to communicate our messages across the organisation.  
• To partner with other areas of the organisation, and e-learning providers, to develop accessible content, as required, for our learning platform, Scope to Learn, and actively exploring ways in which this can be co-created and co-produced.    
• Working with our L&D Coordinator and our colleagues in the People Team to ensure we are optimising our reporting capability through Scope to Learn and iTrent:  reporting traction, compliance and customer experience; tracking our people’s journey at Scope and gaining big data to help us target interventions appropriately. 
• To evaluate impact and reach of all programmes and to understand how we are delivering against our people KPIs and all our Directorates’ KPIs.   
• Working in partnership with our Acquisition and our Equality, Diversity and Inclusion specialists, our Volunteering Team, and other significant stakeholders, to use the platform to communicate development activities across Scope. 
• To work collaboratively within and outside the Talent team, to explore every opportunity to co-produce our approach to talent.  To map our talent, build an equal, diverse and inclusive talent pool, and develop a succession pipeline and programmes to support all our people through these activities. 
• Ensure close links with the Volunteering team so that, wherever possible, our approaches align both employee and volunteer engagement.
• Work together with colleagues across the People Team and across all directorates to ensure our people journey is Equal, Diverse and Inclusive and that we seize every opportunity to increase colleagues’ knowledge and skills and to build a culture of continuous professional development. 
• To build close working practises with colleagues in the Talent team, to understand each other’s peaks and troughs in workload and to reach across to support and assist at times of need.  To create a team of ‘T-shaped’ colleagues who work efficiently and effectively and build agile ways of working.   
• To network externally and share our work with others in the charity sector and beyond, 
  building our online presence and celebrating our successes on social media platforms.  
• To provide creative and practical support to the Head of Talent Acquisition and Development,
  whenever opportunities arise.

Key contacts

Internal contacts

Exec Directors

Senior Leaders

Managers

Colleagues

Volunteers

Internal and corporate comms teams

External contacts

Charity networks

Education and Apprenticeship providers

Service providers 

Partners 

Person specification 

Knowledge and experience

Essential

• Recent experience of designing and managing a Talent and Succession approach and a desire to collaborate and co-produce our new sector leading processes
• Recent experience of designing, delivering and evaluating effective senior leadership development programmes, and learning interventions across the organisation - that have brought about cultural as well as operational change
• Proven commitment to Equality, Diversity and Inclusion
• Learning and Development qualification such as CIPD
• Experience of owning projects from start to finish and of implementing learnings from retrospectives, to bring about improvements
• Recent experience of sharing the organisation’s work with both internal and external audiences, using social media effectively and judiciously to raise employer brand recognition
• Proven experience of influencing senior leaders and of working across an entire organisation to deliver meaningful programmatic change programmes
• Experience of building synergies and understanding across areas of responsibility, to support colleagues, build agile working practices and great collaborative relationships and communities of practise
• Recent experience of using psychometric tools and of delivering feedback to individuals and teams
• Experience of developing accessible digital learning and of managing learning management systems
• Commitment to ensuring our internal and external customer is at the heart of everything we do
• Excited to co-produce our products wherever possible
• Recognised Coaching qualification (or working towards one)     

Desirable

• Lived experience of disability

Skills and competencies

Essential

• Commitment to our cause 
• Creative designer of a broad diversity of learning interventions, that are: cost effective, accessible and build competence to achieve change 
• Self-starter who is committed to identifying and resolving issues and managing risks
• Desire to deliver sector-leading projects and programmes and commitment to continuous improvement of offer 
• Commitment to living and role modelling our values, consistently
• Ability to analyse and interpret data to report findings and make recommendations for own and colleagues’ work, and to act on those recommendations proactively
• Knows what ‘great’ is for a project and is passionate about achieving this in the shoes of the customer – will check back and iterate till it’s right
• Passionate about all things learning and development, and especially about growing our people’s competence, continually 
• Confident and engaging facilitator, presenter and trainer, to all levels of the organisation 
• Commitment to using plain English and accessible content as a default
• Ability to prioritise, flex approach and deliver the best, even under pressure
• Evidence of creative thinking and doing things differently, using a test and learn approach and iterating to continually improve: assets, offer, approach
• Evidence of influencing at all levels to deliver projects, new approaches and to overcome obstacles
• Ability to work collaboratively as part of a high performing team as well as being eager to own and drive projects proactively 
• Resilience to keep going when things don’t go to plan