The Cabinet Office is offering up to £170,000 for the next government chief people officer.
The department is seeking an “excellent leader of people who drives change, improves capability, leads across boundaries, and builds diverse, inclusive and multidisciplinary teams” to succeed Fiona Ryland, who is leaving the role later this year.
The chief people officer leads the Government People Group within the Cabinet Office and sets HR policies that apply across the civil service in areas that are not delegated to departments. This includes the civil service management code, the Civil Service Compensation Scheme, senior civil service pay and performance management and the Civil Service Pension Scheme.
They are responsible for delivering the priorities set out in the Civil Service People Plan: learning, skills and capability; pay, policies and pensions, including delivery of the Civil Service Reward Strategy; employee experience; recruitment and resourcing; and organisational effectiveness, which includes developing a strategic workforce plan for the whole civil service and spearheading the Shared Services Strategy for Government.
The successful candidate will also be tasked with “leading the evolution of GPG to become match-fit for an era of rapid technological change, heightened media scrutiny, and growing employee expectations”.
“Having established itself as the centre of excellence for people policy and HR professionalism, GPG must now become the systems leader for resolving workforce issues, convening across disciplines to address the highest-profile and most political challenges, and must operate as the centre of excellence for transformation, providing specialist advice to departments as they undergo change,” the candidate pack for the role says.
Candidates for the director general-level role must have “extensive breadth and depth of experience” of implementing policy and strategy, as well as excellent communication skills and “high personal impact to establish and maintain trusted and collaborative relationships and to influence ministers to achieve agreed collective outcomes”.
They must be able to demonstrate a commitment to innovation, including an understanding of how AI and digitalisation can benefit the civil service and citizens.
And they must have worked as part of a senior leadership team within a complex operating environment, “providing support and constructive challenge to colleagues to support the organisation’s wider objectives”.
Writing in the candidate pack for the role, government chief operating officer Cat Little said the GCPO has “one of the most significant posts in government”.
“The opportunity is enormous, and the stakes are high. The government has an ambitious agenda of delivery which the civil service must be able to implement with the best people, skills and experience to drive forward change. We need to develop, recruit, enable, and manage civil servants as a leading employer, and do so against a backdrop of rapidly changing technology, diversification of skills and changing expectations from both staff and citizens,” she said.
She said that as well as knowing and being able to “express confidently” what is needed for a large and diverse workforce to be successful and implement effective reform, the successful candidate will need “sophisticated and nuanced policy and political handling skills, and you will be a collaborative and approachable senior colleague”.
“Above all, you will be a great and inspirational leader of people, not just of the staff working directly to you but to all civil servants,” she said.
Little added that she is "actively encouraging applicants" based in York and Glasgow, where the Cabinet Office has a regional presence, as well as London to apply "to reflect the UK-wide nature of the civil service".
Applications for the government chief people officer job close on 30 November.