King's College London

About Us

King’s Organisational Development (OD) team plays a key role in realising the university’s strategic aim to build a thriving staff community. Our goal is to enable a positive and inclusive workplace culture in which staff feel a sense of belonging, empowered to reach their potential, and supported to succeed.

We do this through interconnected programmes of work focussed on the broad themes of staff learning and development, career and talent management, workplace culture and engagement, and digital skills competency.

About the Role

We are seeking to recruit an experienced Organisational Development Careers & Talent Manager to help establish and connect career and development pathways across the organisation to support internal mobility and offer King’s staff the opportunity to learn new skills and develop in their roles. In doing this, the role will also be supporting organisational leadership teams in their efforts to embed talent management initiatives locally, through activities such as succession planning, supporting people plans and overseeing the annual performance management activity.

This is a significant strategic role with the successful candidate leading the delivery of career and talent management activity, both in terms of embedding standardised operational departmental and faculty activity, as well as consulting on wider organisational transformation programmes. Central to this will be the embedding of core frameworks, practices and policies, and the upskilling and support of existing HR colleagues to ensure organisational consistency. There will also be a standalone project to manage the revamp and retendering of our external preferred suppliers/partners, in collaboration with other Organisatioanl Development team members.

The successful candidate will be an amplifier of our values framework “Our Principles in Action” and will be an expert practitioner driving activities aligned to King’s Strategy 2026 and Vision 2029. Mindful of ever-changing working patterns and structures, they will cultivate and promote inclusive ways of working that enable all staff to flourish and have a good work-life balance.

Joining a highly collaborative OD team will mean that the role holder will need to be a positive, proactive self-starter, who is resilient and entrepreneurial in outlook. They will have excellent communication skills, a commitment to continuous improvement and experience of supporting a complex and diverse organisation. This role is for somebody who can manage their own time and deal with frequently changing and multiple priorities in response to organisational needs. It will also come with line management responsibility for an existing Organisational Development team member.

This is a full-time post (35 Hours per week), and you will be offered as an indefinite contract.

About You

To be successful in this role, we are looking for candidates to have the following skills and experience:

Essential criteria 

1. Experience of building and implementing career roadmaps and development initiatives for a variety of staff roles, in partnership with senior local and central leadership teams
2. Expertise in establishing and formalising talent management activities such as coaching partnerships, mentoring programmes, as well as developing and supporting succession and people plans.
3. Knowledge of leading centralised performance management initiatives, including the delivery and reporting of annual Performance Development Reviews.
4. Proficiency in delivering learning support and training to develop and upskill key collaborators in new and existing career and talent management activities.
5. Experience in overseeing large-scale procurement activities, aligned to facilitating the usage of learning, development, and career management external partnerships.
6. Expertise in adopting a consultancy methodology and working with senior organisational stakeholders.
7. Knowledge of best practice process improvement and the capability to leverage available technology, data and reporting to improve new and existing processes.
8. Proficiency in managing and developing people, through adopting a coaching methodology underpinned by trust, empowerment, equity and benevolence.

Desirable criteria

1. Previous experience of working within a university or the higher education sector.
2. CIPD Level 5 or equivalent qualification / experience.
3. Ability to create design impactful organisational toolkits, frameworks and supporting material.
4. Project or change management qualification.

Downloading a copy of our Job Description

Full details of the role and the skills, knowledge and experience required can be found in the Job Description document, provided at the bottom of the next page after you click “Apply Now”. This document will provide information of what criteria will be assessed at each stage of the recruitment process.

Further Information

We pride ourselves on being inclusive and welcoming. We embrace diversity and want everyone to feel that they belong and are connected to others in our community.

We are committed to working with our staff and unions on these and other issues, to continue to support our people and to develop a diverse and inclusive culture at King's.

We ask all candidates to submit a copy of their CV, and a supporting statement, detailing how they meet the essential criteria listed in the advert. If we receive a strong field of candidates, we may use the desirable criteria to choose our final shortlist, so please include your evidence against these where possible.

To find out how our managers will review your application, please take a look at our ‘How we Recruit’ pages.

 Interviews are due to be held the week of 12 August.

We are not able to offer sponsorship for candidates who do not currently possess the right to work in the UK.