HR Business Partner

About the role:

The HR Business Partner will support UK functional leaders in all people-related processes, ensuring compliance with legislation and driving engagement strategies to achieve organizational goals. Responsible for Employee Relations, Talent Management, Reward, Learning, and core HR processes, the role reports to the HR Director UKI and collaborates with global HR teams.

You will play a key role in creating a positive and high-performing culture across both factory and commercial teams, partnering closely with operational leaders to ensure that our people strategies drive productivity, capability and engagement on site. This role offers excellent development opportunities for a driven HR professional to broaden their exposure across both manufacturing and commercial environments, with potential to progress into more senior HR or regional roles within the wider Barry Callebaut organization.

We currently operate a home/office working pattern. For this role the expectation is that you will be in the office a minimum of 3 days a week, or more if required.

Key responsibilities:

• Employee Relations: Provide pragmatic, business-focused ER advice to line managers; proactively identify trends; and work to create a culture of trust, fairness and open communication across the organisation.

• Talent & Performance Management: you will champion culture and key talent processes (performance management, engagement, development, DEI) and lead on talent identification and succession planning for critical roles, ensuring robust development pipelines and readiness for future growth.

• Change Management: Support transformation initiatives by providing insight on workforce impacts, facilitating consultation, and ensuring timely and effective communication with employees and union partners.

• Organization Design: Lead organisation reviews to align capability, headcount and structure with operational efficiency and business growth priorities.

• Learning: working with leaders and individuals you will identify learning needs and solutions.

• Reward: utilising the global reward framework you will work with leaders to ensure compensation is performance related, fair and competitive.

• Core HR Team processes – we are a small team, so you will take ownership of a share of core activities from benefits to supporting our external partners engagement. You will also work alongside our Global Business HR Service, contributing to continuous improvement of HR processes, reporting and data accuracy.

About you:

• Degree and minimum CIPD Level 5 preferable.
• Minimum 5+ years of experience within HR, ideally within Commercial/B2B/FMCG organisations.
• Experience of leading organisaional/culture change projects and talent/performance management.
• Excellent knowledge of the UK legislation and proven track record in employee relations, including union experience.
• Strong analytical and data driven approach, able to interpret HR Metrics and provide insight to leaders.
• Experience with SAP & HR systems (ServiceNow/SuccessFactors/Atoss preferred).
• Good knowledge of Microsoft suite.
• Strong customer focus with excellent relationship-building skills.
• Effective multitasking, prioritization, and time management abilities.
• Proven problem-solving, influencing, and communication skills with solid stakeholder management.
• Able to challenge constructively and influence at all levels.
• Drives culture, engagement, and employee development with integrity and resilience.
• Passionate about creating a positive employee experience and fostering inclusion, performance, and continuous improvement.
• Adaptable, self-motivated team player who thrives in change.