HR Business Partner

Main purpose of the role

The purpose of this role is to support the Director, People – HR Business Partnering in embedding a strategic value add HR function. As a member of the global People and Culture team, the job holder will work alongside other team members in contributing to and delivering CIFF’s organizational-wide people strategy, whilst maintaining a specific focus on London based teams.

This role will lead on and manage all elements of a generalist HR role for the London teams, and ensuring effective delivery of the day-to-day operational agenda, spanning the attraction, development, reward and retention of our talent.  The team act as change agents working closely with the senior leaders and their teams to deliver and embed the People Strategy, upskilling people managers to enable the delivery of CIFF’s strategic goals and contributing more broadly to the philanthropic sector and strategic grantees by leading the way with best-in-class HR practices. To enable the Director, People – HR Business Partnering to operate at the required strategic level, the focus of this role is at an operational level, supporting in ensuring a diversity lens across all HR activities including building organisational and people capability through their excellent understanding of the foundation and the people challenges CIFF faces, particularly given the external environment in which we operate.

The People and Culture team:

This role reports to the Director, People – HR Business Partnering and is expected to work closely with all the People and Culture sub-teams with collaboration sitting at the heart of the team’s success despite working in different locations and teams.

Role’s responsibilities

HR Leadership:

·        Operate as a partner to the London team members, particularly at Manager, Analyst and Support level, proactively working to understand their needs, anticipate the people implications and plan the required support

·        Work closely with and support the Director, People – HR Business Partnering in keeping abreast of best practice developments in the HR field, particularly local developments and insights, and how they can be applied to the work the team does to enhance the value add delivered

·        Act as a true ambassador for the People agenda within CIFF, operating and behaving in a way which exemplifies CIFF’s Leadership Behaviours, and role models HR as a strategic value add function focused on people, business enabling and strategic & operational delivery.

HR Business Partnering

·        Build and maintain strong working relationships with the London teams and other dedicated sector leads and team members to understand ongoing work and take responsibility for proactively managing day-to-day queries from employees, working closely with the HR Operations team, ensuring clear timely communication and collaboration.

·        Support the Director, People – HR Business Partnering to ensure that the people strategy is implemented and adapted based on business requirements.

·      Proactively work to promote, influence and support high performance through leadership & talent, HR processes and other initiatives.

·      Champion the development of an inclusive, diversity-driven culture, ensuring values are upheld and support the delivery of the strategic agenda. 

·        Working closely with the HR Operations team, lead all operational HR activity on behalf of the London teams across the employee lifecycle, including support on pay and performance, onboarding, resource authorisations and changes to employee profiles, exit interviews and probation confirmations, and ensure these are completed and communicated on time.

·        Conduct regular 1-1s with employees up to Manager level to gather insights and understand the pulse of the London teams and propose potential solutions to the Director, People – HR Business Partnering, looping in the Employee Engagement team for CIFF wide insights.

·        Support the Director, People – HR Business Partnering on various people focused reporting and analysis, and on other matters as required.

·        Proactively maintain a strong working knowledge of employment law and compliance, supporting in informing policy and/or process updates

·        Pro-actively use data, metrics and evidence (including insights from Office Vibe, and regular 1-1s) to inform and drive decision making and change across their business areas, including presenting insights regularly.

·        Proactively maintain a thorough understanding of CIFF’s policies and procedures to enable you to coach and provide feedback to key stakeholders to help improve business efficiency.

·        Deliver practical day to day HR policy, process and advice that fits the business and is not ‘over engineered’.

·        Support on team offsites.

Employee Relations

·        Work closely with the Director, People – HR Business Partnering on all employee relations activity, supporting and advising investigation and hearing leads on appropriate processes for disciplinary, grievance, or change management processes for manager level and below

·        Build and maintain strong relationships with the HR Operations team to ensure an effective and efficient HR service across CIFF.

Recruitment & Selection

·        Support in designing job descriptions and panel interviews and job offers, for the London teams up to and including M2, and support on Director recruitment, while ensuring that the approach to recruitment and selection supports the People Strategy’s priorities and CIFF’s purpose, and CIFF’s employer brand is built and maximised

·        Ensure that all relevant paperwork relating to the recruitment process is maintained in a timeline manner within the system or in appropriate electronic filing systems.

·        Support in the evaluation of job descriptions.

Reward

·        Work closely with the Director, People – HR Business Partnering and play an active role in the annual pay review cycle and supporting processes.

·        Support people managers through all reward processes acting as a confidential advisor to ensure CIFF’s approach to reward is applied consistently and fairly across the foundation.

Learning and Development

·        Support the L&D team in developing and embedding a first-class L&D strategy

·        Work with the Learning & Development team in creating a coaching culture, and in implementing the L&D plan for the organisation.

·        Work closely with the Director, People – HR Business Partnering to identify learning and capability gaps and follow through on any L&D needs that are identified including supporting on development of annual L&D plans, ensuring follow through on all L&D needs and continuous monitoring and review.

Projects

·        Contribute to and lead on HR initiatives and projects as required  

Skills & Experience 

• Demonstrable experience of HR business partnering
• Experience of managing complex stakeholders and operating as a trusted advisor across all organizational levels

• A proven track record of coaching and supporting teams
• Excellent knowledge and competency in the fundamentals of HR – Reward, Recruitment & Selection, L&D, Employee Relations – preferably with a strong grounding in the private sector
• International or NGO experience is desirable
• Excellent up to date knowledge of employment law and best practice.
• Experience of using HR Information Systems.
• Outstanding communication skills, both oral and written, influencing and negotiation skills
• Strong interpersonal skills with an excellent team work ethic.
• Highest levels of judgment and professional integrity
• Knowledge and use of psychometric testing activity and feedback.
• Excellent attention to detail

• Authentic leadership style with an innate understanding of leading self, others & organisation
• Ability to demonstrate a passion for CIFF’s mission.
• Ability to quickly develop credibility; an active builder of strong trust-based relationships at all levels with differing levels of HR understanding and competency.
• A real ‘people person’ with excellent interpersonal skills and emotional intelligence.
• Highly curious, keen to continuously broaden business experience and master new knowledge.
• A strong work ethic, high energy, ability to work autonomously and manage own time well
• Flexible and adaptable, coping with changing workloads and requirements.
• Strong cultural awareness and sensitivity.
• Ability to maintain and handle confidential and sensitive issues acting with discretion, diplomacy and tact
• Confident public speaker with the ability to present to groups

CIFF operates a hybrid work policy across all locations, which means employees work in the office and some of the time from home. We are happy to provide more information on this as part of the recruitment process.

The starting salary for this role is £63,790.

Alongside a competitive salary, we offer a generous benefits package here at CIFF that includes, but is not limited to the following.

• Annual leave - 25 days per annum. Increasing by 1 day after each year of service to a maximum of 30 days.
• Bonus - CIFF currently operates a discretionary bonus scheme.
• Training allowance
• Wellbeing allowance
• Life insurance
• Medical insurance

Please submit your application on or before Sunday 9 August 2026. CIFF reserves the right to close the job advert early if we receive a high number of suitable applications.