HR and Estates Director

1. We are a multi-award winning executive agency of the Department for Transport (DfT).
2. As our new HR and Estates Director and a key member of both our Executive Team and Board, you will play a pivotal role in the realisation of our continued ambition to be a data driven, customer-centric, dynamic, digital organisation which provides high quality, innovative and secure by design services.
3. Whatever your role, we take your career and development seriously, and want to enable you to build a really successful career with DVLA and wider Civil Service. It is crucial that our employees have the right skills to develop their careers and meet the challenges ahead, and you’ll benefit from regular

HR and Estates Director

Salary: c£85,000

Swansea (with travel to Birmingham)

We are a multi-award winning executive agency of the Department for Transport (DfT). With over 6,000 staff our organisation touches almost all households across the UK. We are responsible for maintaining over 52 million driver records and over 46 million vehicle records. Last year we handled more than 4 billion interactions, and dealt with 95.5 million individual customer transactions, of which around 84% were processed through our digital channels.  Our aim is to provide the most efficient and effective services to meet the needs of a diverse but ever-growing digitally aware customer base, while recognising the needs of the important minority through assisted digital services or other channels.

As our new HR and Estates Director and a key member of both our Executive Team and Board, you will play a pivotal role in the realisation of our continued ambition to be a data driven, customer-centric, dynamic, digital organisation which provides high quality, innovative and secure by design services. Through the development and execution of a new People and Estates strategy you will ensure that we continue to modernise our working practices, invest in our people and drive a high-performing and inclusive culture that sees the DVLA as a great place to work. 

We are looking for highly experienced HR or Estates professionals, who have significant experience of strategic leadership at scale, in unionised environments. As an expert in your field, you will be able to demonstrate an ability to be a credible voice across the whole portfolio (HR, Estates, Health & Safety). As a senior leader of our organisation, you will be tenacious, collegiate and resilient – able to transcend your direct role, to provide a valuable and significant contribution to the transformation and leadership of our entire organisation.

Job description

The HR and Estates Director has overall responsibility for the provision of HR and Estates Management services to DVLA.

They are a key member of both DVLA’s Executive Team and Agency Board, having a strong understanding of the Agency’s strategic objectives and their people and estate implications, providing professional advice on HR and estates matters to inform decisions. The role holder provides leadership to the organisation to ensure operational delivery and DVLA’s transformation agenda are supported by a high performing workforce and an enabling estate. 

Key responsibilities

The HR and Estates Director will be responsible for:

• acting as a corporate leader to the whole organisation. As a key member of the Executive Team and Agency Board, the HR and Estates Director will be fully involved in the decision making and directional activities of Boards
• developing and implementing the DVLA people strategy for its 6,000 people to drive the people and cultural change required to adapt to the transformation of DVLA’s services, wider government strategy and the wider changing world of work
• driving a high performing culture and continuing DVLA’s journey to create an inclusive culture that is congruent with a modern digital organisation and the high standards and values expected of the Civil Service. 
• building a strong talent pipeline, proactively managing our internal talent and recruiting and retaining great people with the skills and capability we need for the future. 
• developing DVLA’s workforce strategy, producing strategic workforce plans and overseeing the implementation of the people change required to meet those plans.  
• being a member of the DfT group HR model, supporting the strategy to work closely together on cross departmental people matters and sharing best practice.  
• developing the DVLA Estates strategy to align with strategic workforce plans and government’s property strategy. 
• developing and implementing modern policies and procedures across the HR, estates and health and safety functions which comply with the law, assuring that they are followed correctly and rigorously managing risk.
• providing strategic advice to business areas on all people and estates matters. 
• monitoring and reporting on a range of people and estates performance indicators. 
• leading on the delivery of estates services via third party providers and delivering our sustainability objectives including the achievement of the Greening Government Commitments. 
• delivering the physical security service to DVLA sites. 
• overseeing the business continuity management framework.

The role holder has 3 direct reports with overall responsibility for 220 people.

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £85,000, Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency contributes £24,624 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme.

Benefits

Whatever your role, we take your career and development seriously, and want to enable you to build a really successful career with DVLA and wider Civil Service. It is crucial that our employees have the right skills to develop their careers and meet the challenges ahead, and you’ll benefit from regular performance and development reviews to ensure this development is ongoing. As a Civil Service employee, you’ll be entitled to a large range of benefits.

These include:

• 25 days annual leave on entry, increasing on a sliding scale to 30 days after 5 years’ service. This is in addition to 8 public holidays.
• a competitive contributory pension scheme that you can enter as soon as you join where we will make a significant contribution to the cost of your pension; where your contributions come out of your salary before any tax is taken; and where your pension will continue to provide valuable benefits for you and your family if you are too ill to continue to work or die before you retire.
• generous paid maternity and paternity leave which is notably more than the statutory minimum offered by many other employers.
• Childcare Working parents can open an online childcare account and for every £8 they pay in, the government adds £2, up to a maximum of £2000 a year for each child or £4000 for a disabled child. Parents then use the funds to pay for registered childcare. Existing employees may be able to continue to claim childcare vouchers.
• interest-free loans allowing you to spread the cost of an annual travel season ticket or a new bicycle as well as access to the government’s Cycle to Work scheme.
• occupational sick pay, employee assistance services and health and wellbeing initiatives such as flu vaccines and health screening.