Head of People (maternity cover)

UCCF exists to make disciples of Jesus Christ in the student world. People are at the heart of that mission. Behind every conversation about Jesus, every CU events week and every student reached with the gospel are staff and volunteers serving faithfully across Great Britain.

Over the last few years, we've invested significantly in strengthening our people practices, developing a clear People strategy, modernising our systems and building an effective People Team. We've laid strong foundations to strengthen our culture and develop our people as they pursue our mission, and we're looking for an experienced People leader to help us continue that work.

As our Director of People prepares for maternity leave, we're looking for a Head of People to lead our People Team and take responsibility for delivering our People strategy during a one year maternity cover contract.

The role

This is a varied and influential role combining team leadership, organisational development and expert people advice.

You'll work closely with leaders across UCCF, partnering with teams across the Fellowship, developing our People Team and overseeing people initiatives across the employee lifecycle, including recruitment, employee relations, learning and development, wellbeing, reward and compliance.

One day you might be coaching a Team Leader through a complex people situation, advising on an employee relations matter or reviewing engagement data. The next, you could be delivering management training or improving systems and processes that support staff across the Fellowship.

We're looking for someone who combines excellent people expertise with sound judgement, empathy, strong relationships and a passion for helping people flourish in Christian ministry. You'll enjoy working collaboratively and enabling teams to thrive. This isn't a role focused on creating a new strategy from scratch, instead it's an opportunity to build on strong foundations, provide leadership and ensure excellent delivery during an important season for UCCF.

Most importantly, you'll share our desire to see students reached with the good news of Jesus Christ and recognise that excellent people practices rooted in this good news are an important part of enabling that mission.

This is a fixed-term maternity cover role from January to December 2027.

The role is based at Blue Boar House in central Oxford with hybrid working. Our expectation is that you'd spend approximately 60% of your time working together in person across a month. For many people, this typically works out as around three days per week in the office, although conference attendance and travel may mean some weeks look different.

We recognise that strong candidates may not meet every aspect of the person specification. If you're excited by the opportunity to serve UCCF's mission and believe you could make a valuable contribution, we'd love to hear from you.

The details

Salary: £44,657 - £52,516 depending on experience

Hours: Full-time of 37.5 hours per week. We are also open to discussing part time.

Contract: Fixed-term for 12 months

Holiday: 30 days holiday per year, plus 8 public holidays

Location: Hybrid working from our Oxford office

Application closing date: Midnight on Thursday 22 October

Interview date: Wednesday 29 October

Our benefits

• 30 days annual leave, plus public holidays
• 5 days of service leave
• CIPD membership fee
• Modern and spacious central Oxford office
• Facilities including secure bike storage
• Cycle to work scheme
• Free access to counselling and healthcare support, including discounted gym memberships
• Generous enhanced family leave and pay provision