HR Business Partner

Location: St Pancras / Hybrid - 3 days a week required onsite & occasional travel to Boston Spa site.

Contract: Permanent

Hours: Full time (36 hours)

Grade: SB4

Salary: £54,728 - £70,386 per annum

Are you a resilient, commercially minded HR professional ready to help shape the future of a world-class institution? The British Library is seeking Strategic HR Business Partners who can build trusted relationships with senior leaders, translate organisational priorities into a clear people and workforce agenda, and lead the people dimension of significant change. If you bring strong strategic partnering, organisation development and workforce planning expertise, this is an opportunity to make a visible contribution in a role deliberately protected from routine casework and transactional activity.

About Us

The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom, housing millions of items of world culture. We are committed to a ‘One British Library’ approach: breaking down silos, embracing innovation, and putting our users, staff and partners at the heart of everything we do.

About the Role

As the senior strategic people partner for a defined portfolio of directorates, you will hold trusted relationships with executive and senior leaders and work alongside directorate leadership teams. You will translate business and organisational priorities into clear workforce, organisation development, capability and culture plans, ensuring that people considerations are integral to strategic decisions rather than addressed after they have been made.

Using evidence, workforce information and organisational insight, you will diagnose root causes, identify emerging risks and understand what each directorate genuinely needs. You will coach and constructively challenge senior leaders, helping them strengthen management capability, accountability and confidence while supporting better, more consistent people decisions.

You will lead the strategic people dimension of major transformation and organisational change, including restructures, TUPE and formal consultation. You will retain oversight of workforce and employee relations themes within your portfolio, using patterns and insight to identify organisational risk, but you will not own routine casework or transactional delivery.

A central part of the role will be commissioning and coordinating specialist support from Organisation Effectiveness and the Centres of Expertise. Rather than personally delivering every intervention, you will define the requirement, bring together the right expertise and remain accountable for ensuring that directorate priorities are addressed. You will work closely with People Services, employee relations and specialist colleagues to ensure solutions are coherent, evidence-led and delivered through the appropriate route.

This is a genuinely strategic partnering role. Routine casework, shared inbox activity, recruitment administration, contract chasing and line management of operational advisory teams sit outside the role, protecting your capacity to focus on strategic relationships, workforce planning, leadership coaching, organisational diagnosis and change. You will also champion equality, diversity and inclusion, contribute responsibly to workforce and HR budget decisions, and build strong internal and external professional networks.

About You

• Qualifications: Chartered CIPD membership, or Level 7 equivalent, with degree-level education or equivalent professional experience.
• Strategic partnering: Proven experience of holding senior client relationships and translating organisational strategy into workforce, capability, culture and organisation development priorities.
• Public-sector context: Experience gained in a large, complex or unionised organisation, with the judgement and political sensitivity to operate confidently with senior stakeholders.
• OD and change: A strong track record of leading the people dimension of complex organisational change, including restructures, TUPE and formal consultation.
• Workforce insight: The ability to interpret workforce data, organisational health information and employee relations themes to identify trends, diagnose root causes and mitigate risk.
• Commissioning and delivery: Experience of defining requirements, commissioning specialist expertise and coordinating colleagues across HR, OD, employee relations and operational services to deliver organisational outcomes.
• Leadership impact: Strong coaching, influencing and constructive challenge skills, with the professional courage to address difficult issues and strengthen management accountability.
• Values: A clear commitment to equality, diversity and inclusion and to creating a fair, respectful and high-performing organisational culture.

What we can offer you

• 25 days’ holiday plus 2.5 privilege days.
• Generous Civil Service Pension scheme.
• Access to a defined benefit Civil Service pension scheme.
• Flexible working arrangements, including flexi-time.
• Access to extensive professional development and continuous CPD support.
• Dedicated health, wellbeing and employee assistance programmes.
• Full details of employee benefits can be found on our Careers: Benefits

Things you need to know

• Successful candidates must undergo a criminal record check (DBS check).
• Artificial intelligence can be a useful tool to support your application, however, all examples and statements provided must be truthful, factually accurate and taken directly from your own experience. Where plagiarism has been identified (presenting the ideas and experiences of others, or generated by artificial intelligence, as your own) applications may be withdrawn.
• We particularly welcome applications from Black, Asian, Mixed Race and other ethnically diverse candidates and disabled candidates. Creating an inclusive workplace is the core of our business and a way to engage the diversity of thought that is essential to achieve our aims.

For more information please visit: https://osbornethomas.org/jobs/strategic-hr-business-partner-2/ ?

To apply, please contact one of our recruitment team at: thebritishlibrary@osbornethomas.org

Closing Date: 4 October 2026