HR Shared Services Manager

Join Our HR Team at The Compleat Food Group! We have a fantastic opportunity for an experienced and commercially focused leader to join our HR Shared Services department on a 9-month Fixed Term Contract. As HR Shared Services Manager, you will be responsible for driving the performance, transformation and strategic direction of HR Shared Services. This role will ensure the delivery of a high-performing, customer-centric and data-driven service, while accelerating continuous improvement initiatives that enhance operational efficiency, strengthen governance and elevate the colleague experience across the entire employee lifecycle.

Who We Are:

We're home to some of the UK's most exciting and loved food brands, including Wall's Pastry, Pork Farms, Wrights, The Real Yorkshire Pudding Co., unearthed, Vadasz, Squeaky Bean, Palace Culture, and Harvey & Brockless. Alongside our branded portfolio, we're a leading supplier of delicious own-label pastry, sweet bakery, party food, olives and antipasti, added-value egg products, continental meats, dips and sauces and plant-based food to the UK's major retailers, as well as across food service.

With over 6,000 talented colleagues across 17 sites, and an annual turnover of £1.3bn, we're united by a shared ambition to shape the future of food for the better.

Location:

Nottingham

Working Hours:

The working hours are Monday to Thursday 08:30am – 5pm, and 8.30pm – 4pm on Fridays. Who doesn't love an early finish on a Friday! Your Duties Will Include:
Lead the HR Shared Services function on a day-to-day basis, ensuring operational continuity, clear priorities, strong governance and consistent delivery against agreed SLAs and service standards. Drive a higher level of operational excellence across HRSS, ensuring processes are efficient, well-controlled, scalable, and aligned to the needs of the business, managers, and colleagues. Act as the senior escalation point for complex, high-risk or time-sensitive HRSS queries, ensuring issues are resolved professionally, root causes are understood, and preventative actions are put in place.

Lead, coach and develop the HRSS team, building capability, confidence and ownership while creating a culture of accountability, pace, continuous improvement and high-quality service delivery. Manage resource planning, workload allocation, case distribution and capacity forecasting to ensure HRSS activity is prioritised effectively and service delivery remains consistent during periods of change or increased demand. Lead and support HR transformation and operational improvement projects, including process redesign, workflow standardisation, service model improvements, governance enhancements and adoption of new tools or systems.

Use real-time case management data, dashboards and HRSS analytics to monitor service performance, identify trends, highlight risks, forecast demand and drive informed decision-making. Build strong and credible relationships with senior HR stakeholders, Payroll, Reward, Recruitment, HR Business Partners and operational leaders, acting as a trusted partner who can influence, challenge and support better outcomes. Provide clear project leadership across HRSS initiatives, ensuring objectives, milestones, risks, dependencies, communications and stakeholder engagement are well managed.

Identify opportunities to streamline, automate and simplify HRSS processes, removing duplication and improving speed, consistency, accuracy and colleague experience. Support the integration of new entities, business changes or service changes into HRSS, ensuring effective planning, communication, training and readiness across the team and stakeholders. Your

Skills and Experience:

Proven experience leading HR Shared Services, HR Operations or People Services teams in a complex, fast-paced organisation. Background in HR transformation, service improvement, process redesign or shared services maturity development. Experience leading operational projects from planning through to delivery, with strong governance, stakeholder engagement and change management discipline. Strong understanding of HR lifecycle processes, service delivery models, case management principles, SLAs and operational controls.

Confident using HR data, case management analytics and performance reporting to identify trends, manage risk and improve service outcomes. Excellent stakeholder management and influencing skills, with the ability to constructively challenge, build trust and work across HR,…