Business Partner

About The Role

Hippo is seeking a People Business Partner to join our Hippo Herd. This role sits within an expanding People function that plays a pivotal part in supporting our existing Hippos during a period of exciting growth.

This role covers a broad strategic and operational scope across the business. How that splits day-to-day by business unit, strategic pillar, or initiative will be agreed and will evolve alongside the team and business needs. This description sets out the broad scope of the role rather than a fixed set of individual responsibilities.

Our People function is going through its own transformation and AI and automation sit right at the centre of it. We're building a People function where technology handles the repetitive, transactional work so our People Business Partners can focus their time and expertise on culture, coaching, complex problem-solving and the moments that need a human touch. This role is for someone who is excited by that shift, someone who wants to actively use AI tools and automated workflows to work smarter, generate sharper insight, and free up capacity for higher-value people work.

You'll support the ongoing development of a progressive and positive culture, with the overall goal of increasing levels of engagement, enablement, and retention, through the delivery of a high-quality, responsive and increasingly automated people partnering model.

Across all of these areas, ownership at business partner level is about strategic judgement, mentoring advisors, and managing complex, high-risk casework with autonomy.

• Employee Relations & Manager Support: Act as a trusted coach and strategic advisor to senior managers and leaders on complex or sensitive people issues, high-level performance management, and organisational change. Build management capability at scale and personally lead complex casework requiring high-level risk assessment.
• Culture, Engagement & Wellbeing: Interrogate deep engagement analytics to shape targeted culture strategies; provide executive-level coaching that ensures wellbeing initiatives drive measurable organisational impact.
• Development & Capability Building: Design and drive strategic capability frameworks including leadership 360 processes, executive psychometrics and targeted mentoring programs to level up management performance across departments.
• Data & Insights: Lead data-driven decision-making across assigned business areas leveraging AI-powered analytics and predictive reporting to surface trends, inform senior stakeholders and continuously optimise service delivery.
• Business Partnering: Build strong strategic partnerships with senior leadership teams, deeply understanding their business strategies and ensuring People plans directly enable business outcomes.
• Team Leadership: Share responsibility for the day-to-day management, coaching, and professional development of People team members, driving an operational culture of continuous improvement and rapid technology adoption.

This role is about enabling others rather than doing everything yourself. You will take the time to thoroughly diagnose a problem before jumping to a solution, remaining comfortable making timely strategic calls with incomplete information while being explicit about your assumptions. You will be transparent about trade-offs and actively invite challenge to your own thinking.

You will take full ownership for the outcomes of your own work and the team members you direct. You will plan and manage complex workloads and interdependencies, protecting your team’s focus from unnecessary work and interruption. You will provide clear strategic direction and address difficult conversations or performance friction early. When things change or go wrong, you will adapt and recover quickly, leveraging those experiences as actionable drivers of systemic change.

• Professional HR
  
  Experience:
  
  Fully CIPD-qualified HR professional with a strong track record operating at a senior level in a fast-paced, high-growth environment.
• Deep Generalist Expertise: Extensive generalist experience with proven influencing and stakeholder-management skills across the entire employee lifecycle.
• Advanced Data & Tech
  
  Skills:
  
  Highly data-literate, with proven experience using AI-driven analytics tools to translate complex workforce data into compelling executive recommendations.
• Change Champion: Track record of challenging traditional HR…