Head of Support Services

Bramley Health are looking for a motivated, results driven Head of Support Services to join us in our Head Office in Croydon!

Bramley Health is a specialist health and social care provider, currently operating 8 care homes with 2 opening this year and a hospital around London and the Southeast of England. Our key focus is to provide quality care to men and women of a working age and older with a variety of complex and challenging needs, helping them to live a meaningful and fulfilling life.

We are committed to providing a fulfilling working environment that encourages personal and professional development. Employees at Bramley Health are expected to demonstrate and deliver the highest standards of care, treatment, intervention, and education. We strive to support this by fostering a culture of transparency, evidence-based practice, and continuous improvement.

The Head of Support Services provides strategic and operational leadership across the organisations Support Services functions: HR, Payroll, and Recruitment.

The postholder ensures these services are compliant, efficient, data-led, and aligned to the needs of a regulated healthcare environment - supporting safe staffing, strong colleague experience, and high-performing services.

This is a senior leadership role responsible for building a capable team, developing consistent policies and processes, driving continuous improvement, and advising the Board of Directors on workforce strategy, risk, and organisational capability.

• Leadership & strategy
• Lead and develop the HR, Payroll, and Recruitment teams, setting clear objectives, standards, and service levels
• Create and deliver a people operations strategy aligned to business goals (growth, occupancy, quality, workforce stability)
• Act as senior advisor to leaders on workforce planning, organisational change and people risk
• HR operations & employee relations
• Own and maintain HR policies, procedures, and toolkits ensuring best practice and legal compliance (e.g., contracts, disciplinary, grievance, absence management, flexible working)
• Oversee complex employee relations cases (disciplinary, grievance, capability, sickness absence, investigations) and coach managers to improve confidence and consistency
• Ensure robust onboarding, probation, and performance management processes across all sites
• Recruitment & resourcing (regulated healthcare)
• Lead end-to-end recruitment strategy (workforce planning, attraction, selection, offer/onboarding), ensuring safe recruitment and strong candidate experience
• Ensure compliance with sector‑specific pre-employment checks (e.g., DBS, Right to Work, references, professional registrations) and audit readiness
• Deliver retention initiatives and interventions based on workforce data and feedback
• Payroll & people data governance
• Provide senior oversight of payroll operations (accuracy, controls, cut-offs, reconciliations, statutory obligations), working closely with the Finance Department
• Ensure effective payroll governance around starters/leavers, pay changes, sickness/maternity, overtime/allowances, and deductions
• Establish and maintain accurate people data, dashboards, and reporting cadence (turnover, vacancy, time-to-hire, absence, ER trends, training compliance)
• Align with the Financial Controller on a monthly basis to ensure that Payroll Data supplied for MI purposes is accurate
• Work with external Auditors, when required, to ensure requested Payroll information is supplied in a timely manner
• Systems, process improvement & compliance
• Lead continuous improvement and standardisation across multi-site processes, reducing risk and improving colleague and manager experience
• Oversee system effectiveness
• Ensure documented processes, audit trails, and reporting systems are in place
• Stakeholder management
• Build strong relationships with the Finance Department, Service Managers, Regional Clinical Operations Managers and the Board of Directors
• Support organisational change programmes (restructures, TUPE, acquisitions, harmonisation) with clear risk management and communications