People Partner - North

Loungers is a substantial and growing operator in the UK hospitality sector, operating over 300 sites in England and Wales across three distinct but complementary brands, Lounges, Cosy Club, and Brightside. Founded in 2002 by three friends who wanted to create a neighbourhood café-bar that they would want to go to, the Group is now the only growing all‑day operator of scale in the UK.

Despite being the fastest growing café/restaurant group in the Country, Loungers has retained its entrepreneurial spirit and quirky 'Loungey' local community atmosphere.

Reporting into the Head of People Operations, the People Partner is the strategic and operational partner to Operational Leaders:
Providing insight, challenge, and hands‑on support with all regional people priorities, working very closely with Operations Directors (OD), and Regional Operations Managers (ROM) but also providing regular day‑to‑day support of the Operations team.

They play a pivotal role in ensuring the people agenda is fully embedded into operational processes and are the go‑to person for ODs and ROMs on a broad range of people matters and issues, with a strong emphasis on employee relations support.

Through building strong, trusted relationships with ROMs and ODs and levering the expertise of central teams (L&D and Recruitment) the People Partner is close to the operation and able to balance hands‑on support for ROMs with strategic challenge and foresight.

This is a hands‑on role that demands both credibility, influence. They will need a strong grounding in ER as the key priority will be helping to prevent the root causes of ER issues but also resolve them quickly when they arise. In addition, they'll also need a breadth of experience/know‑how across the end‑to‑end employee lifecycle:
Engagement, Data, Retention.

• Provide practical, commercial advice to ODs and ROMs on regional employee relations cases, including investigations, disciplinaries, grievances, performance issues, appeals, and ETs.
• Prioritise swift ER issue resolution, balancing simplicity for teams with commercial and legal requirements. Primarily coach and advise, but take a hands‑on role in complex cases (e.g. writing outcomes, conducting investigations, accompanying senior leaders to HR meetings).
• Build ROM and Ops confidence and capability through proactive training on key ER topics, ensuring leaders handle cases effectively.
• Lead regional ER projects where required, such as TUPE consultations or restructures.
• Champion an employee‑centric culture through fair decision‑making, analysing ER trends, and supporting ROMs and Ops to address root causes (e.g. poor follow‑up, weak PIPs, ineffective leadership, onboarding).
• Partner with the People Advisor and Head of People Ops to design, implement, and communicate ER policies (e.g. Day 1 rights, handbook updates, guaranteed hours changes).
• Collaborate closely with the People Advisor and Head of People Ops to ensure consistent, clear ER advice and role clarity across teams.
• Contribute to onboarding and training to ensure new managers are equipped with essential ER knowledge from the outset to prevent issues.

• Support ROMs with regional people plan actions, ensuring effective follow‑through on performance management and supporting development and succession planning initiatives.
• Own understanding of regional people metrics (e.g. 90‑day leavers, turnover, absence, ER activity, hiring data), breaking them down to help ROMs and Ops identify performance trends and solutions for improvement.
• Lead quarterly Regional "People" P&L sessions with the CPO, Head of People Ops, and ODs, presenting insights on people metrics to drive meaningful discussion and actions; report back on outcomes and opportunities to ODs, MDs, and senior leaders.
• Regularly engage ROMs and Ops outside of P&L sessions on people KPIs‑especially 90‑day retention‑to address early leaver drivers such as onboarding quality or leadership issues.
• Coach and support Ops and ROMs on key areas including engagement action planning and mental health support.
• Attend ROM/Ops huddles…