Head of Talent Development

Role Overview

Key Responsibilities

• Shape and deliver the Talent Development strategy, ensuring it enables the growth planned within the business strategy, wider People strategy and future capability needs of Ridge.
• Lead the ongoing evolution of manager, leadership and high-potential development strategy, including coaching, mentoring and psychometric-based development.
• Establish a consistent and high-quality learning culture across Ridge, empowering leaders and subject matter experts to deliver effective development experiences.
• Develop the career development framework, including career pathways, skills mapping and capability frameworks.
• Define the business wide learning approach, ensuring leadership, professional, technical and core development offering are impactful and scalable.
• Shape the development aspects of the employee lifecycle, including onboarding, professional qualifications and chartership.
• Oversee the strategic approach to inclusion and belonging, embedding inclusive practices across leadership, learning, careers, talent and succession.
• Act as a trusted adviser to the Chief People Officer, People Leadership team and senior business leaders.
• Partner with People Advisory on talent identification and succession planning, strengthening pipelines for critical and leadership roles.
• Partner with People Advisory to enhance the 'Career Conversations' approach and annual performance cycle.
• Work closely with the Head of Talent Acquisition to shape an integrated future talent approach.
• Use data, feedback and business insights to identify capability priorities, measure the impact of talent initiatives and continuously improve the approach.

Skills and Experience Required

• Significant experience leading talent, learning, organisational development or capability activity within a complex and growing business.
• Proven success developing and delivering business wide talent and development strategies aligned to business priorities.
• Strong expertise across leadership development, talent development, career development, organisational learning and capability building.
• Experience developing career pathways, capability or skills frameworks and translating current and future workforce capability needs into practical, scalable development solutions.
• Experience of early careers development, including graduates, apprentices, professional qualifications or charterships.
• Strong understanding of modern learning approaches, including digital, blended and workplace-based development.
• Experience leading and developing a specialist team and managing significant programmes, budgets and external partners.
• Strong commercial acumen, with the ability to prioritise activity according to organisational need, impact and value.
• Credibility and confidence to advise, influence and constructively challenge senior leaders.
• Strong analytical skills, using data and insight to identify priorities, assess capability risks and evaluate impact.
• Experience shaping inclusive talent and development practices, and embedding inclusion and belonging across leadership, learning, careers and progression.
• Excellent communication, facilitation and relationship-building skills, with the ability to simplify complexity and turn strategic thinking into practical action.

About Ridge