Reward Strategy Lead

Join us as a Reward Strategy Lead

• Take on a visible deputy leadership role at the heart of Project Ascent, one of our most strategically important People transformation programmes
• You’ll help shape and deliver a multi-year transformation of how we reward, recognise and retain talent, connecting performance, market competitiveness and colleague experience
• You’ll build senior influence across Reward, People, the business and external partners, translating insight, governance and execution into measurable outcomes
• This role will be offered as hybrid with a minimum of 2 days a week in the office

What you’ll do

In this pivotal role, you’ll act as deputy to the Head of Reward Strategy for Project Ascent, supporting the execution of a Group-wide reward transformation programme. Project Ascent is redefining our reward strategy, so it is clearer, more competitive, more transparent and better aligned to performance, colleague experience and the future workforce. You’ll bring strong strategic judgement, delivery discipline and stakeholder management to turn ambition into high-quality, practical outcomes.

You’ll work across multiple Ascent features, helping to connect design, governance, communications, implementation and business readiness. This includes driving delivery across workstreams focused on performance and pay differentiation, market-competitive reward, critical skills and recruitment experimentation, reward proposition communications and future-state pay review tooling. You’ll be trusted to create clarity from complexity, build alignment across senior stakeholders and keep delivery focused on the outcomes that matter most.

You’ll be:

• Acting as a senior deputy on Project Ascent, translating strategic direction into a clear, prioritised delivery plan across features, milestones, governance forums and stakeholder groups
• Preparing clear, executive-ready papers, updates and recommendations for senior leaders, People forums, ExCo, RemCo and programme governance
• Connecting insights from leaders, colleagues, market benchmarking, external advisers and delivery teams, shaping evidence-based reward proposals
• Driving programme delivery and momentum by managing dependencies, risks, issues, decisions and trade-offs across a complex portfolio
• Partnering across Reward, HR business partners, Talent Acquisition, Communications, Finance, Legal, Regulatory and external advisers to deliver integrated solutions
• Making sure change lands effectively by developing clear narratives, communications and business-ready materials that support understanding and adoption of the new reward proposition
• Coaching and enabling contributors to raise delivery standards, foster collaboration and support high-quality outcomes delivered to time

The skills you'll need

We’re looking for a high-calibre reward, transformation or strategic HR professional who can operate as a trusted deputy on a complex, high-profile programme. Ideally, you’ll bring deep expertise in reward principles and the confidence to apply them in a regulated, commercially complex organisation. Just as importantly, you’ll be able to move seamlessly between strategy and execution: shaping the narrative, challenging thinking, managing the detail and maintaining alignment across senior stakeholders.

You’ll be highly credible with senior leaders, comfortable working with ambiguity and able to bring structure, pace and sound judgement to complex issues. You’ll use data, insight and external market intelligence to inform decisions, while recognising the importance of fairness, transparency, regulatory expectations and colleague experience in reward design and delivery.

You’ll also demonstrate:

• Strong reward, strategic HR, transformation or consultancy experience, ideally gained in a large, complex and regulated organisation
• Proven ability to lead complex workstreams and deliver through others, managing competing priorities and achieving high-quality outcomes
• Excellent communication skills, translating complex reward and people topics into clear, compelling, senior-level narratives
• Strong influencing, judgement and relationship-building capability, with the confidence to challenge constructively and align diverse stakeholders

Hours

Job Posting Closing Date: