Senior Specialist, People Experience Partner

At McLaren, our mission is to set the standard for high performance in sport. Everyone, in every part of the team, plays a critical role in our success, both on and off the track.

The People Team is seen as a highly valued and dynamic business performance partner, offering services across a range of diverse functions and departments within our highly competitive racing teams. It’s a unique and fast paced sports environment, so we are looking for the best in our industry, to lead change and keep pushing boundaries.

Purpose of the Role:

Reporting to the Head of People Experience, this role will be our culture and engagement lead, collaborating with multiple stakeholders across McLaren Racing to deliver an exceptional employee experience programme. The Senior Specialist, People Experience Partner will understand employee needs, help shape a positive workplace culture, and implement initiatives that promote engagement, retention, and development.

Key Accountabilities:

Employee engagement, recognition, and experiences

• Create and support engagement and recognition programs that elevate our unique McLaren Racing culture.
• Create and lead reward, recognition and gifting programmes to celebrate and value the contribution, dedication, and hard work of our colleagues, including long service, and recognition for high-performance values and behaviours.
• Develop and utilise a range of engagement and communications channels to promote our workplace experiences and to ensure employees are informed and engaged with company initiatives.
• Support our McLaren Performance Hub team to promote health and wellbeing initiatives through a range of motivational and educational physical and mental health initiatives.
• Create a two-way engagement culture, and gather feedback from team members using focus groups, pulse surveys, interviews and a range of creative engagement and listening methods.
• Build and share insightful reports to drive conversations that lead to the creation and implementation of engagement action plans at group and functional levels.

Culture Change and Transformation

• Lead and facilitate culture change and transformation initiatives, that help drive and deliver our organisational strategic mission: ‘setting the standard for high performance in sport'.
• Guide people team business partners to coach, enable and empower their leaders and managers to adapt and embed change and culture initiatives across their business areas.
• Provide effective change project management frameworks and tools to ensure programmes continue to build a high-performance culture, mindset and behaviours.
• Work closely with the communications team to engage employees in the process of culture change and transformation, through creative communications strategies and plans.
• Support the employee brand with a focus on the employee value proposition, to ensure the journey for potential employees is inspiring and positive.
• Support our Sustainability team on how best to engage and educate our team across our Sustainability strategy pillars, a core element of our culture and ambition as a team.
• Monitor the effectiveness of culture change and the achievement of a high-performance culture, through audits, metrics, and measurements, to identify trends and areas for improvement and drive ongoing alignment to our core values.
• Develop governance, policies, and processes to underpin change and promote a shared understanding of the ways of working.

Knowledge, Skills and Experience:

• Proven experience in leading people experience initiatives.
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills to build relationships with stakeholders at all levels.
• Strong analytical skills and ability to interpret data to inform strategic decisions.
• Passion for creating a positive employee experience and workplace culture
  
  

Personal Attributes:

• Collaboration: actively collaborates with stakeholders, creating strong working relationships to ensure all needs are represented and the best outcomes and experiences are delivered.
• Highly motivated and agile: thrives within a fast-paced and demanding environment, moving with the business to deliver changing priorities and evolving goals.
• Calm under pressure: Stay focussed and measured while managing projects and juggling requests for support from the people team and the business.
• Results: someone who is driven; who comes with an outstanding work ethic and expects the best from themself and people around them.  
• Credible: considered credible and has gravitas, acting as a role model for our values.  
• Challenges: challenges others to strive for more, both in innovation and meeting stakeholder needs.  
• Ownership: demonstrates behaviours that support a high-performance culture within and across teams and has a clear track record of getting things done.
• Role Model: is a role model and champions best practice in diversity and inclusion.

What can McLaren offer?

We constantly strive to be better tomorrow than we are today. Our ambition is to be the most pioneering and exhilarating racing team in the world, and our collective task is to set the standards for high performance in sport. We show up every day with energy and enthusiasm, ready to play our part.

We encourage and support diversity, equity and inclusion. We will actively promote a culture that values difference and eliminates discrimination in our workplace.

McLaren Racing is based at the iconic McLaren Technology Centre (MTC) near Woking. Here at McLaren, we offer hybrid working with 3 days a week based in the MTC.

Our state of the art, sustainable campus offers many facilities including a gym, restaurant and indoor and outdoor break-out areas, as well as direct access to park and common land. The MTC is connected to Woking mainline station via regular shuttle buses, from which London Waterloo is a 30 minute train ride.

We offer a comprehensive package of benefits including private healthcare, car schemes, life insurance and generous pension contributions.