Deputy Director, Workforce Strategy & Change

Home Office

Hybrid

Expires: Expiring in less than 2 weeks

Full time

£86,000 - £96,000 per year

Job summary

Why this role matters

The Deputy Director for Workforce Strategy and Change is a pivotal senior leadership role within Home Office HR, accountable for shaping the department’s future workforce and ensuring it has the capacity, capability and organisational agility required to deliver ministerial priorities and respond to an increasingly complex operating environment.

Reporting to the Director of People Transformation, you will lead the development and delivery of the department’s workforce strategy, providing strategic oversight of workforce planning, organisational design, workforce analytics and workforce change. Working closely with the Executive Committee and senior leaders, you will ensure workforce decisions are aligned to departmental strategy, transformation ambitions and fiscal priorities.

This role is central to delivering the Home Office's ambitions through the Future Home Office transformation programme. You will drive a fundamental shift in how the department plans, deploys and evolves its workforce, translating organisational priorities into a clear, evidence-led workforce strategy that delivers sustainable organisational performance, improved productivity and long-term workforce resilience.

You will lead some of the department's most significant and high-profile workforce challenges, including strategic workforce planning, organisational redesign and workforce restructuring, influencing decisions with substantial operational, financial and reputational implications.

As a highly visible senior leader, you will operate confidently in an environment subject to significant Permanent Secretary and Executive Committee scrutiny. You will bring strategic judgement, political awareness and strong delivery grip, and balance competing priorities while leading complex change at pace across a large and operationally critical organisation.

Job description

Key responsibilities

Lead the development and implementation of the Home Office's workforce strategy, providing overall accountability for strategic workforce planning, workforce insight, organisational design and workforce change.
Shape the future workforce of the department, working with the Executive Committee to align workforce supply, capability, location and cost with strategic priorities, operational demand and future organisational requirements.
Develop and embed a mature strategic workforce planning capability, strengthening workforce planning disciplines across the organisation and holding leaders accountable for delivering sustainable workforce outcomes.
Lead complex organisational design and workforce transformation programmes, ensuring organisational structures, roles and capabilities are aligned to departmental priorities and future operating models.
Provide strategic leadership for major workforce transitions and transformation programmes, shaping and delivering complex organisational change that supports departmental priorities while ensuring strong governance, effective risk management, workforce engagement and service continuity.
Strengthen the department’s workforce insight and analytics capability, improving forecasting, scenario modelling and evidence-based decision-making to drive improvements in organisational performance.
Work across Finance, Strategy, Estates, Digital and other corporate functions to ensure workforce plans support spending review commitments, Places for Growth ambitions and wider departmental transformation priorities.
Influence and advise the Executive Committee and senior officials on workforce risks, opportunities and strategic choices, ensuring workforce implications are fully considered in departmental decision-making.
Play a leading role in the Future Home Office transformation programme and HR Senior Leadership Team, helping to shape the long-term direction, capability and effectiveness of the organisation.

Person specification

The successful candidate will need to demonstrate:

Significant experience developing and implementing strategic workforce planning approaches, translating organisational strategy into actionable workforce plans and measurable outcomes.
Demonstrable success leading major organisational design and workforce change programmes, balancing pace, risk, governance and stakeholder management in highly scrutinised environments.
Strong strategic and analytical capability, with experience using workforce data, forecasting and insight to influence executive decision-making and shape organisational strategy.
Exceptional stakeholder leadership skills, with a proven ability to influence at Executive Committee level and build alignment across senior leaders, corporate functions and external partners.
Experience advising senior leaders on complex workforce, transformation and organisational effectiveness issues, often within politically sensitive and high-profile contexts.
An accomplished and visible people leader, with a track record of building high-performing teams, leading through ambiguity and delivering sustained change.
Chartered Fellow of the CIPD (FCIPD), or willingness to work towards accreditation.

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £86,000, Home Office contributes £24,914 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides (opens in a new window).

Learning and development tailored to your role
An environment with flexible working options
A culture encouraging inclusion and diversity
A Civil Service pension with an employer contribution of 28.97%

Things you need to know

Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence can be a useful tool to support your application, however, all examples and statements provided must be truthful, factually accurate and taken directly from your own experience. Where plagiarism has been identified (presenting the ideas and experiences of others, or generated by artificial intelligence, as your own) applications may be withdrawn and internal candidates may be subject to disciplinary action. Please see our candidate guidance (opens in a new window) for more information on appropriate and inappropriate use.

Selection process details

Please follow the Job Advert instructions on the Civil Service Jobs website to apply online by 23:55hrs on 21st July 2026.

You will be asked to provide:

A CV – (3 pages max) setting out your career history, highlighting specific responsibilities and achievements that are relevant for this role. Please provide reasons for any gaps within the last two years.

A Statement of Suitability – (limited to 1250 words) providing examples of how your experience meets the essential criteria. This is your opportunity to give examples and show how your skills and experience fit the job requirements.

When writing a supporting statement, it is important that you:

Read the job specification so you are clear about the job requirements. Structure your personal statement to reflect the essential criteria listed in the advert.
Make sure you provide evidence against each of the listed criteria - i.e. ‘experienced in leading high performing and diverse teams and promoting inclusivity.’ When have you led a team, how large, what did you do to promote inclusivity, how did you handle diversity?
Ensure any evidence you provide demonstrates the impact of your actions in that situation, provide statistical evidence where relevant.

For more information on how to write a personal statement, click here.

Guidance on the use of AI

Please review the guidance Artificial intelligence and recruitment to understand the acceptable use of AI for your application.

Before you submit an application, we will ask you to confirm the information you provide is true and accurate. More details about this will be provided in the application form and we may reject applications where AI is used inappropriately at any stage of the process.

Once submitted, applications cannot be amended, so please ensure you are content with your submission before applying.
Interviews and any Ministerial meetings will take place in central London.
Expenses incurred during the recruitment process will not normally be reimbursed. In exceptional circumstances, this may be considered where agreed in advance with the SCS Recruitment Team.

If you’re interested in learning more, we will be hosting a Town Hall event for prospective candidates on Monday 13 July 12:00 - 12:30.
Whilst this is an optional event, all candidates are encouraged to join the panel to gain an insight into the role(s).
You can join this event by registering at Candidate Information Session - Please see the Candidate Pack for further information.

Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.This role has a minimum assignment duration of 3 years. An assignment duration is the period of time a Senior Civil Servant is expected to remain in the same post to enable them to deliver on the agreed key business outcomes. The assignment duration also supports your career through building your depth of expertise.

As part of accepting this role you will be agreeing to the expected assignment duration set out above. This will not result in a contractual change to your terms and conditions. Please note this is an expectation only, it is not something which is written into your terms and conditions or indeed which the employing organisation or you are bound by. It will depend on your personal circumstances at a particular time and business needs, for example, would not preclude any absence like family friendly leave. It is nonetheless an important expectation, which is why we ask you to confirm you agree to the assignment duration set out above.

Security

Successful candidates must meet the security requirements before they can be appointed. The level of security needed is security check (opens in a new window).

See our vetting charter (opens in a new window).People working with government assets must complete baseline personnel security standard (opens in new window) checks.

Nationality requirements

This job is broadly open to the following groups:

UK nationals
nationals of the Republic of Ireland
nationals of Commonwealth countries who have the right to work in the UK
nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities with settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS) (opens in a new window)
nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities who have made a valid application for settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS)
individuals with limited leave to remain or indefinite leave to remain who were eligible to apply for EUSS on or before 31 December 2020
Turkish nationals, and certain family members of Turkish nationals, who have accrued the right to work in the Civil Service

Further information on nationality requirements (opens in a new window)

Working for the Civil Service

The Civil Service Code (opens in a new window) sets out the standards of behaviour expected of civil servants.

We recruit by merit on the basis of fair and open competition, as outlined in the Civil Service Commission's recruitment principles (opens in a new window).The Civil Service embraces diversity and promotes equal opportunities. As such, we run a Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) for candidates with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria.The Civil Service also offers a Redeployment Interview Scheme to civil servants who are at risk of redundancy, and who meet the minimum requirements for the advertised vacancy.

Diversity and Inclusion

The Civil Service is committed to attract, retain and invest in talent wherever it is found. To learn more please see theCivil Service People Plan (opens in a new window) and the Civil Service Diversity and Inclusion Strategy (opens in a new window).

Apply and further information

This vacancy is part of the Great Place to Work for Veterans (opens in a new window) initiative.Once this job has closed, the job advert will no longer be available. You may want to save a copy for your records.

Contact point for applicants

Salary range

£86,000 - £96,000 per year