Head of Talent Development

As Ridge continues to grow and deliver our business strategy, we are seeking a strategic and forward-thinking Head of Talent Development to shape the leadership, talent and organisational capability that will drive our future success.

Reporting to our Chief People Officer and sitting within our People Leadership team, you’ll lead our approach to leadership development, talent development, career pathways, learning, early careers, and inclusion and belonging. Working closely with our senior business leaders and People Partners, you’ll translate our current and future capability needs into practical, scalable solutions that strengthen business performance and create meaningful career opportunities for our people.

Leading our Talent Development team, you'll combine strategic vision with practical delivery, ensuring our investment in talent and development has a measurable impact on our people, our culture, and the long-term success of Ridge.

What you need to do to be effective in this role

• Shape and deliver our Talent Development strategy, ensuring it enables the growth planned within our business strategy, our wider People strategy and the future capability needs of Ridge.
• Lead the ongoing evolution of our manager, leadership and high-potential development strategy, including our approach to coaching, mentoring and psychometric-based development, equipping our leaders to build inclusive, high performing teams.
• Establish a consistent and high-quality learning culture across Ridge, empowering leaders and subject matter experts to deliver effective development experiences while making thoughtful and innovative use of digital learning, technology and AI.
• Develop our career development framework, including career pathways, skills mapping and capability frameworks, creating greater visibility of the skills Ridge needs today, and in the future, defining clear routes for development and progression.
• Define our business wide learning approach, ensuring our leadership, professional, technical and core development offering are impactful, scalable and focused on improving performance.
• Shape the development aspects of the employee lifecycle, including onboarding, professional qualifications and chartership, ensuring our people have clear and supported pathways from joining Ridge through to career progression.
• Oversee our strategic approach to inclusion and belonging, embedding inclusive practices across leadership, learning, careers, talent and succession and using employee insight and networks to strengthen opportunity and connection.
• Act as a trusted adviser to the Chief People Officer, People Leadership team and senior business leaders – providing insight and challenge on leadership capability, talent development, career pathways, learning, early careers, and inclusion and belonging.
• Partner with People Advisory on our approach to talent identification and succession planning, strengthening pipelines for critical and leadership roles, and translating talent reviews into meaningful development outcomes.
• Partner with People Advisory to continuously enhance our ‘Career Conversations’ approach and annual performance cycle, ensuring development and career needs identified through the process translate into meaningful development opportunities and connect effectively with talent, succession and reward.
• Work closely with the Head of Talent Acquisition to shape an integrated future talent approach, ensuring our early careers programmes build the capability and leadership pipelines required for future growth.
• Use data, feedback and business insights to identify capability priorities, measure the impact of talent initiatives and continuously improve our approach.
• Lead, coach and develop the Talent Development team, creating a high performing environment, setting clear priorities and ensuring resources, budgets and external partnerships are focused on delivering maximum business value.
• Shape our people awards and external recognition strategy, identifying opportunities to showcase our culture, people practices and achievements, and enhance our employer brand.
• Maintain a strong external perspective on emerging talent and development practice, bringing fresh thinking, insight and challenge to help Ridge build a modern, scalable and future focused People function.

The skills and experience you need to have for this role

• 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.
• A relevant professional qualification or equivalent depth of experience in talent, learning, organisational development or a related discipline.
• Hogan certification or experience using Hogan assessments would be desirable.
• Resilience, sound judgement, pragmatism and a collaborative leadership style.