Head of People Change and Workforce Planning

Job Title:  Head of People Change and Workforce Planning

Location: Any Hub ( Cumbernauld, Milton Keynes, Middlebrook, London)

Contract and working pattern:Hybrid ( 3 collaboration days), permanent, full time 37.5 hours

Are you ready to Be Your Best Barr None? 

Lets Grow!!!

We are all about Being Your Best Barr None and having a career with real Moments that Matter!

Employing around 950 people across the UK, we are proud to be a responsible business that takes care of our people, values diversity, gives something back to our communities and works to minimise our environmental impact.

For 150 years AG Barr has been building great brands and is home to some of the nations favourite flavours.

At our core is  IRN-BRU, launched in 1901 and still going strong today, the vibrant RUBICON fruit based brand, Boost making every moment better with a caffeine kick, hydration hit or tasty treat, and FUNKIN where real fruit means authentic taste.

We also have a number of exciting owned brands within our portfolio including MOMA, which crafts quality oats into great tasting oat drinks and porridges.

There's never been a better time to join us!

What we’re looking for…

As our Head of People Change and Workforce Planning, you will play a strategic leadership role responsible

for aligning AG Barr’s organisational model and skillsets with business strategy and technology

platforms.

You will lead organisational design decisions, rigorously evaluating work activity

against FTE counts, cost models, technology capability and productivity outputs to optimise the

overall organisational model financially and with the required capabilities.

Working closely with People and Business Leaders, the role will translate business plans into

clear workforce requirements through activity reviews and connecting it with process efficiency

and technology capabilities. Continuous analysis of FTE numbers, organisational design and skill

set mapping to ensure the organisation has the right capability, capacity and organisational

structure to meet current and future needs in a streamlined way that is assessed financially. The

role will provide leadership and oversight of significant change programmes, ensuring that the

impact of change is understood early, appropriately planned and effectively delivered. It will

also establish workforce planning disciplines that enable better decisions around organisational

design, skills, recruitment, deployment, FTE and workforce cost.

This role will bridge strategic workforce analysis with frontline operational delivery ensuring that

structural change programs, transformations, and skillset evolutions are executed effectively,

legally, on time and within budget across the business. This role leads on a continuous review of

operating model versus organisational design.

You will also support on M&A activity and the requirement to design and integrate structures

Your responsibilities will include...

1. Strategic Workforce Planning & Productivity

● Develop and maintain AG Barr’s enterprise-wide workforce planning model, projecting

future role, capacity, and skill requirements over 1–3 year horizons.

● Map activity against the technology roadmap to understand the future requirements of

roles.

● Establish work activity analysis frameworks to evaluate resource utilisation, benchmark FTE

counts against outputs, and directly link resource decisions to measurable productivity

gains.

● Conduct ongoing resource cost analysis to ensure costs are protected during business

growth and capability shifts.

● Translate business plans and forecasts into short, medium and long-term workforce

requirements.

● Develop a clear view of workforce demand and supply, identifying future capacity,

capability and skills requirements.

● Analyse workforce data and trends including headcount, resource cost, turnover,

vacancies, demographics, skills and workforce productivity. Provide insight to the

Executive team on this basis to drive appropriate action.

2. Organisational Design & Transformation

● Lead OD governance and act as the core advisor to executive stakeholders on target

operating models, spans of control, and team structures.

● Translate corporate transformation programs into granular skill matrixes, identifying

capability gaps in key areas with a proposed plan to address

● Map future-state roles and design transition roadmaps that ensure talent capability evolves

alongside operational technology and growth initiatives.

● Forecast potential variance within approved FTE capacity, structure in place and skills

readiness.

● Challenge organisational complexity and identify opportunities to improve spans of

control, layers, accountabilities and ways of working.

● Provide insight to senior leaders on emerging workforce trends, risks and opportunities.

3. Employee Relations & Structural Execution

● Lead and develop the ER team to ensure structural changes are executed seamlessly and

in compliance with legal requirements

● Convert Organisation Design analytics into deliverable consultation plans, managing ER

risk.

● Support the Business Change and ER lead with day to day ER activity and challenges

where required as an escalation point.

4. Change Management & Governance.

● Establish clear metrics to evaluate the ROI of organisational changes, tracking

productivity improvements, cost reductions, and employee retention post-implementation.

What you’ll bring...

● Significant Experience leading Workforce Planning or People and Model Transformation.

● Experience of working with financials, data and insight to analyse cost and resource

models.

● Experience of activity tracking and analysis to understand required labour hours.

● Leadership of Employee Relations activities managing restructures/consultations.

● Hands-on experience executing activity analytics and FTE workload modeling.

● Up to date knowledge of UK employment law, redundancy legislation, and collective

consultation frameworks.

● Strong commercial acumen- able to speak the language of the business.

● Experience of using workforce data and insight to influence business decisions.

● Confident and experience using AI tools to help assess data, trends, future planning and

for reporting.

We believe in creating a diverse and inclusive culture where your voice can be heard.  Our skilled, loyal and committed people are critical to the future success of AG Barr which is why we are continually investing in our employees to develop their talent.

We look after our employees by offering a competitive salary and benefits package which includes;

• Competitive salary, benchmarked to market
• Annual bonus linked to business and individual performance
• Defined contribution Pension with employer contribution
• Up to 34 days holiday (depending on shift pattern)
• Flexible holiday trading
• Flexible cash pot to spend on benefits
• Healthcare Cash Plan
• Flexible benefits e.g. discounts & cashbacks, gym memberships, technology purchases etc
• Life assurance
• Save as you earn scheme
• Staff sales discount
• Free AG Barr products throughout your working day and staff sales
• Ongoing professional development and access to Learning and Development programmes and content

And much more! 

To find out more about what it is like to work for AG Barr, please visit our careers platform here.

We are an equal opportunities employer and happy to discuss any reasonable adjustments that may be needed for successful candidates with a disability, health or mental health condition.

While we have highlighted our ideal requirements for this role, we are realistic that the successful candidate probably won't meet every single requirement in this advert, but we are big advocates of people growing in role. So even if you don’t meet every single requirement, we encourage you to submit an application - you may be just what we are looking for! Apply now!

Speculative CVs from agencies will not be accepted.

Please note, we may close vacancies early where we receive significant numbers of applications, so apply now!