HS2 retained our services to recruit a HR Director to lead the organisation’s people agenda during a period of significant transformation and leadership reset.
HS2 is leading the development and delivery of major new rail infrastructure between London and the West Midlands. The programme supports a workforce of more than 30,000 people across a supply chain of over 3,500 UK businesses, reflecting both its national economic significance and the complexity of its delivery environment.
As a high-profile national programme operating across a complex stakeholder landscape, HS2 requires strong organisational capability and leadership to support delivery at scale.
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HS2 retained our services to recruit a Human Resources Director to lead the organisation’s people agenda during a period of significant transformation and leadership reset.
This was a pivotal appointment, with responsibility for shaping and delivering a people strategy aligned to the scale and complexity of the programme. The role would advise the Executive on all people-related matters, including attraction, development, retention, engagement, organisational performance, and associated risks and mitigation.
Leading a team of c60 people, including eight direct reports, the successful candidate would also be responsible for ensuring a positive employee journey, underpinned by a strong culture of performance, delivery and accountability.
The focus for this search was to identify highly experienced people leaders with a strong track record operating within major infrastructure programmes or complex organisations delivering significant capital projects. Given the nature of the role, particular emphasis was placed on candidates with experience engaging with government stakeholders and operating in complex, high-profile environments.
To achieve this, we mapped talent across major UK infrastructure programmes and client-side asset owner organisations with significant capital spend. This covered a broad range of sectors, including rail, highways, water, aviation, maritime and power, ensuring the search captured leaders with experience operating in comparable delivery environments.
This market mapping exercise enabled us to identify potential candidates through a range of channels, including our internal database, industry news sources, professional institutions, conferences and events, relevant trade associations and professional networking platforms such as LinkedIn. This was supported by targeted Boolean search activity to identify talent beyond traditional platforms and broaden the reach of the search.
We also leveraged our established network of industry contacts to seek recommendations and referrals for suitable candidates.
One of the key challenges during this assignment was identifying candidates with experience operating at a scale comparable to HS2, given its position as one of the largest infrastructure programmes in Europe.
In addition, despite the scale and profile of the opportunity, attracting comparable senior people leaders was challenging, as many were already in established roles with competitive reward structures and long-term incentives.
We addressed this by positioning the role around the strategic importance of the people agenda at HS2, the opportunity to influence a nationally significant infrastructure programme, and the chance to play a pivotal role during a period of leadership reset and organisational transformation.
From a longlist of 40 candidates, Newsom Consulting presented a shortlist of four candidates. The shortlist was diverse in background, with 75% of candidates being female.
The successful candidate brought 17 years’ experience across infrastructure, major programmes and the public sector, making them well suited to transition into the role and support HS2 through a period of leadership reset and organisational transformation.
