Head of People

Job Description

About us

At Perlego, there are over 100 of us working hard to make education accessible to all. In this digital age, we believe that anyone should be able to learn anything at any time. Knowledge should be more accessible, not locked behind sky-high price tags.

Over the past 5 years, our goal has been to support students across the UK & Europe to access quality books. We've just raised our $50million Series B funding round, and the next stage of Perlego is two fold: 1) expand our support to students globally, and 2) build a product that goes beyond the book, a platform that helps students study smarter and more effectively.

What we’re looking for

An experienced Head of People to play a pivotal role in shaping and building our culture of performance whilst maintaining a happy and healthy team. You will have an ability to switch with ease between, doing, leading and advising, whilst facing challenging situations head-on with optimism, you don’t sweat the small stuff. You will partner closely with our leadership and Founder, Gauthier to build a founder-led culture that encompasses both our Founder’s vision alongside best practices.

How we work together

We work in a matrix structure and we organise ourselves into cross-functional tribes working together on common goals, with each tribe focusing on a specific domain and including all the necessary roles and skills to deliver on our objectives.

You will lead the People Team as part of our enabler tribe and be an important member of our extended leadership team, Domain Head. You will report to our COO with a dotted line to the CEO.

What you’ll do

• People Strategy & Ownership: Own the the full people and talent lifecycle, be responsible for the overall journey from awareness & acquisition through to exit and referral.
• Talent: responsible for evolving our employer brand, awareness and hiring processes. Includes managing the agreed hiring plan and budget.
• People Operations: responsible for the end-to-end people operating system that enables an efficient and smooth experience for both employees and our G&A team. Includes owning payroll, compliance and legal within the people space.
• People Engagement: develop and own the engagement strategy and plans across the company
• Reward & Compensation: in collaboration with the Finance Director and COO, develop a compensation and reward structure that aligns that align to the people strategy, yet fits within the business and financial plan.
• Org design: Partner with the COO on our ever-evolving organisational structure to allow us to reach our business goals
• Define and own the people team roadmap and quarterly planning, making prioritisation decisions using key metrics and insights (both internally and externally)
• Proactively provide useful and actionable data to help guide decision-making, allowing the company to scale effectively and efficiently, and create a better working environment and engaged culture

Management

• Manage and coach a team of three in the people & talent team - a People Ops Specialist and People Partner, People & Talent Partner - building a high-performing and engaged team

Business partnering

• Act as a strategic thought partner and coach to leaders across the business to help us scale the business, specifically in our financial mission to become profitable over the next 2-years
• Act as the go-to person for people related concerns, grievances or issues across the business

Requirements

It’s the perfect role for you if you:

• Experience as a Head of People in a fast-paced organisation with constant change
• Believe in the power of a Performance-based and focused culture
• Have exceptional communication and relationship-building skills
• Commercially minded, you understand how people link to business outcomes and can confidently make this link to inform daily decisions
• You are comfortable with financials and data, you proactively and regularly analyse data and use this to inform decision-making
• A team player, but also unafraid to challenge others’ ways of thinking
• A creative thinker and problem solver, who develops innovative ideas and solutions to business problems
• Open to new ideas, knowledge and open to giving and receiving direct feedback

⭐️ It’s a plus if you have:

• Scaled companies through multiple stages of business
• Built a performance culture and have data to back up the impact!
• Experience facilitating exec and leadership workshops
• Coaching accreditations

What success looks like for this role in 12 months

In 3 months you will have:

• Built strong and deep relationships with our executive team (CEO, COO, CPO, VP Eng, Finance Director, CTO & CSO)
• Led an effective salary review that is within budget and optimises for rewarding high-performance
• Support on org structure changes with minimal disruption to performance and engagement

In 6 months you will have:

• Guided the People & Talent team through a full iteration of our talent cycle. Resulting in an increased understanding of performance from 7.35/10 to at least 9.5/10 that is sustained
• Increased eNPS score - it’s already above the industry average but we know we can always do better
• Strengthen our culture to improve the retention of key talent

Benefits

🌈 Benefits include:

✨Compensation

The salary available for this role is £80,000 - £100,000 + share options

Why should you work at Perlego? Apart from our mission, we foster a unique company culture championing self-empowerment, personal development, direct communication and mutual support. Want to learn more about how we’re making learning accessible? Check out our latest impact report

🏠 Flexible We operate a flexible hybrid working environment. For this role, we’re looking for someone who will attend our London office a minimum of twice a week. At Perlego, we empower you to work in a way that supports your needs and your life. We trust people to know what works best for them. Check out our Flexa profile to find out more.

🧠 L&D Budget We value continuous learning and you will have a personal L&D budget for online courses, subscriptions or books not on Perlego.

🌱 Unlimited Coaching Opportunities Unlimited access to MoreHappi, an on-demand professional coaching platform to offer all employees access to unbiased and professional coaching opportunities.

🤓 Learning Time All employees have dedicated Learning Time to focus on new skills, projects or interests that lay outside of their day-to-day job, including Hackathons which bring our entire Engineering team together to work on exciting projects.

🌴 Work-Life Balance Everyone needs a break, so enjoy 30 days off (incl. bank holidays) + 1 additional day annual leave for every year of service up to 35 days off (incl. bank holidays)

🛐 Flexi Bank Holidays We understand that not everyone aligns with the same calendar; we offer the flexibility to take your local country's bank holiday allowance for other religious or cultural days. e.g. switch UK Easter Bank Holidays Days for Eid celebrations

🗺 Work from overseas We are also flexible if you wish to work remotely overseas for short periods of time, as long as you remain a UK tax resident

❄️ Office Reset All employees can also enjoy the days between Boxing Day and New Year off, to reset and refresh for the new year - this is additional to your annual leave 🙂

🏖 Sabbatical After three years there is an opportunity to take a 1-month unpaid sabbatical, and after five years there is an opportunity to take a 1-month paid sabbatical

💛 Personal Days Life happens and we want you to be able to use your annual leave for resting, relaxing or taking time out to do something you love! We offer 1 additional day a year for life events (your wedding, relocation, moving house, or a child starting school).

🍏 Health & Wellbeing We want everyone to feel healthy and happy, so we offer private medical insurance via Vitality.

💭 Mental Health All employees get access to therapy and counselling through Vitality

🚲 Cycle to Work Scheme We're committed to building a sustainable business, so we encourage cycling to work. Perlego will buy your bike of choice, which you'll pay back over 12 months.

🎉 Social We're a tight-knit bunch who enjoy our time to play. We have regular social events and activities for everyone - everything from white water rafting to board game nights.

🍼 Family time We believe family is really important; we offer new parents a competitive matched parental leave as well as a phased return to work from extended leave.

👼 Workplace Nursery Benefit We want to support working parents and carers, so we offer a workplace nursery benefit scheme, helping our employees potentially save thousands of £££ against the cost of nurseries each year.

👋 Belonging at Perlego 🌈 We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity of thought and background. ❤️ We are actively building a diverse team, so we strongly encourage applications from people of colour, the LGBTQ+ community, people with disabilities, neurodivergent people, parents, carers, and people from lower socio-economic backgrounds.

📣 To enable an equitable experience for all and give you the best chance of success, if you have any specific requirements for any stage of the interview process, please let us know by emailing ben@perlego.com