Head of People Partnering

About Dot

Dot is home to a set of businesses united by a bold ambition: to redefine student living and support over one million students each year. Spanning 180+ cities in 30 countries, our companies include, Global Student Accommodation (GSA), Yugo and Student.com. Together, we bring global scale and local insight, powered by more than 2000 passionate people. We believe progress happens when people come together with purpose. We're committed to building long term value through everything we do.

With three decades of continuous evolution, Dot's strength lies in how we work. We are pioneering, purposeful and positive, driving smart, sustainable growth across our portfolio. We connect expertise with opportunity to turn ideas into impact and momentum into lasting change.

At Dot, we live and work by our values every day

• Pioneering: With three decades of groundbreaking achievements and a passion for international expansion, our distinctive proposition remains stronger than ever.
• Purposeful:

Every action we take is intentional, designed to align with our values and create lasting benefits for our people, communities, and the planet.

• Positive: We tackle challenges with resilience and seek to create a supportive and empowering environment for our teams and communities

Role Purpose

This role acts as the lead people partner to leaders across our investment management and corporate functions in GSA, Dot and Yugo, and forms part of the group’s global people leadership team, reporting to the group people director. You will build deep partnerships with executives in our investment management business, GSA, as well as supporting commercial, investment and financial client groups in Dot and Yugo.

You will help ensure we have the organisation, leadership capability and talent needed to deliver our growth ambitions. You’ll support a client group of c. 300 employees globally, with an interesting mix of investment management and real estate professionals, and corporate functions. Global HR experience and the ability to confidently guide leaders through key people decisions will be pivotal, as will the ability to deliver in a practical, sleeves-up way and operate with resilience and good humour.

Working closely with the Group Head of Talent and the wider People team, the role will drive consistent, high-quality partnering while ensuring solutions remain relevant and tailored to individual businesses and markets.

Key Responsibilities

• Act as a trusted advisor and strategic people partner to senior leaders across our business, providing practical, commercially grounded advice and constructive challenge.
• Translate business strategy, growth plans and investment priorities into clear people plans, workforce requirements and organisational priorities.
• Partner on business transformation, integration and both organic and inorganic growth, ensuring the people implications are identified early and delivered effectively.
• Lead workforce and succession planning, identifying critical roles, capability gaps, key-person risks and future talent requirements alongside the Head of Talent.
• Partner with leaders on performance, leadership effectiveness, team dynamics, engagement, culture and organisational health.
• Coach senior leaders through complex people decisions and employee relations matters, balancing commercial outcomes, employee experience and risk.
• Work with Talent, Learning & Development and People Operations to embed effective talent, performance, reward and development practices across the organisation.
• Use people data and insight to identify trends, inform decisions and measure the impact of people initiatives.
• Lead organisational design and operating model work, including role clarity, structure, capability assessment and change implementation.
• Build effective relationships across Dot businesses and geographies, sharing best practice while respecting local market requirements and employment frameworks.
• Support the continued evolution of Dot’s global People operating model, simplifying ways of working and improving the experience for leaders and employees.

Requirements

• Significant senior HR business partnering experience gained within a corporate environment. We are particularly interested in backgrounds in real estate, financial services, technology or investment management.
• Demonstrable global experience, partnering across multiple countries, cultures and jurisdictions in a matrix or portfolio environment.
• Proven experience advising c-suite executives and senior leadership teams, with the credibility to influence, challenge and coach at the highest levels.
• Strong commercial acumen and a clear understanding of how people, organisation and talent decisions support business performance and value creation.
• Experience leading organisational design, transformation, workforce planning, succession and complex change programmes.
• Broad HR expertise across the employee lifecycle, with sound judgement in complex employee relations and people risk matters.
• Experience leading and developing HR or business partnering teams and working effectively with specialist People functions.
• Comfort using data, insight and business metrics to shape priorities and support decision-making.
• Knowledge of employment practices across multiple jurisdictions; direct exposure to UK and/or US employment environments is strongly preferred.
• Experience in a fast-moving, international or investment-backed organisation would be advantageous.
• Based in London, UK or US, with the ability and willingness to travel nationally and internationally as required.

Personal Attributes & Competencies

• Commercial and pragmatic, with the ability to connect people priorities directly to business outcomes.
• Strategic thinker who is equally comfortable getting into the detail and driving execution.
• High emotional intelligence with a confident, credible and appropriately challenging influencing style.
• Builds trusted relationships quickly across seniority levels, businesses, functions and geographies.
• Comfortable operating with ambiguity, pace and competing priorities in a complex global environment.
• Uses sound judgement, discretion and integrity when handling sensitive and high-impact issues.
• Resilient, curious and solutions-focused, with a continuous improvement mindset.
• Collaborative and low ego, able to create alignment across a portfolio of businesses while respecting different perspectives and operating contexts.

Benefits

Bonus, Private Healthcare, 25 days Annual leave plus other benefits