Head of People
ZOE
People & HR
Remote · United Kingdom
Posted on Tuesday, September 5, 2023
We Are Redefining How People Approach Their Health
ZOE is combining scientific research at a scale never before imagined and cutting-edge AI to improve the health of millions.
Created by the world’s top scientists, our personalised nutrition program is radically reimagining a fundamental human need – eating well for your own body. Currently available in the US and the UK, having generated a waitlist of over 300,000, ZOE is already helping tens of thousands of ZOE members adopt healthier habits and achieve their goals.
We are also the team behind the popular COVID Symptom Study, which played a critical role in the fight against COVID in the UK and has now expanded to become the ZOE Health Study (ZHS). ZHS uses the power of community science to conduct large-scale research from the comfort of contributors’ homes to understand health and prevent disease. Our collective work and expertise in biology, engineering, data science, and nutrition science has led to multiple breakthrough papers in leading scientific journals such as Nature Medicine, Science, The Lancet, and more.
A remote-first, well-funded startup, we are backed by founders, investors, and entrepreneurs who have built multi-billion dollar technology companies. We are always looking for innovative thinkers and doers to join our team on a thrilling mission to tackle epic health problems that span the globe. Together, we can improve human health and touch millions of lives.
We value inclusivity, transparency, ownership, open-mindedness and diversity. We are passionate about delivering great results and learning in the open. We want our teams to have the freedom to make long-term, high-impact decisions, and the well-being of our teammates and the people around us is a top priority.
About the People Team
The People Team at ZOE designs, executes and delivers on all aspects of the People Experience, helping to foster a high performing, collaborative and enjoyable environment with our people right at the centre. Our job is to find great people and then do our best to look after them so that they flourish in their role and can build great things with the rest of us.
We design products and optimise for "people experience" - aiming to understand how each discipline within the business works and borrowing the best parts of their various tools, techniques and processes to help us create a great place to work for us all. We’ve made some ambitious plans for the next year to ensure ZOE is the best place to work, and attracts the best talent as a result.
About the role
This newly created role will manage the people team and work directly with our VP People.
Its main objective will be to help set-up & manage a world class People function that ensures that ZOE not only attracts but retains high performing team members with strong connection to our mission and values in a sustainable and scalable way.
This role will be instrumental to help us co-define and set-up our overall people strategy and approach, delighting our customers (= our team members and candidates) as we go along.
This role will be responsible for managing and executing critical aspects of our employee experience. You will collaborate with senior leaders and managers to ensure seamless people operations and outstanding employee experience, serving as their trusted advisor throughout their time with ZOE.
The scope of this role will be to define and ensure an awesome employee experience and strategy for our team members, managing this process end-to-end, running & improving people-growth process & strategy, guiding and educating managers and the broader company on people-centric approach and processes.
You'll be...
- Partnering with the C-Level and Senior Leadership Team to provide strategic and tactical guidance on leading the company's people to successful outcomes
- The guardian of the company's values, ensuring they are lived day-to-day and designing products that enable us to continuously improve our employee experience
- Defining and refining our compensation, reward and recognition philosophies, ensuring we are fair, transparent and equitable
- Fostering a culture of continuous feedback, with systems and performance processes to ensure we have the right talent, in the right place, at the right time
- Leading and empowering team members, defining clear roadmap, providing direction and strategic guidance to ensure the team is delivering best-in-class people experience and operational excellence for Zoe
- Ensuring the appropriate frameworks, practices and procedures are in place for compliance with employment law, social governance and best practice
- Driving cultural excellence by ensuring inclusive practices across the entire organisation and employee life-cycle, and by initiating continuous improvements to the company's Employer Value Proposition
This role would be a great fit if you...
- Have solid experience in a full-cycle people role, creating and managing excellent employee journeys that are memorable, impactful and delivery-focused and relevant experience in a senior HR leadership role
- Show true customer-obsession, able to re-prioritise ruthlessly to deliver the best outcomes to employees, at speed and at scale
- Have strong analytical thinking, approaching People as a product organisation, and able to define the right KPIs and metrics to assess performance
- Are experienced working in fast-pace scale-ups, including managing cross-functional teams (e.g. engineering, data science, analytics, comms..etc)
- Are a doer with an action oriented & entrepreneurial mindset, comfortable getting hands-on as taking a step back and thinking strategically, identifying issues and opportunities, and tackling them methodically and proactively, diving deep as you go
- Have excellent communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to build relationships at all levels, including VP and C-Level and ability to inspire team members
- Have deep knowledge of HR best practices, employment laws, and regulations, particularly in the UK
These are the ideal skills, attributes, and experience we’re looking for in this role. Don’t worry if you don’t tick all the boxes, especially on the skills and experience front, we’re happy to upskill for the right candidate.
Life as a ZOEntist – what you can expect from us:
As well as industry-benchmarked compensation and all the hardware and software you need, we offer a thoughtfully-curated list of benefits. We expect this list to evolve as we continue supporting our team members’ long-term personal and professional growth, and their wellbeing.
Remote-first: Work flexibly – from home, our London office, or anywhere within the EU
Stock options: So you can share in our growth
Paid time off: 28 days paid leave (25 holiday days, plus 2 company-wide reset days, and 1 “life event” day)
Enhanced Parental Leave: On top of the statutory offering
Flexible private healthcare and life assurance options
Pension contribution: Pay monthly or top up – your choice.
Health and wellbeing: Like our Employee Assistance Program and Cycle to Work Scheme
Social, WFH, and Growth (L&D) budgets. Plus, multiple opportunities to connect, grow, and socialise
We’re all about equal opportunities
We know that a successful team is made up of diverse people, able to be their authentic selves. To continue growing our team in the best way, we believe that equal opportunities matter, so we encourage candidates from any underrepresented backgrounds to apply for this role. You can view our Equal Opportunities statement in full here.
A closer look at ZOE Think you’ve heard our name somewhere before? We were the team behind the COVID Symptom Study, which has since become the ZOE Health Study (ZHS). We use the power of community science to conduct large-scale research from the comfort of contributors’ own homes. Our collective work and expertise in biology, engineering, and data/nutrition science have led to multiple breakthrough papers in leading scientific journals such as Nature Medicine, Science, The Lancet, and more.
Seen ZOE in the media recently? Catch our co-founder Professor Tim Spector (one of the world’s most cited scientists) and our Chief Scientist Dr Sarah Berry on this BBC Panorama, and listen to CEO Jonathan Wolf unpack the latest in science and nutrition on our ZOE podcast.
Oh, and if you’re wondering why ZOE? It translates to “Life” in Greek, which we’re helping ZOE members enjoy to the fullest.