People & Policy Partner

Contract type: Permanent

Location: Hatfield (Hybrid working – 3 days in the office)

Working hours per week: 40 hours

Level: Senior Associate

Application Closing Date: Monday 27th October 2025

About Us

Our mission is to deliver joy in every shop, through unbeatable choice, unrivalled service, and reassuringly good value.

We’re Ocado Retail, a market-leading joint venture between Ocado Group and M&S, and the world’s largest dedicated online supermarket, ocado.com. Not only is Ocado.com the only place to shop a full range of M&S food online, it’s also the home to the widest online supermarket range in the UK and champion of small, independent brands. We’re also the brains behind Zoom by Ocado, our same-day grocery delivery service.

About The Team And The Role

As part of the People Team, you’ll play a huge role in helping Ocado Retail colleagues continue to love what we do. We’re a small, close knit team, focused on recruiting, developing and retaining top talent, driving high engagement, performance and creating an inclusive workplace where everyone can thrive. This role will support across two sites, both in our Head Office site in Hatfield, and our Customer Hub in Sunderland.

As a People & Policy Partner, you will work in partnership with Leaders across all teams, Customer, Commercial and CFO, using your partnering skills to ensure we deliver strategic people initiatives that meet capability and meet our business priorities and applying your expert generalist HR to ensure we maintain a high-performing and inclusive workplace, You will also own and apply your expertise to continually develop all our employment policies, driving upskill and consistent adoption across all functions.

You’ll work closely in partnership with our People Specialists (Reward, Talent Acquisition & Learning and Development) to deliver a joined up yet tailored colleague experience and there’s always opportunity to grow your specialist skills through project work with these teams.

What You’ll Do

• Trusted Partner & Advisory Excellence: Act as a trusted partner for sensitive or complex employee relations issues, owning the end-to-end case management and providing advice across all levels of the organisation. As a People & Policy Partner you would provide generalist support across areas such as: policy understanding and deployment, including hybrid working, family leave and employment relations. You will be required to coach, collaborate, challenge and empower our people leaders to develop and deliver solutions that consider emerging thinking, colleague experience and support best practice, employment law and our ORL values.
• People Policy & Communication: Own, maintain and continually develop all employment policies and processes by proactively tracking new legislation, HR trends, and emerging thinking. Leverage AI and data insights to drive policy adoption, upskill leaders and drive consistent adoption across all of our business areas, considering both sites. You will also actively partner with our external partners to embed best practice, enhance colleague experience and work with our internal teams to strategically communicate policies and processes tailoring messaging and channels to maximise our colleague experience.
• People Partnering Core Cycle Activity – In collaboration with the wider People Partnering team, support the delivery of all core cycle activities, including Talent Review, Objective setting and Annual Reward Review. Coach managers to successfully complete their parts of these processes and work to deadlines.
• Make data driven decisions – Collate, analyse and present internal people data as well as market insights, trends and AI Insights to all relevant stakeholders, to provide people insight to the business which informs decision making, consistent adoption and ensuring competitive advantage and look to continually drive continuous improvement.
• Projects – Contribute to and / or own project(s) that support positive behavioural, business or organisational change as well as support on wider People projects and initiatives across the People Team.
• Be curious and expand your knowledge – Keep up to date with external thinking and best practices, using them to inform recommendations and strategy as well as drive the development of self-service capabilities, including the integration of AI solutions, to empower both all colleagues.
  
  

Who You Are

• You’ll have strong working knowledge of UK employment law, policies and procedures with experience of coaching and influencing leaders to deliver tailored solutions that support both the colleague and the business and be confident in assessing business and colleague risks, providing sound, empathetic advice.
• Thrive in ambiguous, fast-paced, and evolving environments, demonstrating the resilience and ability to multitask and effectively manage competing priorities and diverse stakeholders to deliver exceptional internal customer service.
• Confident in leveraging data and analytics to inform strategic decisions and drive actionable insights.
• Effective at influencing, facilitating, presenting, mediating, and problem solving, with the ability and confidence to tailor communication style to work with stakeholders at all levels.
• Excellent stakeholder management and communication skills.
• Ability to thrive in a fast-paced, dynamic environment while maintaining attention to detail and quality.
  
  

What’s In It For You

By joining Ocado Retail, you’ll have the chance to experience life at the world’s largest online retailer, work with an amazing bunch of people who challenge what’s possible each day, and grow your skills and career in online retail.

If that’s not enough to tempt you, you’ll also get access to loads of great benefits to sweeten the deal. Here’s a taste of what we offer:

Health & Wellbeing: Private medical insurance with option to add your family, Digital GP appointments, market-leading family policies, mental health support, discounted gym memberships, dental insurance, and more.

Spend & Save: Annual bonus scheme split between personal and business objectives, recognition with reward platform, up to 7% matched pension contributions, 15% Ocado discount, 20% M&S discount, free breakfast every day in the office, electric vehicle leasing scheme, and free shuttle bus from Hatfield station to the office.

Never miss the moments that matter: Hybrid working, 26 days holiday plus 8 flexible bank holidays, options to buy extra holiday, 2 weeks work from anywhere, and lifestyle break opportunities.

Our Hiring Process

Lucky for us, we receive a high volume of applications and genuinely appreciate the time and effort invested by every candidate. To ensure a fair and thorough process, every application is reviewed by a member of our team. If your skills and experience are a strong match, a Talent Partner will contact you to discuss the role and guide you through the next steps of our hiring process.

Your Application and AI

In the spirit of innovation, we welcome you to use AI tools in your application, just as we use them in our own business at Ocado Retail. However, as you leverage this technology, please don't lose sight of the most important element: your unique self. Your experiences, passions, and personality are what truly set you apart. Ensure that your application still authentically conveys who you are and why you're a great fit for us.

Everyone’s welcome

We’re an equal opportunity employer. That means that we make sure all potential colleagues are treated fairly and equally. If you require reasonable adjustments during the recruitment process, please let us know on the application form.