Senior People Operations Specialist

Ready to put your people expertise behind the managers and high-performance culture of a mission-driven health tech company?

We're looking for an experienced Senior People Operations Specialist who thrives in a fast-paced environment and is passionate about driving high-performance cultures.

This is a hands-on specialist role, not a management one. You'll sit at the heartbeat of our mission-driven healthcare startup, working closely with our managers to enable our team to be at their best in conquering obesity and type 2 diabetes.

At Second Nature, we're trying to solve an incredibly complex problem, and that takes a team performing at its best. We believe high-performance cultures don't happen by accident: they're built by people who care deeply about fairness, honest feedback, and creating an environment where everyone can do their best work. That's where you come in.

What you'll do

• Help our managers drive a high-performance culture with empathy and compassion
• Train and coach managers in people best practice, helping them get the best from their teams (an L&D background is a plus)
• Advise managers on people situations, helping them act early, fairly, and with confidence
• Lead on culture at Second Nature, from quarterly events to away days
• Keep our people policies accurate, practical, and legally sound as UK employment law changes
• Support our twice-yearly performance review and calibration cycles, keeping them fair and consistent
• Keep our people practices compliant and audit-ready
• Contribute to on wider People team projects, from business continuity and hiring to compliance and engagement

Requirements

Role-specific requirements

• Proven experience as a trusted people partner, advising managers on performance, and people matters with fairness and sound judgement
• Strong working knowledge of UK employment law, including in the ERA 2025 changes
• Experience running performance processes, such as review cycles, calibration, and progression frameworks, using people data to keep decisions fair and consistent
• Experience supporting reward and pay processes, including pay reviews and benchmarking
• Experience designing and delivering manager training that builds real-world leadership skills and confidence
• The ability to see the whole employee lifecycle as one connected system, and to spot where it feels clunky
• The ability to handle sensitive information with absolute discretion and empathy
• Excellent written and verbal communication
• CIPD Level 5 or above, or equivalent experience

Who you are

• You're calm and fair under pressure, and people trust you with the hardest conversations
• You're warm and empathetic, but direct; you say the thing that needs saying, kindly, rather than letting a problem drift because it's awkward
• You're organised and thorough, with a keen eye for detail; you know that in people work, the detail is often the difference between a fair process and an unfair one
• You're a team player who's happy to muck in beyond your specialism; no task is beneath you when the team needs a hand
• You handle sensitive information and conversations maturely; people tell you things knowing they'll go no further
• You're professional and personable in equal measure; people trust you quickly, whether that's a manager mid-crisis or a colleague who just needs a listening ear

The Company

The Challenge

Obesity has become a global epidemic; in the UK, we spend £9 billion a year alone on diseases like type 2 diabetes (that’s 10% of the NHS budget). What’s shocking is most of this is preventable – through sustained lifestyle and habit change.

Enter Second Nature.

We’re here to help people take control of their health. By bringing together behavioural science, technology, and incredible people, our grand mission is to eradicate the global epidemic of chronic lifestyle diseases once and for all.

Our digital habit change programme – delivered digitally through mobile and web apps – helps people to improve their lifestyle, lose weight, and ultimately reduce their risk for conditions such as type 2 diabetes.

• About us:
• We've positively changed the lives of over 250,000 people
• We're rated 'Excellent' by over 7k of our members on Trustpilot
• We’re one of the few consumer health brands that are commissioned by the NHS and leading health insurer, Vitality Health
• We're a leading B2C provider of GLP-1 medication-assisted weight loss programmes, and 1 of 5 NICE-approved providers to deliver these services within the NHS in the future
• Our team members stay with us for an average of 4.3 years

You can find out more about working with us here and here: https://www.secondnature.io/our-story

Benefits

• An exciting job at a health-tech startup. You’ll be able to see first-hand the impact that we have on improving thousands of people’s lives and tackling the type 2 diabetes and obesity epidemic on a daily basis

• A competitive market salary and awards/bonuses to recognise your contributions
• 25 days of holiday plus national holidays, in addition to flexible working hours and autonomy over your workload to support your own wellbeing
• Private medical insurance, provided after your first year with the company
• A budget of £200/year to spend on professional development with additional budget available for role-specific training needs
• Hybrid working policy: 2 days per week in our West London office, the rest of the week remote working
• Option to join the Salary Sacrifice scheme, and Cycle to Work scheme
• Quarterly company meet ups and socials in London