Head of People & Operations

Remote · UK and Europe · 3 days a week

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Series Eight is looking for a Head of People & Operations to join our remote team on a fractional basis.

We're an award-winning, independent digital agency, founded in 2015. We work across brand identity, design and development for established businesses, luxury brands and ambitious B2B clients around the world. We're a team of twenty-three, mostly in the UK, with people dotted across Portugal, Spain, Italy and Cyprus.

We're after someone who has run the inside of a business like ours before. Someone who can hold a rhythm across a busy team without having to push, and who spots what's quietly sitting with nobody. Organised, calm, and happy to do the work rather than advise on it. You'll have room to be fully yourself here, personality and spirit included.

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The role

You'll own the systems and rhythms that keep the agency running well. The performance reviews and growth conversations that land on time. The goals that get written down and stay alive. The tools that get looked after. The All Hands that never feels last minute. You'll work closely with all department leads.

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What you'll do

We've grouped this around the four values we hold each other to.

Raise the bar (then repeat)

• Keep our company initiatives moving, so the quarterly review is a conversation and not a scramble
• Own goal setting end to end: once the annual strategy lands, you open the round, brief the leads, and make sure everyone's goals are written down and still alive a quarter later
• Own the tools we use, what they cost, and whether they still earn their place
• Facilitate the PM team in keeping the project lifecycle documented and current, without taking it over
• Keep Notion in good shape. It's our knowledge base, our handbook and our process documentation, and it only works if people trust it

Zero ego, all action

• Run both performance cycles: dates, comms, gathering 360 feedback, keeping the leads to time
• Look after the whole employee lifecycle: offers, contracts, onboarding, leave, sickness, exits
• Run our pulse and end of year surveys: ask the right questions, read the answers properly, and turn them into something that actually changes
• Close the gaps that currently sit with nobody

Bring the energy

• Produce the monthly All Hands: gather the content, build the deck, hold the running order
• Keep our rituals alive, and tell us honestly when one has gone stale
• Help organise the annual team trip, and anything else that gets us in the same room
• Build a recognition programme worth having, and keep gifting thoughtful rather than generic
• Ask "what would this look like if it were fun?" and mean it

Genuinely human

• Look after learning and development: what people want to learn, what's approved, and making sure the days actually get taken rather than lost to project deadlines
• Coordinate company-wide training and workshops end to end, from booking the trainer to the follow-up materials
• Hold people's confidences properly, because a lot of what crosses your desk is personal
• Communicate directly, especially when something's slipping

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What we're looking for

• Already operating at a senior level, running the internals of a business independently, ideally an agency or studio
• You've held a rhythm across a team that didn't report to you, and made it stick
• Sound judgement on people and compliance questions, and a clear sense of what to escalate
• Clear, direct communicator in writing and in person

Bonus points for

• Having untangled contractor or employment status questions before
• Experience designing a performance or goal-setting process, not just running one
• A genuine interest in how teams work, not just how systems work

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Why join us

• The scope is written down and the gaps are already identified, so you're not spending three months working out what the job is
• Real ownership from day one, not a handover that never ends
• A business small enough that what you fix will be visible and felt within a month
• Fully remote
• Competitive day rate

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How to Apply

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