Recruiting an Executive Director of HR

Executive Director

HR

Highways England is a leading infrastructure business responsible for 4,300 miles of road networks and while this represents only 2 percent of all roads in England by length, these roads carry a third of all traffic by mileage and two thirds of all heavy goods traffic. The organisation employs around 5,500 staff based in locations around the country and will deliver £15 billion of investment on the road networks across a 5 year investment cycle.

Having worked closely for several years with the CEO of Highways England in replenishing his executive team across Operations, Major Projects & Capital Portfolio and Commercial, Hoggett Bowers were retained to recruit the Executive Director Human Resources & OD.

This was a time critical hire and important member of the Executive leadership team acting as a principal HR business partner to the CEO and Board. The position is pivotal in creating a culture of high performance and engagement in Highways England.

The search focused on a target list of private sector commercial organisations exposed to delivering high value, asset rich complex civil engineering related programmes and projects together with generating referrals from Hoggett Bowers’ existing and extensive network of contacts.

A range of diverse candidates were shortlisted and interviewed, leading to two outstanding candidates being selected by the client who confirmed that they met the challenging remit and could do the job.