SVP (People, Change & Internal Communications)

Diaceutics PLC is a diagnostic-driven therapy commercialisation company. For 20 years we have built the intelligence and engagement solutions that help biopharma see where eligible patients are emerging, engage the HCPs and labs shaping treatment decisions, and move faster from diagnostic activity to therapy adoption. The therapies we support touch 1 in 10 American lives - 30 to 40 million patients a year - across 700+ diagnostic-driven therapies, backed by a network of 600+ US labs and clients including AbbVie, AstraZeneca, GSK, Novartis, Pfizer and Roche.

Our portfolio brings together Intelligence Solutions (Signal, Insight Services, and Practice Gaps launching soon) and Engagement Solutions (Physician Engage, Expert Exchange, Lab Engage, Scientific Engagement, Precision Medicine Educators), connected through Relay - a partnership model built for precision medicine - and powered by the DXRX platform and Reveal engine.

We are headquartered in Jersey City, NJ (US) and Belfast, UK, and we are moving into our next chapter under a Precision for All ambition: a future where every eligible patient is identified, diagnosed and receives the right therapy at the right time.

Role Summary

Diaceutics is entering its next phase of growth and is evolving its operating model so the organisation can scale with greater clarity, accountability, pace and operational efficiency. This role exists to help accelerate growth and build the organisational capability required for the future by leading the continued evolution of the operating model, embedding the work completed to date and turning it into the way Diaceutics operates every day. The role will align structure, leadership, talent, performance, culture, change and communication behind our strategy.

Reporting to the Chief Marketing & People Officer, you will take full day-to-day leadership of the People function while owning a much broader agenda spanning organisational effectiveness, operating model evolution, performance culture, enterprise change and internal communications. You will ensure the organisation has the structure, leadership, capabilities, systems and ways of working needed to accelerate sustainable growth, while enabling the Chief Marketing & People Officer to focus the majority of their time on Marketing.

As a member of the Extended Leadership Team, you will operate as an enterprise leader first and a functional leader second. You will share accountability for company outcomes, make cross-functional trade-offs, deploy resources within agreed guardrails and bring clear recommendations, risks and opportunities to ExCo.

This is deliberately and materially broader than leading a People function. The successful candidate will understand how growth and customer value are delivered, bring strong executive presence, and connect commercial priorities with organisation design, operating model, performance, capability, systems, process, culture and communication.

What you'll be doing

Enable the operating model and improve organisational effectiveness

• Lead the continued evolution of the operating model and embed the work completed to date, converting design intent into clear accountabilities, decision rights, interfaces, spans, layers, capabilities and ways of working that enable the organisation to scale and accelerate growth.

• Partner with ExCo and ELT leaders to build cross functional alignment, clarify ownership and ensure decisions are made at the lowest appropriate level.

• Build an enterprise view of organisational health, effectiveness and readiness to scale, using data to identify structural, capability, capacity and leadership constraints before they slow growth or customer delivery.

• Lead organisation design, strategic workforce planning and future capability building so structures, roles, skills and investment choices support strategy, scalability, productivity and customer delivery.

• Drive simplification, standardisation, automation and continuous improvement across people processes and wider organisational workflows, improving efficiency, effectiveness and employee and leader experience.

Build a high-performance culture

• Shape and embed a performance culture in which priorities are explicit, goals are connected to strategy, feedback is direct and useful, strong contribution is recognised and underperformance is addressed fairly and promptly.

• Own the enterprise performance and growth framework, ensuring leaders have the capability, confidence and tools to set expectations, coach performance and make differentiated decisions.

• Embed the One Diaceutics Behaviours - Care Deeply, Be Bold, Make an Impact, Succeed Together and Don't Stand Still - in leadership, talent, reward, recognition and everyday decisions.

• Lead enterprise succession planning for ExCo and ELT, working with the CEO, ExCo and Board stakeholders to identify succession risks, define credible internal and external pipelines, strengthen readiness and build the future enterprise leadership capability Diaceutics needs. Extend this discipline to other critical roles and leadership pipelines across the organisation.

• Use engagement, performance, retention, capability and workforce data to focus leadership action and measure whether cultural change is translating into stronger business outcomes.

Lead enterprise change and internal communications

• Create and lead a practical enterprise change approach that connects strategy, sponsorship, stakeholder impact, readiness, capability, communication, adoption and benefits realisation.

• Act as a hands-on change leader for the highest-priority cross-functional programmes, ensuring changes are understood, adopted and sustained rather than simply announced.

• Own the internal communications strategy, narrative, channels and rhythm so colleagues understand the strategy, the choices being made, what is changing and what is expected of them.

• Equip leaders to communicate with clarity, consistency and humanity, particularly through ambiguity, significant change and difficult decisions.

• Build listening and feedback loops that surface employee insight early and enable leaders to respond visibly and credibly.

Lead a scalable, commercially focused People function

• Take full accountability for the day-to-day leadership, priorities, performance, budget and delivery of the People function, creating the capacity for the Chief Marketing & People Officer to focus majority of their time on Marketing.

• Evolve the People team from a strong service base into a proactive, insight-led partner that solves business problems, challenges constructively and delivers measurable organisational value.

• Ensure operational excellence, appropriate governance and legal compliance across the employee lifecycle, with clear service standards, ownership, controls and escalation routes.

• Create a coherent people data, systems, AI and automation roadmap that improves decision quality, productivity, scalability and employee experience.

• Own and evolve the enterprise reward strategy, ensuring pay, incentives, benefits, recognition and executive reward are commercially grounded, externally informed, internally coherent and aligned with performance, talent, culture and sustainable growth.

• Prepare and coordinate all People, reward, talent, succession and organisational inputs for the Remuneration Committee, producing high-quality analysis, recommendations, papers and supporting materials, and ensuring agreed actions are followed through with appropriate governance and rigour.

• Lead, develop and organise the People team so accountabilities are distinct, capability is matched to future needs and team members can operate with appropriate independence.

Contribute as an enterprise leader

• Operate as an active member of the ELT, sharing collective accountability for strategy execution, enterprise performance, culture and organisational health.

• Bring the executive presence, confidence and judgement to influence ExCo, ELT, RemCo and Board stakeholders, lead through ambiguity and hold senior leaders to account while building trust and alignment.

• Bring evidence-based recommendations and a clear point of view to enterprise decisions, resource allocation, cross-functional priorities, material risks and opportunities.

• Champion agreed decisions with one aligned voice, combining constructive challenge in the room with visible ownership after decisions are made.

• Bring relevant external, market and functional insight into decisions, while avoiding a narrow HR lens.

• Support people and organisational aspects of acquisitions, partnerships or integrations where required, including due diligence, organisation design, culture and change.

What we're looking for

We are looking for a commercially focused enterprise leader and operator who brings deep people, culture and change expertise alongside first-hand experience leading a business function. This role requires someone who can help scale the organisation, accelerate growth, build organisational effectiveness, evolve and embed the operating model and help create the leadership and organisational capabilities needed for the future. The role must understand the realities of customers, delivery, budgets, investment choices, trade-offs and execution, not only advise others on them. You must be happy to flex ‘altitude’ from strategy setting to design and delivery of day to day work, given scale of business and team (currently 6 people in People Team).

Enterprise leadership, executive presence and commercial judgement: You bring the presence, confidence and judgement to influence at ExCo, ELT, RemCo and Board level, provide constructive challenge and lead difficult enterprise conversations. You step beyond your function, make trade-offs for the good of the whole company and connect organisation choices to growth, customers, productivity and financial outcomes. You bring a clear point of view, evidence and recommendations rather than unresolved issues.

Operating model, scale and organisation effectiveness: You have helped an organisation scale and accelerate growth by translating strategy into practical organisation design, governance, accountabilities, decision rights, capability and ways of working. You understand how structures, processes, systems, incentives, leadership and culture interact; can embed operating model change after the initial design phase; and can identify the few interventions that will materially improve performance and future readiness.

Performance culture and leadership: You have built stronger performance expectations and leadership disciplines without losing humanity or trust. You can create clarity, support leaders to have better conversations, differentiate contribution and address difficult issues fairly and decisively.

Change leadership and internal communications: You have personally led complex, enterprise-wide change with visible adoption and business outcomes. You can shape a clear narrative, segment audiences, build sponsor capability, listen well and communicate difficult messages with candour, empathy and consistency.

Functional leadership and operational excellence: You can lead a multi-disciplinary People function with strong standards, clear priorities, reliable operations, useful data and disciplined execution. You know when to standardise, automate, stop, redesign or invest, and can run a function within budget while improving its impact.

AI fluency and future of work: You use AI confidently and responsibly to improve insight, productivity, communication and service delivery. You can help leaders redesign work, roles and workflows around the complementary strengths of people, data, automation and AI, with appropriate governance and judgement.

Ideal experience and qualifications

• Senior leadership experience across People, culture, organisational effectiveness and enterprise change in a scaling or transforming organisation.

• Direct leadership of a business function, operational unit, transformation portfolio or other material enterprise remit outside a solely People/HR career path.

• Evidence of enabling an operating model through organisation design, decision rights, governance, capability, process and behavioural change.

• Experience leading a People function or broad people agenda with accountability for operational delivery, team leadership, budget, risk and business partnering.

• Strategic reward experience, including executive reward, incentive design, external benchmarking, governance and preparation of high-quality Remuneration Committee inputs.

• Strong experience of performance management, leadership development, talent, succession and culture change.

• Experience owning or materially shaping enterprise internal communications and leading communications through significant change.

• Strong executive presence and experience influencing ExCo, ELT, RemCo and Board stakeholders, with the commercial judgement to make enterprise-level recommendations and trade-offs.

• Experience leading executive and senior leadership succession planning, including assessment of succession risk, pipeline strength, readiness and development actions.

• Experience in an international organisation, with a practical understanding of operating across the UK and US.

• An advantage but not essential: experience in a technology-enabled, data, SaaS, healthcare or life-sciences environment.

• An advantage but not essential: experience of M&A due diligence, integration or post-merger organisation and culture work.

• A relevant professional qualification, such as Chartered CIPD, is useful but not a substitute for broad business leadership and delivery experience.

Success Indicators

Operating model & performance

• Accountabilities, decision rights and critical interfaces are clearer, with fewer avoidable escalations and faster cross-functional decisions.

• Performance expectations and leadership routines are consistently applied, with visible improvement in goal quality, feedback, accountability and action on performance.

• The operating model work completed to date is embedded and continues to evolve; organisation and capability plans provide a credible route to scale, accelerate growth and build future capability.

Operational excellence & scale

• The People function is led day-to-day with clear priorities, service standards, measures and ownership, requiring limited operational intervention from the Chief Marketing & People Officer and creating capacity for the intended Marketing focus.

• Core people processes are simpler, more consistent and increasingly automated, with reliable data supporting workforce and investment decisions.

• The function is viewed as commercially credible, proactive and accountable for outcomes, with a coherent reward strategy and high-quality, decision-ready inputs provided to RemCo.

Leadership, culture & communication

• Leaders and colleagues understand the strategy, operating model and major changes, including what these mean for their work.

• Change programmes show stronger sponsorship, readiness, adoption and sustained follow-through.

• The One Diaceutics Behaviours are visible in leadership decisions and ways of working, with stronger ExCo and ELT succession plans, clearer readiness actions and credible leadership pipelines.

Life at Diaceutics

Culture is a powerful driver of Diaceutics’ success and growth. Our culture is an outcome of our ‘One Diaceutics’ Behaviors. These behaviors set out a promise and an expectation of what it means to work at – and with – Diaceutics.

We exist because we Care Deeply about our patients and customers. To Be Bold, we pioneer, we innovate, and we think big. We take responsibility, and we are driven and determined to Make an Impact. We prioritize collective success and when we win, we Succeed Together. We are excited by change and driven by progress. We Don’t Stand Still.

We are a multi-cultural, diverse team spanning 16 countries around the world. All of our employees work remotely or in a hybrid model, collaborating together as a global community.

We hire smart, fun people who care about our mission and about each other. Some interesting points about us:

·       Training and development opportunities

·       Remote, Virtual Working and Hybrid Working based on location to offices

·       Flexible Working incl. Flex Day Program

·       Share Incentive Plan

·       Increase of Annual Leave with tenure

·       Pension

·       Healthcare (including Vision and Dental) and Additional Benefits

·       Life Insurance

·       Group Income Protection

·       Enhanced Maternity and Sick Pay Provisions

·       Robust Performance Management Framework and Individual Growth Plan

·      Attractive  Staff Referral Scheme

·       Dedication to a positive working culture with regular health and wellbeing activities and an annual company get-together

We are an equal opportunities employer and welcome applications from all suitably qualified persons.

Please see link below to our Candidate Privacy Statement -

https://www.diaceutics.com/privacy-statement