About us
Halfords is a leading UK provider of motoring and cycling services, with a diverse portfolio spanning specialist retail, an extensive garage network, Commercial Fleet Services, and a growing B2B offering. Together, these businesses enable us to support customers and partners with integrated, convenient solutions, ranging from e-bike and electric vehicle servicing to on-demand motoring services.
As a specialist retailer, we lead the market through customer-driven innovation, expert service, and a distinctive product range, giving customers compelling reasons to return throughout a lifetime of motoring and cycling.
The business is evolving, with a new CEO and Retail MD joining in 2025 to lead our next phase of growth. Our People team plays a central role in this journey, driving strategic plans that support business success while enabling our talented colleagues to grow, thrive, and build rewarding careers at Halfords.
About the role
As a Retail People Business Partner, you will work in close partnership with Retail leadership teams, acting as a trusted advisor and strategic people partner across our field-based retail estate. You will play a critical role in enabling the delivery of our retail strategy by shaping and implementing people plans that build leadership capability, drive performance, and support consistent, high-quality customer experiences.
Operating at the heart of the retail operation, you will connect the realities of store-based delivery with strategic people solutions, acting as a conduit into our People Centres of Excellence. As a custodian of culture, you will coach and challenge retail leaders, embed strong leadership standards, and ensure our people approach maximises capability, capacity, and productivity, delivering measurable impact for colleagues, customers, and commercial performance.
This field-based role will provide people partnership across the following areas: Cheshire, Wales, Midlands and West Country.
Key responsibilities
- Partner with Retail leadership teams to translate retail and workforce strategy into practical, future-focused people plans that drive performance, capability, and productivity.
- Act as a trusted advisor and coach to retail leaders, building leadership capability and accountability while fostering an inclusive, engaged, high-performance culture.
- Lead workforce planning, and talent initiatives across the retail estate to ensure stores are structured and resourced to deliver commercial and customer outcomes.
- Use people data, insights, and retail performance metrics to shape targeted interventions that improve colleague experience, retention, and results.
- Enable and embed people change across retail, supporting leaders to implement new ways of working, behaviours, and capability aligned to strategic priorities.
- Act as the key interface between retail teams and People Centres of Excellence, ensuring joined-up, practical, and scalable people solutions.
- Identify leadership and capability gaps within retail, driving succession planning, pipelining, and development interventions in partnership with CoEs.
- Champion colleague experience, wellbeing, and Diversity, Inclusion & Equality across stores, ensuring sustainable improvements that support performance and representation.
About you
- A proven track record as a HR/People Business Partner within fast-paced, field-based or operational environments, ideally retail, hospitality, or customer-facing sectors.
- Strong experience partnering with Retail leadership teams, with credibility and impact in a frontline, commercial setting.
- Clear commercial mindset, with evidence of using people levers to drive retail performance, productivity, engagement, and customer outcomes.
- Experience designing and delivering people plans at scale, working in partnership with Centres of Excellence and leading delivery through cross-functional teams.
- Demonstrated success leading people and organisational change in complex, high-volume environments, balancing pace with sustainable outcomes.
- Highly developed influencing, coaching, and relationship-building skills, with a data-led and pragmatic approach and the resilience to operate in a dynamic retail environment.
- Experience, managing / leading, and implementing change and project‑based work.
Reward & benefits
- A fair and competitive salary evaluated against market data, company car, annual discretionary bonus scheme, pension, life assurance, 25 days annual leave plus bank holidays and enhanced family leave.
- Commitment and dedication to your ongoing personal and professional development. We help you to own and grow your potential so you can be at your best in your current role and to support your future career aspirations.
- This is a field-based role supporting your designated region, you will be onsite / in the field circa 3 days per week.
- You will have access to a wealth of employee discounts across the Halfords suite of products and services.
- Wellbeing and inclusion are at the heart of our colleague experience. We offer resources and ongoing support to enhance your wellbeing at work and active Colleague Networks supporting inclusion initiatives across Halfords.
Not sure you meet all the criteria? We'd encourage you to take the wheel and apply anyway! At Halfords we are committed to creating an inclusive workplace for our colleagues. We're an equal opportunities employer and proud to welcome applications from all backgrounds and embrace diversity within our one Halfords Family.
