Head of People (HR and Recruitment)

Glasgow will host the 23rd edition of Commonwealth Games between 23 July and 2 August 2026. Approximately 3,000 athletes and team officials from up to 74 nations and territories across the Commonwealth will come together in a 10-day celebration of sport and culture. Events will take place across Glasgow, entertaining around 500,000 ticketed spectators and reaching a global broadcast audience of more than one billion.

Glasgow 2026 Limited, the Organising Company (the OC), is organising the Games along with the Commonwealth Games Federation (CGF) and Commonwealth Games Scotland (CGS). Each has key parts to play in the planning and delivery of the Commonwealth Games - individually and collectively - to ensure that Glasgow 2026 is a huge success.

We have an exciting opportunity available to join the team!

We are looking for an experienced and passionate Head of People (Human Resources and Recruitment) to manage a small but busy function. The Head of People is responsible for developing and executing the overall human resources strategy to support the delivery of the Games. This includes managing the full employee lifecycle, fostering a high-performance culture, ensuring compliance with HR best practices, and overseeing the recruitment of a diverse, skilled workforce essential for the successful execution of the Games

The Head of People will work collaboratively across all functional areas of the Organising Company to ensure the Games’ staffing needs are met efficiently while creating a positive and inclusive working environment.

Job Summary:

The Head of People will be responsible for

·      Champion the OC culture, vision and values cascading through the OC team and external partners, creating an exciting high achieving team

·      Ensures the OC people process, for employed and otherwise engaged team members meet legal and regulatory compliance, delivered through robust recruitment practice, ongoing governance and purposeful policies and procedures

·      Oversee the end-to-end recruitment process, including talent acquisition, selection, and onboarding, for both permanent and temporary staff

·      In partnership with Finance, ensure the employee workforce plan is robust and fully costed through monitoring and controlling the employee payroll budget

·      Owns the delivery of the workforce and skill requirements plan, including retention strategies and programmes of external recruitment, recruiting a diverse and highly talented workforce, holding the external resourcing partners to account for their deliverables

·      Overall responsibility for the timely delivery of efficient HR Services to the OC team, including accurate people data, controls and reporting; close liaison with the Workforce team

·      Develop onboarding programmes that engage new Organising Company employees and prepare them for their roles effectively

·      Inspires an innovative and exciting internal engagement and communication programme across the Organising Company, dovetailing with the overall Marketing strategy where appropriate.

Education:

The Head of People should have a higher Education qualification in Human Resources Management or related discipline and be experienced HR professional having worked in a fast paced, agile environment.

Key Skills and Experience:

We are looking for a Head of People who can is an excellent communicator, thrives working in a fast-paced environment and is a strong team player. In addition, the successful candidate should also display strong leadership credentials and be able to demonstrate experience of achieving high-performance delivery, by exceptional proactive creation and management of organisational culture and values. Relationship building is key for this role and experience of influencing senior internal and external stakeholders essential.

If you have experience in delivering HR strategy fostering a high-performance culture and diverse workforce, we would love to hear from you!

For more detail, please see the full job description on our website: Head of People (Human Resources & Recruitment) Glasgow 2026 Ltd.