Role: People Director
Contract Type: Full Time, working 7.5 hours per day, 5 days per week
Location: Hybrid, working 3 days a week in our offices based in Old Street, London
About Us
Nothing is clearer to us than the belief that every woman should include strength training in her life to enhance both physical and mental well-being. It's about building strong bodies and even stronger minds, asserting their right to take up space in the gym, and allowing the spotlight to shine bright on their progress.
To us, strength training represents a determined, goal-oriented mindset and an unwavering work ethic. We don't wait for success; we create it through hard work and determination. When faced with challenges, we don't back down; instead, we break through barriers, recognising that true progress lies on the other side.
These are the pillars that form the foundation of Oner Active. We consistently challenge ourselves to create innovative and impactful products, so that you can perform better. With our range of products and innovative approach, we provide a wide variety of colours to ensure that all skin tones genuinely radiate in Oner.
Our Purpose and Mission
We are on a mission to unite and empower women to be the strongest version of themselves through strength training. We want to inspire women to take centre stage in the gym by promoting strength training, which underpins all movement and sport, as a healthy foundation in life.
About you:
Oner's people infrastructure needs to scale with the business, but not by building a single, all-consuming People function. We're splitting the work in two: a Talent team who own the full talent lifecycle from recruitment through to career development, and a People team who own everything that makes Oner a genuinely great place to work once people are here - culture, performance, capability, compliance, and the systems that hold it all together.
As People Director, you'll build a People function that goes beyond admin and process, and becomes a real driver of a high-performance, strength-based culture across the UK and US. This is the “once someone's here” half of the people function - the person who makes sure Oner is a place worth staying, growing, and doing your best work.
You'll be responsible for:
Culture & High Performance
Own the Oner Mindset as a lived, everyday reality, not a slide in onboarding, but something embedded in how people are managed, reviewed, and developed
Build and champion a genuine high-performance culture: clear standards, real accountability, and real support to meet them
Lead the shift from reactive HR to strategic People partnership with the business
Grow and actively embed culture into the US as it scales. Oner should look and feel like Oner wherever someone sits, not a UK culture with a US satellite bolted on
Own onboarding end-to-end - from signed contract through to a new starter's first weeks - making sure their first experience of Oner feels considered and consistent, not just a Talent handover memo
Find the specific mechanisms (rituals, comms, manager behaviours, physical/visual cues) that carry culture across distance and time zones, not just policy documents
Internal Communications
Own how Oner talks to itself: build and maintain a genuinely great internal communications rhythm, not just cascade-and-forget updates
Make sure key messages - from leadership, from People, from the business - land consistently and land well across both markets and all levels
Treat internal comms as a culture lever in its own right, not an afterthought bolted onto other work
Performance & Capability
Own performance management end-to-end: reviews, PIPs, warnings, probation - consistent, fair, and legally sound across both markets
Recruit the L&D Manager as a first-90-days priority, then direct them in building capability and leadership development for the people Oner already has (career development itself sits within the Talent team — this is about building the skills and leadership bench once someone's on a path)
Coach and develop line managers so that day-to-day people management improves, not just formal process
Employee Relations & Compliance
Own UK and US employment compliance, policy, and risk - the two markets have different rules, and this role is the person who knows both cold
Manage employee relations casework and escalations, with the judgement to know what needs legal input and when
Exercise good judgement on when to push back on legal risk versus when to find the pragmatic, commercially sensible path through it - not every risk is worth the caution a lawyer's instinct defaults to, and not every shortcut is worth the exposure
Keep policies (leave, benefits, conduct, flexible working) current, consistent, and genuinely usable, not just defensible
Reward & Benefits
Own the benefits offering across both markets, making sure it reflects a business now operating transatlantically rather than a UK-only legacy structure
Make sure contracts and benefits carry the same spirit and generosity everywhere, even where legal requirements and local norms force differences in the letter of them — the experience of being an Oner employee shouldn't feel like a UK offer and a US offer, it should feel like one philosophy expressed twice
Partner with Finance on pay structure, benchmarking, and reward consistency
Operational Excellence
Reduce key-person dependency by building resilient, documented People operations
Own the People systems and data that let the business (and this role) see what's actually happening - turnover, engagement, performance trends
Work as a genuine partner to the Talent team so a candidate's experience - from first interview through year three - feels like one joined-up business, not two functions that don't talk
Team Leadership
Lead and develop the People team, setting clear standards and holding the function to a genuinely high bar
Foster a collaborative, inclusive environment that prioritises continuous learning and improvement within the team and the wider business
You'll need to have:
Proven People leadership experience through a period of real growth, ideally UK-based with strong, direct US employment experience - not theoretical, but having actually run compliance, ER, and benefits across both markets
Previous experience operating at Director level, owning a function rather than a slice of one
Previous experience at a fast-growth, founder-led company - someone who already understands the pace, informality, and founder proximity that comes with that environment, rather than arriving from a large corporate and needing to unlearn it
A track record of building high-performance, strength-based cultures, not just maintaining engagement scores
Confident owning employee relations and compliance risk independently, with good judgement on when to escalate
Comfortable being hands-on early (this is a build phase) while operating at a genuinely strategic level
A clear, collaborative operator who can define a clean line between the People and Talent team rather than compete over territory
Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion
At Oner Active it's about embracing diversity and empowering every individual to reach their full potential. We are committed to creating an environment where everyone feels valued, supported, and able to thrive.
We welcome applications from all backgrounds and are dedicated to ensuring that everyone has equal access to opportunities during the recruitment process. If you require any reasonable adjustments or additional support, we encourage you to reach out to our Recruitment team — we're here to support you every step of the way.
