Department/Team: Business

Responsible to: People and Culture Director

Contract: Permanent

Location: Mix of home working and from The Old Vic, 103 The Cut, London, SE1 8NB – 3 days in the office and 2 days at home, you may be required to work more days in the office from time to time, to suit the needs of the business

Hours: Full-Time [40 hours per week, 10am - 6pm Monday-Friday. Including 30 minutes daily paid lunch break]

The Old Vic offers the ability to work these flexibly under the guidelines in our Hybrid Working policy. Additional hours may be necessary in order to fulfil the requirements of the post.

Salary: £31,500 - £33,500 depending on experience.

Benefits

• Hybrid working for eligible teams and a company culture that promotes good work/life balance

• Enhanced annual leave, starting at 25 days per year, increasing by one day per year up to 30 days (plus bank holidays). Opportunity to switch statutory bank holidays to mark a religious event or festival

• Complimentary tickets for you and a guest to Old Vic preview productions

• Discretionary invite to Press Night performances and parties

• Free therapy from our therapy partner SelfSpace

• Mental health support via our in-house Mental Health Champions

• Salary sacrifice scheme with The People’s Pension and enhanced employer pension contributions

• Festive day – one discretionary additional paid day off around the festive period for a collective pause

• Time to volunteer – one day per year to support a charity or project of your choosing

• Commitment to learning, education and development

• Enhanced sick pay

• Access to interest free travel schemes including Cycle 2 work and Season Ticket loans after your probation period

• Family friendly policies and enhanced maternity/paternity/adoption/shared parental pay

• All staff social events

• Staff discount in Penny and The Old Vic bars as well as discounts in local bars and restaurants

• Opportunities to get involved with staff clubs and working groups such as the Inclusion Working Group

• Buddy schemes including New Starter and Parental buddies to support your induction and return to work after parental leave

• Death in Service Benefit

Role Summary

The purpose of the People Coordinator is to provide seamless coordination of all employee lifecycle activities to all departments, outstanding customer service, support with ongoing People projects and contribute to the progress of the objectives under our People Plan.

Your Team

The People Coordinator sits within a small People team, comprising of a People & Culture Director and People Partner. The People team sits as part of a wider Business Team, led by Deputy Executive Director / Chief Operating Office, and including Inclusion & Access Lead, Executive Assistant, Associate Director of Special Projects.

The People Coordinator will work closely with all hiring and line managers across the business on a regular basis, in addition to external training and recruitment stakeholders where required.

Areas of responsibility

The People Coordinator will be responsible for:

Recruitment

• Providing coordination and first line advice for our inclusive recruitment processes end to end, including advertising roles on job boards, scheduling interviews and room bookings, responding to candidate queries, pre-employment checks, providing feedback to candidates and maintaining up to date vacancy information on our systems

• Overseeing the job requisition process, ensuring that budgetary approval is sought for each vacancy

• Support with the benchmarking of salaries for new roles

• Ensuring that recruitment and selection procedures are carried out in accordance with our Inclusive recruitment guidelines as set out in the Recruitment Guidebook and providing guidance to line managers to ensure an inclusive process

• Maintain diversity data tracker for applicants, contributing to progress in line with our Belonging and Inclusion Strategic plan

• Reviewing NPS data, candidate feedback and equality monitoring information held within our ATS

• Ensure hiring managers are acting in line with our Disability Confident status. Working with hiring managers to provide constructive feedback to candidates

• Act as a Team Tailor champion, troubleshooting/escalating any system functionality issues and providing guidance for new users

• Maintaining full ownership of the Jobs inbox/chat function and answering any recruitment related queries from both candidates and managers

• Requesting and drafting references where necessary

Employee Lifecycle

• Keeping the new starter, leaver and staff changes trackers up to date

• Maintaining right to work information for all staff and sending reminders as and when visa/right to work info is expiring

• Drafting and sending all necessary new joiner paperwork (including a variety of contracts) and carrying out right to work checks, reference checks and DBS checks (where relevant), ensuring all contracts are reviewed by the People Partner

• Coordinating IT starter forms and equipment for new joiners

• Coordinating new joiner induction processes including arranging a buddy, ensuring all paperwork is completed and actioned/filed correctly and that new staff are welcomed and well orientated

• Administration for all staff probation periods, job changes and leaver processes

• Maintaining data accuracy on Cascade and Staff Savvy; acting as a system champion for both systems

• Coordination of the quarterly Old Vic Welcome Days and evaluation of feedback for continuous improvement

• Calculating holiday entitlements and pro-rating entitlements

Data analysis and reporting

• Analysing basic workforce data and providing useful basic commentary and suggestions for recommendations for action

• Running reports or key metrics from our HR systems i.e staff turnover

• Supporting with analysis of data obtained from annual engagement survey Have Your Say

• Ensuring equality monitoring data is held in according with GDPR and that it is collected in line with our policies

• Any other ad hoc report/data requests as required

Training

• Coordinating all mandatory and inclusion staff training sessions (virtual and in person), liaising with training leads to obtain all relevant training course information to be sent to candidates

• Maintaining the Training Calendar and liaising with training leads to schedule sessions and sending calendar invites

• Saving accurate attendance registers, flagging where there is repeat non-attendance

• Administration of any training certificates, including sending these to candidates and filing on personnel files

• Act as a Blue Lemon (Learning Management system) champion, ensuring all course details and registers are up to date

• Sending feedback surveys to attendees of new training providers and evaluating final feedback

Administration

• Closing down holiday years, calculating carryover and any ad hoc holiday entitlement calculations on our HR Information System, Cascade

• Filing formal letters in personnel files

• Creating a large volume of letters and contracts through use of mail merge

• Tracking and filing H&S documentation in personnel files i.e DSE assessments

• Conducting a contract/documentation audit of personnel files and right to work documents where required

• Benefits administration and queries i.e cycle to work scheme, discount platform, wellbeing initiatives, pensions

• Ensuring up to date staff lists for Press Night invites and Programmes

• Tracking appraisals and completion reporting

• Formatting documents in accordance with our branding guidelines

• Seek and share best practice with our sector peers via the Arts HR Working Group

Other Duties

• Supporting in any ad hoc project work I.e research, circulating papers, minute taking etc

• Seeking to drive efficiencies and streamlining processes and people initiatives to enhance our people agenda

• Keeping People manuals (Cascade, Team Tailor, Staff Savvy) up to date

• Publishing updated documents, news or messages on the Intranet, Staff Noticeboard or News

• Being the point of contact for internal and external queries received to the People and Jobs inboxes, flagging/categorising emails for HR team members and answering any general HR queries

• Keeping all relevant HR databases and employee records updated

• Making sure HR databases and employee records are deleted in accordance with GDPR and Data Protection Policy

• Raising Purchase orders and processing invoices/payments with finance

• Preparing monthly payroll summary for the Payroll Manager

• Ensuring staff gifts are arranged for leavers or those on parental leave

• Keeping up to date with legislation changes and working with the People Director to update company policies from time to time.

• Supporting the People Partner on administration for any family or special leave processes.

• Supporting the Inclusion & Access Lead in embedding processes contributing to the successful progress of objectives set within our Belonging and Inclusion Strategic Plan

• Providing administration for internal communications and annual staff surveys, including evaluation of data.

• Arranging ad-hoc social events including staff parties.

• Providing support for the Mental Health Champions Group and our Self Space therapy partnership, supporting our wellbeing agenda and advising staff on any wellbeing initiative queries

• Playing an active membership role in the Sustainability Working Group and advocating for sustainable people processes and operation

This is not an exhaustive list of duties and the Theatre's management may, at any time, allocate other tasks which are of a similar nature or level.

Person Specification

We are looking for an enthusiastic self starter keen to progress their HR career.

This role requires a high degree of attention to detail, data management and efficiency in managing multiple tasks at one time. We’re a small team of three, who work collaboratively on a varied workload. The role will suit someone who is excited by a dynamic environment and who has an eye for streamlining processes for efficiency as we seek to continuously develop and improve our processes. An ability to work with data accurately is essential.

This role will provide an excellent opportunity to work with staff across all departments and to gain an understanding of how the People team works alongside each team.

Essential:

• Previous experience working in an HR administrative role

• A strong interest in developing a career in HR

• Excellent organisational skills and ability to manage multiple tasks simultaneously

• Ability to prioritise own workload and work autonomously

• Ability to work to deadlines

• Demonstrable written communication interpersonal skills and an ability to maintain a professional tone at all times

• Meticulous, with excellent attention to detail

• Confident user of Microsoft Office, specifically Excel i.e able to create pivot tables, do a VLOOKUP, manipulate data and produce graphs, Word to format documents and Outlook

• Sensitivity, confidentiality in dealing with personal and sensitive data and understanding of basic GDPR principles.

• Evidence of high levels of customer service and stakeholder management

• Commitment to equity and inclusion with the ability to balance differing needs

• We use Team Tailor, IRIS Cascade and Staff Savvy – any previous experience using these systems or other Applicant Tracking Systems / HR Information Systems would be useful.

How to Apply

We understand that everyone is different and we want you to apply in whichever way you feel best shows your skills and experience. There are a range of ways that you can apply with us:

• 1. Sending a short video file of yourself (no longer than two minutes in length), detailing your experience, why you are applying for the role and what about working at The Old Vic interests you (have a look at the person specification in the job description).

• 2. Sending a short audio file of yourself (no longer than two minutes in length), detailing your experience, why you are applying for the role and what about working at The Old Vic interests you.

• 3. Completing our application form.

• 4. Uploading your CV and covering letter, explaining why you are interested in the role and working at the Old Vic.

As a Disability Confident employer, The Old Vic has made a commitment that all applicants with disabilities who meet the essential criteria for this job will be invited to interview. However in the event that we have a high volume of applications all of whom meet the criteria and identify as disabled, meaning it is not practicable to interview everyone, we may apply a weighting to the shortlisting criteria, or add an additional shortlisting stage before any interviews take place. In all cases we will take care to ensure that any criteria or weightings do not disadvantage disabled applicants.

All appointments are made subject to satisfactory references and proof of eligibility to work in the UK. 

The Process

The recruitment process for this role will be two stages:

• 1st stage virtual conversation

• 2nd stage in person conversation

• You may be asked to complete a work based skills assessment or challenge.

The closing date for this role is 16 March 2026. First Conversations are likely to take place w/c 16 March 2026.

Equal Opportunities

We actively support and encourage people from a variety of backgrounds, experiences and skill sets to join us and help shape what we do. We are particularly keen to receive applications from people of the global majority, LGBTQ+, neurodiverse and disabled candidates.

We may take positive action, in cases where candidates are equally qualified, to increase the employment of under-represented groups at The Old Vic.

In the event that we ask you to attend the theatre for a conversation and you are struggling financially, we may be able to reimburse you for any reasonable travel costs.

We partner with a range of inclusive organisations, to find out more please read our FAQs. 

FAQs

Read our recruitment and selection and equal opportunities FAQs here.