Senior Culture and Engagement Lead

This is a senior role focused on strengthening culture, accountability, collaboration and employee connection across the organisation. You will lead how we design and deliver employee engagement and listening approaches â€" ensuring our strategies are insightâ€'led, evidenceâ€'driven and grounded in meaningful staff feedback. You'll play a critical role in shaping a listening organisation â€" where employee voice is prioritised, insight drives action, and engagement and culture are actively developed at scale. About the Role Reporting to the OD&C Senior Manager (Practice Lead: Culture, Leadership & Engagement), you will take a strategic, portfolio view of engagement, listening and culture insight work across the organisation. This role is not only about understanding culture - it is about actively shaping it. You will lead and influence culture change across the organisation, working with senior leaders to translate insight into visible shifts in behaviour, leadership practice and organisational norms. This role goes beyond insight generation. You will partner with senior leaders to:

• Translate staff feedback (e.g. staff surveys, pulse and listening activity) into clear insight and organisationâ€'wide action that drives behavioural and cultural change
• Design and lead engagement strategies, culture change initiatives and listening cycles that embed sustainable changes in practice
• Drive engagement activity that is rooted in evidence, feedback and best practice
• Shape organisational narrative and ensure insight meaningfully informs leadership behaviour, decision making and the organisation's evolving culture
You will lead the development of our internal listening and engagement plans, maximising our employee voice systems and using dataâ€'driven insight to measure, refine and scale impact.


• Significant experience in employee engagement, organisational listening, culture transformation or OD
• Strong qualitative and quantitative insight capability, with ability to synthesise complex data into clear, compelling insight
• Experience influencing and partnering with senior leaders to drive engagement and cultural change
• Ability to translate insight into practical, organisationâ€'wide action that delivers sustained behavioural and cultural impact
• A track record of leading engagement strategies and insightâ€'driven organisational initiatives
• Confident operating in an agile, iterative way (e.g. testâ€'andâ€'learn, evolving approaches as insight emerges)
• Skilled facilitator, able to build trust and rapport quickly across all levels of a large, complex organisation
• Able to connect (join the dots) across culture, engagement and leadership insight to identify root causes and shape coherent, systemâ€'wide action
You may come from an OD, engagement, research, organisational psychology or culture/change background â€" we are interested in the strength of your insight practice, judgement and impact.

Northumberland County Council is undergoing a major transformation to modernise how we work, strengthen leadership, and create a modern, inclusive and highâ€'performing organisation that puts residents first. As part of this, we are redesigning our Organisational Development & Culture (OD&C) service and we are now recruiting a Senior Culture and Engagement lead to play a pivotal role in shaping how the organisation listens, understands itself and acts.


• A rare opportunity to shape how an organisation listens and learns
• A senior OD role with real influence and visibility
• The chance to build organisationalâ€'level engagement and insight capability
• An OD&C service with strong senior sponsorship
• Attractive local government benefits including generous leave, pension, agile working and wellbeing support
• Attractive local government benefits including generous leave, pension, agile working and wellbeing support
• 26 days annual leave plus public/bank holidays, rising to 31 days after 5 years of service (pro rata for part-time employees)
• Automatic enrolment into the Local Government Pension Scheme
• Flexi scheme - up to 2 days flexible leave available per month (pro rata for part-time employees)
Whilst we offer hybrid working, there is a requirement to attend County Hall on a regular basis, along with a need to support services areas in person as required.