Jobs

Head of Industrial Relations

£68,602 per annum + excellent benefits.

Home-based with travel to meetings/training across the country as required

Full time, permanent.

Lead negotiations. Influence change. Protect and strengthen the voice of school and college leaders.

Make A Difference

This is a rare opportunity to lead a highly influential function, shape national industrial relations activity and make a lasting difference to the professional lives of school and college leaders.

Why This Role Matters

As our clients Head of Industrial Relations, you will play a pivotal role in ensuring that school and college leaders have a strong and influential voice in shaping their pay, conditions and working environment. Leading their industrial relations and collective bargaining function, you will help safeguard members' rights, secure positive outcomes through negotiation, and strengthen their position as the leading professional body and trade union for education leaders. Your expertise will directly contribute to improving the working lives of members across the UK while ensuring the organisation remains legally compliant, strategically focused and highly respected within the sector.

Who We’re Looking For

Our client is seeking an experienced industrial relations, trade union or HR professional with a proven track record of leading successful negotiations at a senior level. You will bring substantial experience of collective bargaining, strong leadership capabilities, and a deep understanding of employment relations within complex organisations. You'll be a strategic thinker, an influential communicator and a confident relationship-builder who can work effectively with employers, trade unions, members and external stakeholders. A commitment to trade union principles, combined with the credibility to work alongside experienced school and college leaders, will be essential to your success in this role.

What You’ll Be Doing

You will lead and develop the Industrial Relations team, ensuring the delivery of a high-quality, consistent service to members nationwide. Working closely with employer groups, trade unions and local representatives, you will oversee negotiations, represent members at key joint negotiating committees, resolve disputes, and help secure the best possible terms, conditions and benefits for members. You will also provide strategic advice across the organisation, ensure compliance with relevant legislation and trade union requirements, support the development of local representatives, and contribute to the organisation's broader industrial relations strategy.

What our client can offer

Our client is an equal opportunities employer and offers a very generous package of benefits including

· Flexible working: Flexible working – a combination of working from home, attending external meetings and events and being in-person at their Leicester HQ as necessary.

· Generous leave: 33 days annual leave + bank holidays.

· Pension: 9% employer contribution.

· Professional development: Ongoing training and peer support.

· Expenses covered: Travel, home-working allowance, and equipment provided.

· Inclusive culture: They welcome applicants from all backgrounds and communities.

They encourage applications regardless of age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex or sexual orientation.

This is a home-based role with travel across England and Wales to meetings and events as required. Reasonable travel expenses, IT and telephone equipment will be provided.

If you’re ready to lead a team that makes a real difference to education leaders and organisations across the UK, they would love to hear from you.

INTERESTED?

The closing date for application is 4pm on Wednesday 5 August 2026.

Interviews will be held in-person, at HQ in Leicester on Wednesday 19 August 2026.

Start date: Tuesday 1 December 2026 but dependent on individual circumstances.

TO APPLY

To download the job description and person specification, follow the link on the 'Apply here' button above (which will take you to Networx Recruitment's website). From there, please complete your email address in the top right-hand box and click on the green 'Apply Now' button and follow the online application process.

About us

Rainforest Foundation UK (RFUK) is a values-driven organisation working with Indigenous Peoples and local communities to protect the world’s rainforests and uphold their human rights. Since 1989, RFUK has partnered with forest peoples and grassroots organisations to secure land rights, challenge destructive industries, and influence laws and policies that safeguard forests and the people who depend on them.

Our mission is clear: to combine human rights and environmental protection to tackle deforestation. From the Congo Basin to the Amazon, our work has helped communities protect millions of hectares of rainforest. With a growing team of passionate advocates for social and environmental justice, we are committed to scaling up our impact to confront the accelerating climate and biodiversity crises.

About the role

Reporting to the Head of External Relations and working closely with the Programmes and Fundraising teams, the Communications Coordinator will be responsible for enhancing the external profile of the organisation, communicating to, and broadening our impact with, a wide range of audiences, from multilateral institutions and the global media to our supporters and peers. With a strong grasp of strategic communications, excellent content creation skills and a keen eye for detail, you will have the ability to produce timely and engaging communications outputs both independently and in close coordination with other teams and our local partners. 

Based in London with hybrid working options, we offer flexibility, a supportive culture, and the chance to make a lasting difference.

About you

You are an organised, self-starting and experienced communications professional with a proven track record of working in fast-paced, internationally focused environments.

We are looking for someone with a strong track record in developing and promoting engaging content that helps drive change on hard-to-win issues and elevates the voices of marginalised groups. The candidate should also have practical knowledge of online communications tools, including Mailchimp or similar email platforms, website content management systems and social media management platforms. While not an essential requirement, working knowledge of French and/or Spanish is highly desirable.

You are confident engaging with a diverse range of stakeholders from policy makers to journalists to individual supporters and are motivated to build long-term relationships with these groups. You have excellent communication skills, can juggle multiple tasks, thrive in a collaborative environment, and bring resilience and cultural sensitivity to everything you do.

We are looking for someone with an interest in developing their skills as we take on new challenges in delivering our new vision and strategic plan. The role represents an exciting opportunity for candidates with the necessary aptitude, flexibility and ambition, as well as a strong commitment to our mission.

Above all, if you are passionate about social and environmental justice and ready to help shape RFUK’s future, we would love to hear from you.

Job description and benefits

Please download the full job description. We offer 30 days annual leave, 4% pension contributions, Employee Assistance Programme, learning and development allowance, and four weeks of work-from-anywhere flexibility.

Location

This role is offered as a hybrid role based in our Bethnal Green, London office. The postholder will be required to work in the office for 2 days per week during their 6-month probation period. This can be reviewed with their Line Manager thereafter.

Application Process

To submit your application, kindly complete the online application form by 9AM, Friday 7 August. Please be aware that the form will be anonymised for review by the panel.

Please note that CVs will not be considered.

We strongly encourage all candidates to read the Recruitment FAQs page on our website before submitting their application.

Regrettably, due to the large number of applications we usually receive, it is not possible to write to you should you not be shortlisted for an interview. If you have not heard from us within 10 working days of the closing date, please assume that your application has not been successful on this occasion. 

Interviews with shortlisted candidates will be held in-person on Wednesday 2 September. Please let us know in your application if you are available to attend an interview.

Equal Opportunities

We are committed to promoting diversity and inclusion within RFUK. As part of our recruitment process, you may voluntarily complete our Equal Opportunities Monitoring Form. This form is used solely for monitoring purposes and helps us ensure fairness and equal opportunity throughout our recruitment process. Your responses are confidential and will not affect your application.

Medact is looking for an experienced campaigner and organiser to lead our work advocating for a justice-centred approach to securitisation and peace work. 

Background

Medact organises with the health community to win a world in which everyone can truly achieve and exercise their human right to health. We cover some of the most pressing national and global threats to health and wellbeing including institutional racism; climate change; human rights abuses; violent conflict; and rising inequality. We’re a member-led organisation, and our members are made up of a range of people who work in health including nurses, doctors, midwives, and clinical researchers.

We take an organising-centred approach to our work. We build community power by working in solidarity with health workers and the communities experiencing harm from the unjust systems we challenge. We run national campaigns, use research to expose injustice, and we support local organising groups across the country who lead most of our work.

About the role

The Transforming Peace & Security Campaigner will lead Medact’s campaigning for healthcare spaces which truly centre health and health justice, not surveillance, profiling and policing, in addition to providing ongoing strategic support to members organising against war and nuclear threat. 

This role will lead on our strategic priority area of Ending State Violence. The campaigner will implement campaign strategy focused on targeted organising to build coalitions and solidarity with marginalised communities, continuing our campaign against the Prevent duty in health, and supporting our Medact Abolitionist Approaches to Health Group. They’ll also work with our established Nuclear Weapons group to promote disarmament and encourage investment in nonviolent responses to conflict. The role involves maintaining and deepening existing partnerships with external organisations, grassroots groups and institutions. 

About you

This isn’t an entry-level role but you don’t need to have had a job in an NGO before or be a professional campaigner to be right for it. You might have worked with your local community to campaign on a social justice or health issue that you care about. Or you might be a healthcare worker who has seen the impact of securitisation on your patients and wants to challenge the encroachment of policing and profiling. You’ll have a strong understanding of power and how to work with others to create pressure for change. You need to be a great communicator, able to build trusting relationships with Medact members, academics, partner organisations, and community groups alike. You’ll have an understanding of how digital communications compliment campaigning and an eye for a good media story and the know-how to get it out into the world.