Performance & Development Lead (Fractional)

About Unity Advisory.

Unity Advisory is a modern advisory business built for today's CFO, with connected solutions across finance, deals and tax. Focussed on client outcomes, seasoned experts lead every engagement, in an operating model powered by AI and free from audit conflict.

About the role

This role is about performance development, not performance management. Unity's approach to performance is built on genuine ownership and accountability, not a traditional annual review cycle — but the system itself isn't the point. The point is helping people actually grow into what that ownership requires: sharper judgement, stronger client and commercial instincts, real skill in giving and using feedback, and the behaviours that take someone from new joiner to trusted senior contributor.

This role exists to build that growth, not to run the administrative mechanics of reviews and calibration. It's about coaching Partners and Functional Leaders to develop their people well, giving every new joiner a genuine development runway from day one, and building the skills, frameworks and programmes that help people grow faster and more deliberately than they would simply by doing the job. Classic L&D sits inside this, but the mandate is bigger: making sure people are developing, not just being assessed.

What you'll own

• Feedback and check-in skills: build the skills behind how Unity gives and receives feedback — people requesting feedback proactively, managers giving sharp and timely feedback, and check-in conversations that are genuinely structured performance discussions, not informal catch-ups

• Learning programmes: design and curate the professional and technical skills development that sits underneath the performance model — practical, tied to real work, sourcing external providers where that's the better route and building internal content where it isn't

• Calibration and promotion readiness: help Partners and Functional Leaders build strong evidence for promotion and reward decisions — coaching on what good evidence looks like, so panels can make fair, consistent, well-evidenced decisions

• Probation and onboarding: own onboarding and the probation experience so new joiners and their sponsors get real substance from day one, with every new hire set up to demonstrate strong early contribution

• Performance tooling literacy: build firm-wide understanding of the modern performance tools Unity uses to connect strategy to individual accountability, so they build trust rather than anxiety

• Skills and progression frameworks: define skills and progression frameworks for client-facing and enablement tracks that map onto Unity's own grading and progression criteria, working with the Reward Lead so learning pathways line up with progression and pay

• Measurement: use data, not just attendance or completion rates, to track whether this work is actually changing behaviour — feedback quality, check-in substance, calibration consistency — and report to the CPO and Management Team
  

What success looks like in year one

• Partners and Functional Leaders visibly more confident and skilled at developing their people, not just assessing them

• People growing faster and more deliberately, with real development evidence behind every promotion case, not last-minute case-building

• Every new joiner on a genuine development runway from day one, not just surviving probation

• A live, skills-based framework that people can see their own growth against
  

What we're looking for

• Senior experience in people development, performance coaching or L&D, ideally somewhere with a strong, explicit growth philosophy rather than a generic annual-review cycle

• Genuine comfort connecting development work to how Unity assesses and rewards performance, without this becoming a process-administration role

• A strong instructional designer and facilitator — able to build and personally deliver programmes, not only commission them

• Energised by growing people and building a development mindset into how they work, rather than running review mechanics or delivering content for its own sake

• A pragmatic prioritiser, comfortable scoping ambitious work into 3 focused days a week and sequencing what matters most first

• Confident coaching senior Partners and Directors on how to develop their people, not just how to assess them
  

How this role fits at Unity

You'll sit in the People Team working with the Chief People Officer, the Reward Lead, and People Ops, and work closely with Partners and Functional Leaders across client teams and enablement teams. Feedback, check-ins, probation and calibration are where your impact shows up, but the goal is always growth, not process — this isn't a separate, bolt-on training function.