London: Source

Bristol: Source

About the job

👋🏻 Hello, we’re Laka

You might not have heard of us yet – that’s OK, you’ve found us now – come and find out more about our journey…

Founded in 2017, Laka set out to transform insurance by connecting passionate cyclists to form a collective and protect their bikes for when things go wrong – a better model for insurance was born. For once people come first in insurance by fairly sharing the cost amongst each other. We exist to rewrite the rules of insurance so it’s something people stand with, not against.

Our model: Laka makes sure everything runs smoothly for The Collective – from exceptionally fast claims, splitting the cost fairly, guaranteeing a maximum price and all the other heavy lifting of a regulated insurance business. For that service, the collective pays Laka a fee relative to the claims in a month.

Take a closer look at exactly what this means and how it works here.

What have we been up to since then…?

In a nutshell, we’ve been very busy! Here are a few of the massive achievements we’ve had:

🚀 Raised an awesome Series A investment round of over $20m

🚀 Grown the team to over 60 Lakanauts, based across the UK, NL & France, enabling a choice-based, remote-first way of working

🚀 Launched Laka in lot of new European countries, essentially helping more people in more places!

🚀 Captured the UK and NL enthusiast cyclist market and expanded into commercial business partnering

🚀 Been awarded ‘Best Cycle Insurance Provider’ (for the past 6 years in a row – go us! 🥳)

🚀 Opened 3 shiny new offices in London, Bristol & Amsterdam to provide spaces for people to collaborate as they like

🚀 We’ve also achieved great reviews on Google Reviews and Glassdoor – go check us out!

Help us continue to change an outdated industry…

We’re growing real fast on our path to make the Laka collective model the industry standard and we’re expanding across segments, products, and territories. We’re looking for innovative, bold and brave minds to help us build the world’s best insurance company.

🤘🏼 The role

People at Laka

The team at Laka are what makes the business special – super-talented individuals joining forces to change the way insurance works for people on their bikes (and e-bikes and cargo bikes!). Following a very successful Series A fundraise, the Laka team has grown to over 60 people, spread across 3 countries (UK, NL & France).

The purpose of the Head of People is to support the business as it continues to grow – into new countries, routes to market, products and services. Reporting to the CEO, this role is a critical thought partner to the C Suite and a key support to the wider Leadership Team.

What you’ll be getting up to:

• Steering Laka as we target our Series B fundraising, and preparing for the anticipated growth beyond. Evolving our People strategy and mobilising the team to enable company growth
• Owning and delivering the People strategy across a remote-first, distributed team as we scale, with a focus on enabling our people to do their best work
• Advising on the best people strategy to unlock high performance in the company – evolving what a high-performance culture looks like at Laka
• Continuing to develop the way we think about our remote-first set up – defining our rituals and best practices
  

On an operational level, you’ll focus on the following topics:

Leadership

• Act as a trusted advisor on strategic People initiatives to the Leadership Team, and other senior leaders, to support the delivery of business objectives
• Support and guide managers at all levels in the organisation with how best to manage, coach & develop their teams
• Provide advice on internal communications to ensure we bring the team with us on the exciting journey ahead
• Build and lead the People team as we grow; recruiting and developing the expertise we need to build a world-class People function
  

Culture & Engagement

• Lead on embedding company culture and values to ensure that these are woven into the fabric of Laka
• Build our people operations processes across the employee experience to ensure that they not only deliver but also can scale; whether it’s delivering a brilliant onboarding experience, performance enablement or succession planning, every aspect should be honed and crafted
• Build our people analytics to measure the impact of programmes, drive decision making and apply that data to evolve further programmes & initiatives with the ultimate aim of improving team engagement and retention
  

Org Design

• Work with the Leadership Team to ensure that our org design sets us up for success, allowing speed of decision-making and autonomy alongside cohesion and alignment
• Focus on building our teams, ensuring that we have the right people in the right roles at the right time. Designing for scale and growth, having a firm grip on what we need today and a clear view of what we will need tomorrow
  

Recruitment

• Own all recruitment activity, with a focus on ensuring that we continue to hire exceptional talent, and people who are genuinely excited by Laka’s future
• Continue to develop both internal and external pipelines of talent, utilising a variety of sourcing methods
  

People Operations

• Ensure all systems and records are kept up to date, and that people can access the information and data they need
• Own all People admin tasks – from benefits administration through to the issuing and control of equity schemes
  

Learning & Development

• Ensure Laka’s teams have access to great growth and learning opportunities to enable high performance and support them in achieving their goals
• Craft and define progression paths for our people so that we can retain top talent and provide an opportunity for our team to grow their careers with us
• Work across the organisation to ensure we are setting our teams up to perform to the top of their potential
  

Reward

• Lead the evolution of our pay philosophy and the associated processes
• Ensure that we have a leading approach to benefits and keep up with market data to ensure we stay competitive
• Enable a culture of recognition that is aligned with our values
  

Requirements

👉🏻 This role will be a great fit if you:

• Have spent time in a similar role – owning a broad range of People & Talent topics in an early-stage business, with demonstrable experience of building and implementing People programmes & initiatives – whether from scratch or evolving or revolutionising what exists
• Have experience in building start-ups and are comfortable with (& excited by!) the myriad of challenges that come with steep growth phases
• Know what great looks like – you’re keen to use your past experiences to build something amazing
• Are comfortable being both strategic and operational – flexing in & out to ensure all topics are covered
• Are comfortable utilising data; with experience in running employee engagement programmes and reporting on trends using both quantitative & qualitative measures
• Have experience managing tricky employee situations – you know how to mitigate the impact of this upon the individual, their teams and the organisation
• Don’t think like a traditional people leader – your focus is on creating and evolving an amazing employee experience
• Have a strong EQ, with great interpersonal and communication abilities – you’re straight talking, direct and comfortable managing conflict when required, but with a human approach
• Are comfortable with a fast-moving pace, and getting involved in a range of tasks and projects relating to your role
• Are inspired by Laka’s purpose and have a willingness to sink your teeth into the role
  

Location: officially Laka is ‘remote-first’, but it would be lovely for this person to be a semi-regular presence in our offices (Bristol, London or Amsterdam)

Before you apply, please make sure that you currently have the right to work in the UK (we’re really sorry, but we’re not able to provide visa sponsorship for this role).

Benefits

🌟 Our perks

What can you expect from working at Laka?

🏠 Remote-first way of working – you choose whether you work from home or our beautiful offices in London & Bristol (we have no minimum expectation of how many days you come in, although we’d love to see your friendly face!)

📈 Share options – we want you to be rewarded for Laka’s success – everyone in the business is granted share options when they join

💰 Company bonus scheme – if the company hits its targets, you’ll get a cash bonus annually

🌴 Annual leave – 25 days holiday (plus bank holidays), plus an additional 3 days at Christmas, with the option to roll over up to 5 days per year

💶 Pension scheme – Laka pays 3% of your base salary into your pension to help you save for the future

💊 Private medical insurance – we’ll give you individual private cover, with the option to add partners & dependants too (at a small cost)

🖥 Home set-up allowance – in addition to letting you choose the kit you want (MacBook or Windows laptop, plus additional equipment like screens, keyboard, etc), we’ll also give you a one-off budget of £200 to get anything else you want in order to make your homeworking environment a comfortable place to be

🍽 Weekly lunch on us – £15 every Wednesday to enjoy lunch on Laka – pop out locally with people in the office, or order-in at home, the choice is yours

💃 Company-wide events – we love getting everyone together as much as possible – expect regular events throughout the year, for team building, bonding, and general good old-fashioned fun!

🎳 Monthly socials – as if quarterly company events weren’t enough, we also give each office a budget for a monthly social activity (think anything from low-key dinner & drinks through to adventure golf, paddleboarding, bowling, electric darts, trampoline parks and more!)

👚 Laka swag – we’ll give you some lovely Laka kit to get you started, including a jumper & t-shirts so you can feel (& look) like part of the family

🚴 Laka credit – for all you cyclists, we’ll give you £10 credit per month towards insuring your bike(s) with us – plus give you access to a bunch of cycling industry discounts

🧠 Mental health support – unlimited support via Spill, including one-to-one therapy sessions

🌈 Belonging at Laka

We’re committed to building and sustaining a business that promotes diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging – our customer collective is broad and inclusive, and we’d like our own people to be too. We’re fast becoming a global community of people and we believe each person’s unique qualities should be celebrated as they are a huge part of what makes Laka a great place to be. We’d love you to bring your authentic self to work every single day, no matter your age, ethnicity, religion, citizenship, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability status, caring responsibilities, neurodiversity, or anything else that makes you, you. If you’d like to request a reasonable adjustment as part of our application or assessment process, please let us know by emailing support@laka.co.uk.