Hiring for a Combined HR and Facilities Role: How to Get It Right

In many growing organisations, one person looks after both the people and the place. The job title varies: Office Manager, HR and Facilities Manager, People and Workplace Manager, or Head of HR and Facilities in a larger business. The logic is the same. The organisation is too small to justify two specialists, and the two jobs touch each other every day.

Hybrid working has made the overlap bigger. The CIPD found that 74% of UK organisations now have hybrid working in place, and Remit Consulting reports UK office occupancy settling above 40%, with a new high of 44.1% in late January 2026. Attendance expectations, desk booking, wellbeing, onboarding and the question of why people should come in at all now sit across HR and the workplace. One person owning both can make a lot of sense.

It can also go badly wrong. Here is how to scope a combined role, hire for it and know when it has outgrown one person.

Where combined roles go wrong

Three problems come up again and again.

The first is that the job is really two full roles with one salary. If the employee relations caseload is heavy and the building needs constant attention, the person spends every week choosing which half to let slip. Good people leave roles like that.

The second is hiring for the half the hiring manager understands. A Finance Director or Operations Director recruiting for the role will often test the side closest to their own experience and take the other half on trust. The gap only shows when something goes wrong.

The third is a compliance gap. Both halves carry legal risk. On the workplace side that means fire safety, water hygiene, electrical and gas safety, asbestos, contractor control and health and safety more broadly. On the people side it means employment law, absence, disciplinaries, grievances and right to work. Few candidates have deep expertise in both, and an employer who assumes otherwise is carrying risk without knowing it.

Decide the centre of gravity first

Before writing the advert, decide which half carries more of the risk and the time. Ask:

• How many employees are there, and how much employee relations work comes up in a typical month?
• How many buildings or sites are there, how old are they, and who maintains them?
• Is there a landlord or managing agent handling the building, or does the organisation own and run it?
• Which half would cause more damage if it were handled badly for six months?
• Is a move, refurbishment, restructure or rapid growth coming in the next two years?

The answers tell you whether you need a people professional who can run a workplace, or a facilities professional who can handle core HR. Those are different hires with different backgrounds, and the advert, job title and salary should reflect which one you want.

Back up the weaker half

Once you know which half leads, plan support for the other. Practical options include an employment law advice service or outsourced HR support for complex cases, a competent health and safety adviser for risk assessments and audits, and a facilities service partner who handles planned maintenance and statutory testing under contract.

This is not a sign the hire is wrong. It is how a combined role stays safe. Agree the budget for it before the person starts, so they are not asked to cover specialist work they cannot evidence.

What to look for

Be clear about which qualifications are essential and which can be gained in the role. As a rule of thumb:

• For a people-led role, a CIPD qualification and solid employee relations experience are usually essential, with IOSH Managing Safely as a minimum on the workplace side.
• For a workplace-led role, facilities experience, statutory compliance knowledge and IOSH or NEBOSH are usually essential, with a CIPD foundation qualification or proven HR administration on the people side.
• In either case, an IWFM qualification is a useful sign of commitment to the workplace side, but not a substitute for evidence of running a building safely.

Look for evidence of judgement as much as knowledge. A combined role is full of competing demands: a leak on the second floor and a grievance meeting at the same time. You want someone who can prioritise on risk, explain their reasoning and know when to bring in specialist help.

If the role manages a team, test management ability properly. The Chartered Management Institute found that 82% of people entering management roles have had no formal management and leadership training. Do not assume a strong administrator is ready to lead people.

Interview for both halves

Structured interviews predict job performance far better than unstructured ones. In a major meta-analytic update, structured interviews had a mean validity of .42, against .19 for unstructured interviews. For a combined role, structure also stops the panel from spending the whole hour on the half they find more interesting.

Agree five or six weighted competencies before the first interview. A workplace-led example might look like this:

• Weight 5: building compliance and health and safety ownership.
• Weight 5: managing suppliers and contractors against agreed standards.
• Weight 4: core HR processes, absence and employee relations.
• Weight 4: stakeholder engagement with senior leaders and staff.
• Weight 3: systems, documentation and reporting.

For a people-led role, swap the weights round. Then ask scenario questions that cross the boundary, for example:

• A manager wants to bring forward a team's return to the office next month. What do you need to check on the people side and the building side before agreeing?
• A contractor reports that a member of staff was abusive to them on site. Talk me through the first 48 hours.
• You have a fire risk assessment action overdue and a disciplinary hearing to prepare for in the same week, with no admin support. How do you prioritise?

Our free Interview Scoring Template sets out the weighted method and includes a bank of FM competency sets you can adapt.

When to split the role

A combined role is often right for a stage of growth, not forever. Signs it has outgrown one person include headcount growth that brings a steady employee relations caseload, a second site or a significant move, a backlog of compliance actions, and the postholder routinely working long hours to keep both halves afloat.

When that happens, the usual next step is to split the role into a dedicated HR lead and a Facilities Manager, or to keep the combined role at a more senior level with a coordinator or specialist under each half. Planning that early is far cheaper than replacing a good person who has burned out.

Talk to Maxwell Stephens

Maxwell Stephens is a specialist Facilities Management recruitment consultancy. We recruit Office Managers, Facilities Managers and workplace leaders, including roles that combine facilities with people responsibilities. If you are scoping a combined role, contact us for a confidential conversation.