Head of People job description

Human resources — Head of People
Sets people strategy, workforce plans and reward company-wide.

RESPONSIBILITIES
- Set the interview standard for the organization, including when assessments or work samples are used, and show whether the process predicts who does well once hired.
- Set the organization's employee relations approach, covering early resolution, mediation, formal routes and collective agreements, and decide the highest-risk cases.
- Set how investigations are commissioned and run across the organization, decide when an external investigator is needed, and review the findings of other investigators for fairness.
- Own the disciplinary and grievance procedures, updating them when law changes, and decide how the highest-risk cases and any legal claims are handled.
- Set how legal risk is weighed in people decisions, including when to take legal counsel, and report compliance to leadership for every place the organization employs people.
- Decide which policies the organization needs and which it does not, and set how policies are approved, published and kept lawful everywhere it operates.

REQUIREMENTS
- Experience at the HR Manager level (level 4 of 5) or equivalent
- Holds SHRM Certified Professional (SHRM-CP)

REQUIRED SKILLS
Talent Acquisition
- Job Requisition and Role Scoping — You can scope roles that are new to the organization or sit across several teams, and set the requisition standard other recruiters and managers follow.
- Candidate Sourcing and Screening — You can design the sourcing and screening approach for a whole hiring campaign, and check the pass-through data at each stage for unfair or unexplained drop-off.
- Structured Interview Design — You can set the interview standard for the organization, including when assessments or work samples are used, and show whether the process predicts who does well once hired.
- Offer Management and Pre-Employment Checks — You can set the offer approval rules and the checks each role needs, and fix the steps that keep delaying start dates.
- New Hire Onboarding Delivery — You can redesign the onboarding program from new-hire feedback and early-leaver data, and get managers to own their part of it.

Employee Relations
- Employee Relations Case Handling — You can set the organization's employee relations approach, covering early resolution, mediation, formal routes and collective agreements, and decide the highest-risk cases.
- Workplace Investigation Conduct — You can set how investigations are commissioned and run across the organization, decide when an external investigator is needed, and review the findings of other investigators for fairness.
- Disciplinary and Grievance Procedure Management — You can own the disciplinary and grievance procedures, updating them when law changes, and decide how the highest-risk cases and any legal claims are handled.
- Employment Law and HR Compliance — You can set how legal risk is weighed in people decisions, including when to take legal counsel, and report compliance to leadership for every place the organization employs people.
- Absence and Leave Management — You can review absence data across the organization, fix the policy or process gaps it reveals, and train managers to hold return-to-work conversations well.

HR Operations
- HR Records and HRIS Administration — You can lead a change to the HR system, such as a new module or a migration, and keep records complete and correct through it.
- Payroll Input and Benefits Administration — You can run the payroll and benefits calendar across several teams or countries, resolve disputes with the payroll provider, and tighten the controls that keep failing.
- HR Policy Writing and Maintenance — You can decide which policies the organization needs and which it does not, and set how policies are approved, published and kept lawful everywhere it operates.
- People Data Reporting and Analytics — You can set the people analytics agenda for the organization, decide which questions matter most, and use the answers to shape people strategy.

Performance & Growth
- Performance Review Cycle Administration — You can improve the review process from what went wrong in the last cycle, and train managers to write reviews that rest on evidence rather than opinion.
- Manager Coaching on People Issues — You can set how the organization equips managers to handle people issues, and hold senior leaders to the same standard when they avoid hard conversations.
- Learning Needs Analysis — You can build the organization's learning plan from the needs analysis, and set its priorities against the budget.
- Compensation Benchmarking and Pay Banding — You can set the reward strategy for the organization, decide where it pays against the market and why, and keep the pay structure fair and affordable.
- Learning Program Design and Delivery — You can evaluate a learning program by comparing participants' work performance before and after, and change the design when the results fall short.

People Strategy
- Workforce Planning — You can own workforce planning for the organization, tying headcount and skills to the business strategy and budget over several years.
- Organizational Design and Change — You can set the design principles for the whole organization, such as spans and layers, and lead large-scale change without losing the people it depends on.
- Employee Engagement, Wellbeing and Inclusion — You can hold leaders to account for acting on what employees say, and decide how engagement, wellbeing and inclusion shape the people strategy.
- HR Business Partnering — You can advise executives on people decisions that shape the organization's direction, and set how business partners are deployed across business areas.
- Talent and Succession Planning — You can set the organization's definitions of talent and succession cover, and decide which development investments protect the roles it cannot leave vacant.

Delivery
- Project Management — You can set the everyday habits for how work is organized and followed up across the organization, and teams you do not lead adopt the routines you introduce.
- Planning & Estimation — You can forecast work and staffing quarters ahead, and set the estimating method other teams use.
- Ownership & Accountability — You can report the organization's most exposed outcomes to its leaders as they stand, including bad news, and answer for them.
- Quality Focus — You can raise the quality bar across the organization by building the tools and habits that make the careful way the easy way.

Craft
- Problem Solving — You can crack problems the organization has repeatedly failed to solve, and your approach becomes how others tackle that whole kind of problem.
- Domain Expertise — You can influence how the field is practiced beyond this organization, and your expertise settles questions that have stood open for years.
- Continuous Learning — You can set what the organization invests its learning time in, and the material and practice you create outlive your involvement.

Communication
- Communication — You can set how the organization communicates by creating the forums and norms that teams use to share information.
- Collaboration — You can remove the barriers that stop teams working together by putting in place routines and forums they use across the organization.
- Writing & Documentation — You can set the writing standard the organization works to, and documents you wrote are still in use long after you have moved on.
- Stakeholder Management — You can represent the organization in its most important relationships and set how it engages with everyone who depends on it.

Leadership
- Leadership — You can set direction for the whole organization, make hard calls under real uncertainty, and carry the decisions nobody else wants to own.
- Mentoring — You can shape how the organization grows its people, and those you developed are themselves named by others as strong in their field.
- Strategic Thinking — You can shape the organization's strategy, and the bets you argued for are visible in where it ended up.

REQUIRED CERTIFICATIONS
- SHRM Certified Professional (SHRM-CP) (required from HR Manager)