HOD People Operations

SUMMARY:
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POSITION INFO:

Our client is one of the leading sterile vaccine manufacturers rooted in Africa, with our core purpose being to "protect life". We are looking to hire a dynamic, passionate, confident, proactive, and meticulous Head of People Operations to join a goal-oriented team.

CORE ACCOUNTABILITY:

To lead the execution of our human capital operations strategy across Africa. This pivotal role will drive operational excellence across the full employee lifecycle, ensuring a human centric, agile, data-driven people philosophy and infrastructure is in place, that positions our client as a biopharmaceutical employer of choice, and that is aligned with our mission to build a sustainable vaccine ecosystem for Africa. The incumbent acts as the strategic operational bridge between our clients’ long-term talent strategy and the everyday experiences that shape engagement, performance, and retention.

QUALIFICATIONS NEEDED:

• Bachelors degree in human capital / human resources management or a related field.
• Postgraduate diploma in business management or Leadership preferred.
• Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) will be considered for extensive practical experience.

EXPERIENCE REQUIRED FOR SUCCESS:

• Minimum 10 years of progressive Human Capital generalist experience, including 4 years in a senior HC leadership role.
• Proven success in a manufacturing or life sciences environment, preferably pharmaceutical, biotech, or vaccine production.
• Strong track record in organisational development, people project management, workforce planning, talent mapping, career pathing, and employee engagement.
• Demonstrated local and continental labour relations and compliance management expertise, including policy development and dispute resolution.
• Experience in Payroll Management, HR systems scoping and implementation, analytics, and operational process optimisation.

KNOWLEDGE AND SKILLS NEEDED TO MAKE A MEANINGFUL IMPACT:

• Deep understanding of South African Labour Legislation and pragmatic IR application.
• Knowledge of scarce skill attraction and retention strategies, particularly in technical and scientific fields.
• Advanced capability in HC policy, process design, and people metrics.
• Skilled in performance management, succession planning, and career development frameworks.
• Strong change management, stakeholder engagement, and communication capabilities.
• Digitally savvy with strong experience across established HR information & payroll systems and platforms as well as well-established across the full office 365 suite

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES OF THE ROLE:

1. Strategic Leadership

• Assist with developing and lead operationalisation of our client’s Human Capital Strategy through a forward-looking People Operations plan that ensures smooth execution of workforce and employee experience priorities.
• Develop our client’s Employee Value Proposition (EVP) improvements as part of strategic rolling plans and budgets and translate and market the EVP into daily people practices, ensuring that every value- added offering reinforces our mission, values, and brand promise.

2. Workforce Planning & Talent Mapping

• Lead annual and mid-term workforce planning in collaboration with business leaders, ensuring alignment with our client’s strategic growth and localisation plans across Africa.
• Drive ongoing talent mapping to identify current and future capability gaps in both technical and leadership roles.
• Establish and maintain a critical skills and succession visibility framework to ensure proactive risk management of scarce and mission-critical positions.
• Partner with Centres of Excellence to ensure talent pipelines are developed, monitored, and continuously replenished.
• Plan, implement and oversee recruitment campaigns in line with budget and placement timelines, and ensure on time in full and within budget conclusion per campaign

3. Organisational Design & Structuring

• Execute approved organisational structure changes in alignment with our client’s strategic workforce plan and annual operating plan, ensuring structural integrity and compliance across all departments and sites.
• Operationalise workforce design decisions by implementing approved restructures, role realignments, and reporting line adjustments in a timely, controlled, and auditable manner.
• Maintain accurate organisation charts, reporting lines, and position management data within HRIS and related business systems.
• Partner with Finance, Business Leaders, and the People Excellence COE to ensure all structural changes are aligned with approved headcount budgets, spans and layers principles, and operational efficiency goals.
• Manage the end-to-end administrative and governance process for restructures.
• Conduct regular headcount audits and workforce reconciliations to confirm accuracy between organisational plans, HRIS records, and payroll.
• Ensure job descriptions and job profiles accurately reflect current responsibilities, reporting lines, and required competencies.
• Provide operational insight to support organisation efficiency analysis (e.g., duplication, bottlenecks, or structural gaps) and recommend tactical adjustments to optimise business performance.
• Act as the central liaison between People Operations, People Excellence, and Finance to ensure structure implementation, change governance, and workforce data integrity are synchronised

4. Employee Relations & Compliance

• Maintain a healthy employee relations climate by embedding trust, transparency, and Ubuntu-driven engagement.
• Source and facilitate team development and team building activities that connects our people to our culture and our purpose.
• Assist Line management with optimising team engagement and productivity in support of driving a high-performance culture.
• Oversee industrial relations, ensuring proactive engagement with unions, fair disciplinary processes, and sound dispute management.
• Represent our client in external labour forums such as CCMA, Labour Court, and the Department of Labour.
• Ensure compliance with all HR-related legislation across our client’s operating geographies.

5. HR Operations Excellence & Systems

• Ensure operational processes are standardised, digitised, and continuously improved for efficiency and employee satisfaction.
• Manage HR administrative activities including employee data, contracts, payroll processing, onboarding, offboarding, and records management.
• Provide compliance, management and strategic business reporting.
• Oversee accurate and timely HR reporting to leadership and governance bodies.
• Track trends across all people analytics and insights and provide recommendations and track ROI of related activities to ensure effectiveness

6. Performance, Career Pathing & Retention

• Drive execution of the performance management framework, ensuring every employee has clear, measurable goals linked to our client’s business priorities.
• Partner with leaders to ensure robust career pathing visibility, particularly for technical, engineering, and scientific roles.
• Operationalise succession and development plans to enable internal mobility and readiness for future leadership needs.
• Implement targeted retention interventions for scarce and high-performing talent, ensuring continuity in critical capabilities.
• Partner with the broader HC team to align performance outcomes with reward, recognition, and career development opportunities.

7. Employee Experience, Engagement & EVP

• Bring our client’s Employee Value Proposition to life through consistent, authentic experiences from onboarding to exit.
• Monitor employee sentiment through engagement surveys, listening channels, and pulse checks; use data to shape interventions.
• Support line leaders in building team cultures that balance high performance with wellbeing and inclusion.
• Drive internal communication initiatives that celebrate employee contributions, milestones, and our client’s social impact.

8. Governance, Budget & Risk Management

• Manage the People Operations budget effectively, ensuring efficient resource allocation.
• Identify, mitigate, and escalate HR operational and compliance risks.
• Maintain governance standards for policies, audits, and reporting to ensure organisational resilience.

9. Leadership & Capability Building

• Champion a people-first culture where operational excellence, compliance, and engagement intersect.
• Be the culture ambassador across all business engagements and coach and mentor leaders to ensure our client’s leadership philosophy and overall culture is promoted and upheld
• Lead, coach, and develop a high-performing People Operations team with strong generalist capability.
• Promote accountability, cross-functional collaboration, and service excellence within the HC team.
• Foster a culture of continuous improvement and operational innovation.

CORE COMPETENCIES REQUIRED TO THRIVE

• Leadership: Discreet, empowers teams, models integrity, and inspires trust.
• People Centricity: Champions employee experience and wellbeing as levers for performance.
• Communication: Clear, persuasive, and transparent in all stakeholder interactions.
• Operational Excellence: Detail-oriented with a strong focus on process reliability, compliance and optimal, agile HC team performance.
• Analytical Thinking: Uses metrics, insight, and logic to inform business and people experience decisions.
• Business Acumen: Aligns people strategies with commercial objectives and sustainability.
• Change Agility: Adapts quickly and leads others confidently through transformation.
• Innovation: Continuously improves people operations with future-fit ideas and technology and generate efficient people optimisation solutions.
• Diversity & Inclusion: Values and embeds equity, belonging, and fairness in all people practices.
• Achievement driven: Drives goals, goal refinement, risk mitigation and proactive, on-time and full achievement across the people operations and overall business deliverables.