Head of HR/Senior Manager – Human Resources

About this opportunity

The Head of HR/Senior Manager – Human Resources is a strategic team member of the Group’s people agenda, partnering with the GCHRO and senior business leaders to turn enterprise ambition into organizational capability and sustained performance. This is a leadership role for someone who sees Human Resources not simply as a function, but as a catalyst for growth, transformation, and competitive advantage. Across an assigned portfolio, the role will anticipate the workforce of tomorrow, reshape organizations for agility and scale, build exceptional leadership and talent pipelines, and create the conditions for people to perform at their best. The incumbent will bring together organization design, strategic workforce planning, talent acquisition, performance, succession, rewards, employee experience, Emiratization, and change into an integrated people agenda. Shape the People Strategy & Build the Organization of Tomorrow Translate the Group’s strategic ambition into a bold, integrated people agenda with measurable outcomes for growth, capability, productivity, and organizational health. Partner with senior leaders to design agile, scalable organizations that anticipate changing business models, emerging capabilities, and future workforce requirements. Use workforce intelligence, business insight, and external trends to challenge conventional thinking and shape decisions on organization design, spans of control, productivity, restructuring, and transformation. Lead the adoption of Group-wide Human Resource frameworks and transformation priorities, balancing enterprise consistency with the distinctive needs of individual businesses. Establish progressive HR governance, clear accountabilities, and responsive service models that enable confident, timely decision-making. Build robust job architecture, organization structures, and position intelligence as the foundation for strategic workforce and investment decisions. Inspire and develop a high-performing Human Resources team with the capability, curiosity, and commercial mindset to lead through change and shape the future. Create powerful partnerships across Finance, Legal, IT, government-relations teams, and external ecosystems to accelerate enterprise priorities with integrity and sound judgement. Architect the Future Workforce, Talent Pipelines & Emiratization Lead strategic workforce planning that looks beyond today’s vacancies to anticipate future skills, pivotal roles, workforce scenarios, and emerging capability gaps. Reimagine the end-to-end talent journey—from attraction and selection to onboarding, mobility, growth, and exit—creating an experience that strengthens the Group’s employer proposition. Build dynamic talent pipelines and innovative sourcing strategies for critical, emerging, and hard-to-find capabilities. Advance Emiratization as a strategic talent agenda, creating meaningful career pathways that accelerate attraction, development, progression, and long-term retention of UAE National talent. Use talent intelligence and workforce analytics to strengthen quality of hire, speed, internal mobility, succession coverage, and workforce resilience. Champion equitable, rigorous, and future-focused selection practices aligned with approved organization structures and investment priorities. Build Leadership, Capability & a High-Performance Culture Create a future-skills and leadership agenda that equips the organization to thrive through digital disruption, new business models, and evolving customer expectations. Translate business strategy into distinctive learning experiences and capability academies that build critical technical, commercial, digital, and leadership skills. Develop leaders and managers who inspire performance, lead inclusively, navigate ambiguity, and create environments where talent can flourish. Bring competency frameworks and career architectures to life, enabling greater visibility of opportunities, accelerated internal mobility, and meaningful career growth. Reinvent performance, talent review, and succession practices around clear accountability, high-quality conversations, differentiated development, and future potential. Identify and accelerate high-potential talent and successors for business-critical and leadership roles, strengthening leadership continuity across the Group. Measure learning and talent investments through business impact, capability uplift, succession strength, and demonstrable workforce outcomes. Reimagine Employee Experience, Culture & Belonging Shape a distinctive employee experience that connects people to purpose, strengthens belonging, and inspires exceptional contribution. Turn employee listening into action, using insight to continually redesign the moments that matter across the employee lifecycle. Champion wellbeing, inclusion, recognition, and engagement as strategic drivers of performance, advocacy, and retention. Equip managers to lead with courage, empathy, and accountability across performance, conduct, attendance, grievances, disciplinary matters, and organizational change. Lead complex employee relations matters and investigations with fairness, consistency, confidentiality, and strong partnership with Legal and senior leadership. Embed the Group’s values into everyday leadership and decision-making, building a culture defined by accountability, collaboration, customer focus, innovation, and continuous improvement. Accelerate Digital HR, People Intelligence & Operational Excellence Shape competitive and equitable reward practices that recognize contribution, reinforce performance, and support the attraction and retention of critical talent. Safeguard compliance with UAE Labour Law, Emiratization requirements, employment contracts, working-time and leave provisions, and end-of-service obligations. Deliver seamless immigration and employment administration across work permits, visas, medicals, Emirates ID, renewals, cancellations, and final settlements. Govern payroll with precision through disciplined inputs, reconciliations, approvals, controls, and Wage Protection System coordination. Elevate HR service delivery through clear service-level agreements, strong vendor governance, smart case management, and relentless simplification of employee and manager experiences. Maintain resilient policies, employee records, and audit-ready controls while anticipating regulatory change and proactively managing workforce risk. Accelerate the shift toward digital-first Human Resources through HR platforms, intelligent automation, employee self-service, and simplified workflows, while protecting data privacy, access, approvals, and governance. Establish a single source of truth for workforce intelligence and develop forward-looking dashboards across headcount, vacancies, hiring, Emiratization, turnover, attendance, performance, succession, skills, and labour cost. Move people analytics from reporting what happened to anticipating what comes next—translating data into workforce scenarios, risks, opportunities, and decisive action. Bachelor’s degree in human resources, Business Administration, Organizational Psychology, or a related field. Master’s degree, such as an MBA, MSc HRM, or Organizational Psychology, is preferred. Professional Certifications Professional HR qualification such as CIPD Level 5/7, SHRM-CP/SHRM-SCP, SPHR, or equivalent is preferred. Credentials in change management, coaching, psychometric assessment, people analytics, digital HR, or organizational transformation are advantageous. Experience Typically 10–15 years of progressive Human Resources experience, including at least 5 years leading a broad HR function or business portfolio. Demonstrated leadership across strategic workforce planning, organization design, talent, performance, succession, rewards, employee relations, HR operations, and compliance. Experience in a UAE-based, diversified, multi-entity, or multicultural organization is strongly preferred. Proven success leading organizational transformation, Emiratization, leadership capability, digital HR, workforce analytics, and process reinvention. Experience building high-performing teams, managing budgets and strategic partners, governing payroll controls, and influencing senior stakeholders through insight and commercial judgement. Knowledge & Skills Strategic and commercial mindset with the ability to connect business ambition, workforce strategy, organization capability, and measurable value creation. Future-focused perspective on talent, skills, organization design, digital HR, AI-enabled work, and evolving workforce models. Advanced people analytics capability, with the ability to turn workforce data into foresight, scenarios, and actionable executive insight. Exceptional communication, influence, and facilitation skills across senior and multicultural audiences; Arabic is an advantage. Strong transformation leadership, with the courage to challenge established practices, mobilize stakeholders, and convert strategy into sustained execution. Strong working knowledge of UAE Labour Law, Emiratization, immigration, payroll governance, end-of-service requirements, and HR data controls