Job Description

Empowering Africas tomorrow, togetherone story at a time.With over 100 years of rich history and strongly positioned as a local bank with regional and international expertise, a career with our family offers the opportunity to be part of this exciting growth journey, to reset our future and shape our destiny as a proudly African group.Job Summary Overall Job Purpose:Reporting to the Managing Executive: People Operations and Digital Technology, this role provides strategic leadership and oversight in managing a team of professionals through thought leadership, operational excellence, and agile work practices. Your mission? To revolutionize Human Capital Shared Services and Operations management practices through cutting-edge technology, insightful workforce analytics, and streamlined processes.With a focus on developing strategic and operational frameworks and designing various constructs in Payroll, Colleague Support, and the People Omni-Channel, you will orchestrate cross-functional collaboration to mold the Human Capital Shared Services and Operations function. We're seeking a seasoned leader who thrives on high performance, design thinking, solving problems, and ideating for change and innovation while scaling as our organization transforms.Key Accountabilities:Strategy Formulation:

• Sets and communicates long-term strategy that clearly articulates strategic targets and metrics to align the delivery of HR Shared Services and Operations against the organisations strategic objectives and targets and shareholder expectations.
• Drives the evolution of the HR Shared Services and Operations function and develops a future-focused strategy that can be translated into measurable actions and results.
• Directs the review and design of the business architectures for Operations (people, systems, processes, products, market segments, geography) to maintain competitive advantage, reduce cost, and improve profitability.
• Drives sustainable cost and processing efficiencies through continuous innovation, industry benchmarking, and alignment to best practices.
• Proactively manage changes in the environment and ensure the effective implementation and stabilisation of changes in the function.
• Stays abreast of industry trends and role players and ensures that the function is well positioned to provide competitive and industry-leading services.
• Utilises commercial awareness to align the business unit's strategy with the organization's goals and global human capital best practices, especially in a business with multiple core lines of business.
• Gives clear direction to leaders in the function on the strategic and operational focus areas.

Business Performance:

• Demonstrates a deep understanding of the global marketplace, competitive position, and commercial drivers for a complex, large-scale business.
• Uses analytics, data, and trends both internally and externally to diagnose business unit issues and recommend effective solutions.
• Understands business goals and market trends and leverages this insight to recommend and influence new approaches.
• Provides ongoing advice and direction to the operational environments managed by this role in terms of the areas of focus, opportunities, key targets and relative policies, and legislative and regulatory environments.
• Implements performance controls to proactively measure achievement against strategic targets and address changes or non-performance.
• Drives operational excellence initiatives to improve efficiency, scalability, and resilience of Human Capital operational processes, enabling Human Capital to deliver superior services to stakeholders.
• Navigates a complex organization and finds ways to drive ideas forward and make things happen.
• Drives a culture of customer-centricity and responsiveness across all Human Capital teams.
• Develops and implements change management strategies to facilitate the adoption of new frameworks, mindsets, and processes as well as the required technology.
• Promotes collaboration, integration and leveraging of shared resources effectively.
• Successfully drives the annual planning and review of budgets for the function, understanding cost drivers and managing budgets successfully.
• Ensures the function has sufficient resources to deliver on operational and customer commitments. Monitor annual resource utilisation and implement strategies to improve the efficient allocation and utilisation of resources.
• Reviews workforce and recruitment plans for the area and reallocate resources where required.

Stakeholder Management:

• Builds and maintains effective stakeholder relationships within the industry and within the orgnanisation to ensure the function is successfully positioned to manage risks and expectations and deliver on shareholder value. Building working relationships and quickly gaining trust with key stakeholders.
• Works with key stakeholders and customers to continuously evaluate the Human Capital shared service, monitoring feedback and operational activity to improve the overall service.
• Serves as a trusted advisor to key stakeholders, providing expert guidance and insights on Human Capital shared services and operational matters, leveraging a deep understanding of organizational objectives and industry best practices.
• Employs exceptional communication skills to articulate complex concepts and strategies to stakeholders at all levels, fostering alignment and buy-in. Utilize influential networking abilities to cultivate productive relationships and garner support for initiatives that advance the organization's human capital agenda.

People Management:

• Leads and manages others, a true people person who treats everyone individually, focussing on strengths and growth potential, and who can link business objectives with the overall people agenda.
• Demonstrates influence and credibility with senior leaders across the Human Capital Function.
• Inspires a large or diverse workforce to commit to priorities and required deliverables.
• Ensures the development of a high-performing team through embedding formal Performance development and informal coaching in determining and analysing training and development needs for team members.
• Establishes and maintains a succession plan for the team using the formal talent management process.
• Develops appropriate engagement plans to drive heightened employee engagement.
• Drives strategies to ensure the business unit attracts, retains, and develops talent.
• Ensures that poor performance is addressed, and relevant corrective actions are implemented.
• Ensures focus on improving the teams productivity & delivers high efficiencies and has a mechanism to effectively measure performance metrics.

Governance, Risk and Compliance:

• Participates and leads in both internal and external audits as and when required.
• Leads, manages, and oversees all HR operational processes related to the employee lifecycle in alignment with regional compliances and organizational policies and provides strategic direction to the team.
• Identifies and takes accountability for the assigned principal risks relevant to the area in terms of the Absa Operational Risk Management framework and ensures that adequate controls are in place within the roles area of responsibility.
• Drives a culture of proactive compliance and risk management within the executive team and the function.
• Implements risk and conformance management structures and reporting frameworks to proactively manage business risks.
• Presents the functions requirements in Group meetings such as the EXCO-level Operational Risk Committee, Group Change Council, and others.
• Influences the implementation of effective internal controls system and corporate governance in the functional area of accountability.

Qualifications, Knowledge, Skills & Experience:

• Bachelor / Masters degree in business, Human Resources, Organization Development, or another related field
• Minimum 9- 12 years of progressive experience in a global and matrixed environment
• Experience in managing and leading teams in an HR shared service environment that provides a wide range of services across the full employee lifecycle
• A track record of reliable and valuable delivery and continuous improvement in a shared service and operations environment
• Knowledge and understanding of HR compliance, Administration, HR Generalist activities, and Management Information (MI) reporting
• Experience in managing data requests with a good knowledge of Data Protection legislation, its implications, and the need to comply
• Exceptional interpersonal skills, sound judgement, and the ability to juggle many competing priorities simultaneously
• Ability to influence leaders and build and nurture relationships across the organization
• Project Management experience to deliver operational excellence
• Comfortable working in detail and understanding the big picture and ability to consider the ramifications of decisions on various constituencies
• Strong Excel and PowerPoint skills, ideally Slack, Trello, and Egnyte
• Experience with HR Management systems like Workday and Case Management software (an advantage)
• Flexibility to support the team to cater to a diverse, international set of stakeholders and willingness to be flexible about office timing
• Thrives working autonomously but has the solid ability to collaborate
• Self-driven, anticipates challenges or bottlenecks and plans effectively around them
• Strong attention to detail and accuracy, particularly with complex problems, projects, and stakeholders
• Clear, direct, and understands how to adapt communications both written and verbal depending on the audience

EducationPostgraduate Degrees and Professional Qualifications: Business, Commerce and Management Studies (Required)Absa Bank Limited is an equal opportunity, affirmative action employer. In compliance with the Employment Equity Act 55 of 1998, preference will be given to suitable candidates from designated groups whose appointments will contribute towards achievement of equitable demographic representation of our workforce profile and add to the diversity of the Bank.Absa Bank Limited reserves the right not to make an appointment to the post as advertised

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