Global HR Organisational Effectiveness Director

Location: UK
Reports to: Global HR Director
Function: Group HR

Direct Reports: 3

Role purpose

The Global Organisational Effectiveness Director will play a critical leadership role in shaping and delivering the people, organisation, systems and change agenda required to support a series of major enterprise-wide transformation programmes.

Working closely with the Global HR Director, Executive Leadership Team, Transformation Office, business leaders and functional heads, the role will lead the HR workstreams across transformation and change programmes focused on improving organisational effectiveness, simplifying operating models, strengthening accountability, building capability, improving change execution, and enabling better people data, systems and reporting.

The role will combine deep expertise in organisation design, transformation, change management, HR systems, people analytics and HR operating model effectiveness. It will require someone who can operate at both strategic and executional levels: shaping future-state organisation models, influencing senior stakeholders, leading global implementation, and ensuring the HR function has the data, systems and capability to support a more agile, efficient and performance-led business.

Key accountabilities

1. HR transformation leadership

Working with the Global HRD and HRLT, Transformation Office and leadership teams to shape and lead the people components of transformation, ensuring that people, organisation, culture, capability, systems and change plans are fully integrated into the overall programme roadmap.

Translate enterprise transformation objectives into a clear people transformation plan, with defined milestones, dependencies, risks and benefits.

Partner with the Global Transformation Office to ensure people impacts, organisation changes, leadership requirements and change risks are properly understood and governed.

Lead the HR workstream across organisation design, workforce transition, capability building, communication, engagement, change adoption and people-risk management.

Establish robust governance, reporting and escalation mechanisms for HR transformation activity.

2. Organisation design and operating model effectiveness

Support and lead the design and implementation of future-state organisation structures, accountabilities, decision rights and ways of working.

Partner with the Global HRD, CEO, ELT and business leaders to define future organisation principles and design options.

Lead organisation design across Group, divisions, regions, countries and enabling functions.

Identify opportunities to reduce duplication, improve governance, simplify reporting lines and strengthen functional effectiveness.

Ensure organisation design decisions are supported by data, benchmarking, business case analysis and implementation planning with robust follow up, measurement and monitoring of success factors.

3. Change management and adoption

Build and lead the change management approach required to land transformation successfully across a complex, global and operationally intensive business.

Support the design of the global change strategy, including stakeholder mapping, leadership alignment, communications, engagement, training and adoption plans.

Identify change capacity, capability and readiness risks across different markets and functions.

Develop practical change tools, playbooks and implementation approaches that can be adapted locally.

Track adoption, sentiment, resistance and behavioural change across the programme.

4. HR systems, people data and reporting

Work with Global IT and the HRLT to shape and execute the strategic direction and effectiveness of HR systems, people data governance and management reporting.

Define the requirements for HR systems, ensuring alignment with the wider enterprise systems and data strategy.

Improve the quality, consistency, reliability and accessibility of people data across the Group.

Develop standardised HR reporting for the ELT, business leaders and HR leadership teams.

Establish clear people metrics linked to transformation, productivity, workforce cost, capability, attrition, engagement, diversity, succession, leadership and organisational health.

5. HR operating model and functional effectiveness

Strengthen the effectiveness and support the execution of the HR operating model so it can support the business through transformation and beyond.

Work with Global HRD and HRLT to review and improve the HR operating model across Group, regions, countries, centres of expertise, shared services and business partnering.

Support the development of HR capability in transformation, organisation design, change, analytics and business partnering.

Identify opportunities to simplify HR processes and improve efficiency, consistency and user experience.

Ensure HR policies, processes and systems enable rather than constrain business change.

Key deliverables

In the first 12–18 months, the role holder will be expected to deliver:

A clear HR transformation roadmap aligned to the enterprise transformation programme.

Implemented organisation design changes across agreed priority areas.

A global change management framework and practical deployment toolkit.

Improved people-data governance and standardised HR reporting.

A refreshed HR systems roadmap aligned to wider business systems strategy.

Clear HR workstream governance, risk management and progress reporting.

Stronger HR operating model clarity across Group, divisions, countries and centres of expertise.

Improved organisational effectiveness metrics, including spans, layers, workforce cost, capability, attrition, engagement and leadership bench strength.

A practical change adoption approach that enables local execution while maintaining global consistency.

Requirements:

Experience required

The successful candidate will be a senior HR, organisational effectiveness or transformation leader with experience in a large, complex, international organisation. They will bring a blend of strategic HR leadership, transformation execution, organisation design, change management, HR systems and people analytics experience.

They should have:

• Significant experience leading people and organisation workstreams in large-scale transformation programmes.
• Experience working in a global, matrixed, operationally intensive organisation of comparable scale and complexity partnering with executive teams, transformation offices, consultants, Finance, IT and business leaders.
• Strong change management experience, including senior stakeholder alignment, adoption planning, communications, leadership mobilisation and change measurement.
• Specialist expertise in organisational effectiveness, organisation design, HR transformation or people analytics.
• Experience owning or significantly influencing HR systems, HR data, reporting and analytics.

Preferred background

• FTSE 100 / Fortune 500 or equivalent multinational organisations.
• Global B2B, business services, industrial services, facilities management, logistics, field services, consumer services, healthcare services, telecommunications or other operationally intensive sectors.
• Organisations with distributed workforces, branch networks, regional/country structures and significant frontline populations.
• Prior roles such as Global OE Director, HR Transformation Director, Organisation Design Director, People Strategy Director or senior consulting-to-industry backgrounds.

Leadership competencies

The successful candidate will be:

Strategic and commercial - able to connect people, organisation and systems decisions directly to business performance, growth, efficiency and value creation.

Highly influential  - credible with CEOs, CFOs, CHROs, country leaders and functional leaders.

Execution-focused - able to move from strategy and design into practical implementation, with strong programme discipline and attention to delivery.

Pragmatic and business-led - comfortable working in an operationally intensive environment where solutions must work in the field, not just at corporate centre.

Data-driven - able to use workforce data, benchmarks, systems insight and organisational diagnostics to shape recommendations and track progress.

Collaborative and low-ego - able to work collaboratively across HR, Finance, IT, Strategy, Transformation, Operations and external advisers.

Resilient and comfortable with ambiguity - able to lead through complexity, pace, challenge and competing stakeholder views.