Cape Town: HOD People Operations posted by Mindmatch Consulting

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 clients Human Capital Strategy through a forward-looking People Operations plan that ensures smooth execution of workforce and employee experience priorities.
• Develop our clients 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 clients 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 clients 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 clients 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 clients 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 clients 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 clients 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 clients 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.