Head of P&O

at  Specsavers

Our employees are the cornerstone of our operations. With an ambitious vision for Specsavers’ future, this role presents a great opportunity for you to impact our people agenda and strategy for the Netherlands. You’ll represent P&O in the Netherlands and work closely with the rest of the P&O Leadership team in the Northern Europe (NE) region.

YOUR QUALIFICATIONS

To drive our ambitious P&O agenda forward, we seek a talented and engaging HR leader with broad operational HR experience and a strong commercial mindset.

We anticipate that you bring several years of experience in comparable roles and thrive in an international environment. Your capacity to manage and harmonise peers, direct reports, and stakeholders from and local regions is crucial. With responsibilities spanning direct reports and close collaboration with a wider management team, your strong leadership, communication, and interpersonal skills are indispensable. On top of that, you can recognise yourself in the below requirements:

• A solid background in P&O – experience from an (preferably international), complex matrix organisation
• Have a strong desire to bring external thinking and trends into the business around all things people
• Experience working with an executive management team in an P&O capacity
• Track record of delivering organisational change and associated change management
• Attention to details with the ability to work with tight deadlines and to manage/deploy complex projects
• Able to coach, influence and have excellent communications and presentation skills.
• Able to prioritize and adapt global initiatives locally
• Self-driven and able to effectively deliver results through self and others
• Able to build and develop good relationships and collaborative working with key stakeholders
• Proven ability to establish personal credibility quickly, demonstrate leadership behaviour and build trust with colleagues
• Competent in using and analysing people-related data to identify trends, gaps, and opportunities
• Some experience in optics/healthcare and/or retail organisations is considered a plus.

YOUR ROLE

As Head of P&O for the Netherlands, your role will involve partnering with the management team in the Netherlands on the overall employee experience. Together with the P&O Director for NE, you’ll work on the development and implementation of our comprehensive people strategy for both our Optics and Audiology businesses. You’ll partner with our country management team on optimising the employee experience throughout the entire employee lifecycle, including recruitment, onboarding, fostering team and individual performance, enhancing engagement, change management, and implementation of global processes and projects such as engagement survey and talent review.

Working closely with your team, you’ll ensure alignment with regional processes and initiatives. Overseeing a team of 4 direct reports and a wider team of 7 colleagues, your role will be pivotal in shaping the People agenda for the Netherlands, and there’ll be many exciting tasks to get involved in. Your primary tasks and responsibilities include:

• Being a key member of the Country Management Team representing the People agenda
• Working with the NE P&O Director to ensure the creation and implementation of a People Plan in Northern Europe in line with the NE and Global business plan
• Working with the NE P&O Director to ensure consistency of the Reward Agenda in the country following the NE and Global plan and policies
• Leading and inspiring the NL P&O and a payroll team, supporting them in their development and performance
• Ensuring all P&O core processes are executed and deployed in a professional manner
• Ensuring P&O admin is in place, for example staff online handbook and clear people processes/policies in accordance with local legislation
• Overall accountability for managing relevant external services
• Coaching and supporting the management team and colleagues with development conversations
• Facilitate Engagement Survey and Great Place To Work surveys once a year including culture report, action setting and follow-up

We anticipate that you bring several years of experience in comparable roles and thrive in an international environment. Your capacity to manage and harmonise peers, direct reports, and stakeholders from and local regions is crucial. With responsibilities spanning direct reports and close collaboration with a wider management team, your strong leadership, communication, and interpersonal skills are indispensable. On top of that, you can recognise yourself in the below requirements:

• A solid background in P&O – experience from an (preferably international), complex matrix organisation
• Have a strong desire to bring external thinking and trends into the business around all things people
• Experience working with an executive management team in an P&O capacity
• Track record of delivering organisational change and associated change management
• Attention to details with the ability to work with tight deadlines and to manage/deploy complex projects
• Able to coach, influence and have excellent communications and presentation skills.
• Able to prioritize and adapt global initiatives locally
• Self-driven and able to effectively deliver results through self and others
• Able to build and develop good relationships and collaborative working with key stakeholders
• Proven ability to establish personal credibility quickly, demonstrate leadership behaviour and build trust with colleagues
• Competent in using and analysing people-related data to identify trends, gaps, and opportunities
• Some experience in optics/healthcare and/or retail organisations is considered a plus