People & Culture Director - RSC & Human Capital COEs

Location: Al Rayyan Tower, Al Nahda, Sharjah (Border of Dubai & Sharjah)

About the Role

We are looking for an experienced and commercially minded People & Culture leader to lead the P&C agenda for our Restaurant Support Centre (RSC) and a portfolio of Human Capital Centers of Excellence (COEs) spanning Learning & Development, People Analytics, HR Systems & Digital Transformation, and Human Capital Policies & Procedures .

This is a broad leadership role that brings together strategic business partnering, organizational capability, people insights and digital HR. Reporting to the Head of Human Capital, the role will work closely with senior business and Human Capital leaders to translate business priorities into practical people solutions, strengthen organizational capability and enable increasingly data-driven and digitally enabled people practices.

The role will lead specialist teams across its COE portfolio and will be responsible for building strong functional capability, clear governance and high-quality delivery across the organization, including the practical and responsible application of AI to improve employee experience, productivity and decision-making across Human Capital .

Key Responsibilities

People & Culture, RSC

• Lead the P&C agenda for RSC functions, partnering with senior leaders on workforce, organization and capability priorities.
• Drive workforce planning, organization effectiveness and manpower optimization.
• Build a strong business partnering model focused on proactive, commercially relevant people solutions.
• Partner with the Talent & Performance Management COE to ensure effective execution of talent, succession and performance priorities across RSC.
• Use workforce insights to identify organizational risks and opportunities and translate them into practical interventions.
• Support leaders through organizational change, workforce decisions and evolving capability requirements.
• Build the capability of the P&C team to operate as trusted, commercially minded partners to the business.
• Partner with the Talent & Performance Management COE to drive the effective implementation of talent, succession and performance management solutions across Americana, ensuring consistent execution, strong leader adoption and alignment with business priorities.

Learning & Development

• Lead the Learning & Development COE, setting direction and ensuring learning priorities are aligned with current and future business capability needs.
• Provide leadership and direction to the L&D team, ensuring strong functional capability and effective execution across the organization.
• Build scalable leadership, functional and professional capability-development solutions.
• Connect learning priorities to business capability gaps, development plans and broader talent priorities.
• Strengthen the organization's approach to leadership and critical capability development.
• Drive adoption and effectiveness of digital learning platforms and continuously improve the learning experience.
• Establish meaningful measures of learning effectiveness and impact, moving beyond participation toward capability and business outcomes.
• Explore the use of AI-enabled learning solutions to support personalization, accessibility and more effective capability development at scale.

People Analytics

• Lead the People Analytics agenda, providing high-quality workforce insights to support business and leadership decisions.
• Strengthen dashboards and analytics across headcount, people cost, productivity, attrition, workforce demographics and other critical people metrics.
• Build stronger workforce planning, forecasting and scenario-planning capability.
• Establish clear governance and common definitions for key Human Capital metrics.
• Move the organization from primarily reporting people data toward using analytics to identify trends, risks and opportunities and enable proactive decision-making.
• Translate complex people data into clear insights and recommendations that leaders can act on.
• Leverage advanced analytics and AI-enabled capabilities to strengthen workforce insights, identify emerging patterns and support better people decisions.

HR Systems & Digital Transformation

• Own the functional roadmap for HR systems and digital people solutions, ensuring technology supports the organization's Human Capital priorities.
• Drive simplification, digitization and automation of core people processes.
• Identify opportunities to embed AI and intelligent automation across Human Capital processes to improve employee and manager experience, productivity and quality of decision-making.
• Partner with Technology and relevant stakeholders to evaluate and implement AI-enabled HR solutions, with appropriate focus on data quality, governance and responsible use.
• Strengthen HR data quality, system governance, process ownership and user adoption.
• Partner with Technology and other stakeholders on system enhancements, integrations and digital transformation initiatives.
• Continuously improve the employee and manager digital experience through intuitive, efficient and scalable solutions.
• Build adoption of HR technology through effective change management, communication and user enablement.

Human Capital Policies & Procedures

• Lead the Human Capital Policies & Procedures COE, establishing clear, practical and consistent people policies and standards across Americana.
• Own the development, review and continuous improvement of Human Capital policies, procedures and related governance frameworks.
• Ensure policies are aligned with business needs, company values, governance requirements and applicable local legislation, working closely with Legal and relevant stakeholders.
• Drive greater consistency and standardization of Human Capital policies and practices across markets, while allowing appropriate flexibility for local regulatory requirements.
• Establish clear policy ownership, approval, review cycles and governance to ensure policies remain current and fit for purpose.
• Translate policies into simple, practical procedures and guidance that can be consistently understood and applied by employees, managers and Human Capital teams.
• Lead the effective communication, implementation and adoption of new and revised Human Capital policies across the organization.
• Monitor policy effectiveness, identify gaps or inconsistencies in application and drive continuous improvement based on business needs, employee experience and emerging practices.

What We're Looking For

• Strong leadership experience across People & Culture / Human Resources, ideally within a complex, multi-market organization.
• Broad experience across HR business partnering, organization effectiveness, workforce planning, Learning & Development, People Analytics, HR technology and digital transformation.
• Demonstrated experience leading both business-facing P&C teams and specialist Human Capital functions.
• A strong track record of partnering with senior business leaders and influencing organizational and people decisions.
• Commercial acumen, with the ability to connect people priorities and workforce decisions to business performance.
• Strong analytical capability and confidence using data and insights to challenge assumptions and shape decisions.
• Experience leading transformation, digitization and change across functions and geographies.
• Experience or strong exposure to AI-enabled HR solutions, intelligent automation or emerging HR technologies, with an understanding of how AI can be applied practically and responsibly across the employee lifecycle.
• Ability to move comfortably between strategic thinking and hands-on execution.
• Experience building, developing and leading high-performing specialist teams.
• Strong stakeholder management, communication and influencing skills.
• Bachelor's degree required; postgraduate qualification or MBA preferred.

The Leader We Are Looking For

• A commercially minded, pragmatic and forward-looking People & Culture leader who can connect business needs, organizational capability, data, technology and emerging AI capabilities.
• You will be comfortable partnering with senior leaders, challenging constructively and simplifying complexity, while remaining close enough to execution to ensure ideas translate into results.
• You will bring both the breadth to lead an RSC P&C agenda and the functional leadership to build strong Human Capital COEs, creating an integrated, insight-led and digitally enabled people experience.