Global HR Director: Architect of High-Performance Culture in Wokingham

As the largest independent global SAP solutions provider serving the public sector as well as offering specialist skills in media and entertainment, we bring deep expertise combined with advanced technologies to enable organizations to modernise so they can run at the speed of today’s business. We know how to navigate the extraordinary complexities of international businesses and public sector organizations, working with stakeholders to drive change and create agile organizations of tomorrow using the technologies of today. The company is entering a multi-year growth phase, with a clear ambition to scale its clients' product offering, and expand market presence across the UK, Asia and the Middle East, and build organisational capability that accelerates value creation.

Role Information

• Department: HR
• Location: Head Office, UK, Reading
• Reporting To: CFO
• Direct Reports: 5
• Employment Type: Full-time

Role Purpose

As the Global HR Director, this role will support our global workforce of over 800 professionals through a critical period of evolution and requires a high-impact, transformational leader who can design and execute a global people strategy aimed at professionalising our HR operations for the next phase of growth. The expectation is that this role will be the architect for implementing a new culture and values, employing best-practice performance frameworks and enabling our new target organisational design that ensures excellence across all functions. Beyond owning the traditional HR oversight responsibilities, we are looking for a commercially astute leader who can operate at pace, lead from the front, make bold decisions and turn the strategic vision into tangible results.

Core HR Responsibilities

• Global HR Team Leadership: Lead, coach, and develop the existing HR team to achieve best-in-class performance. Utilise your expertise to evaluate the current function and determine the optimal structure, reporting lines, and individual responsibilities to drive efficiency.
• Global HR Oversight: Direct the daily operations of a distributed HR function, ensuring consistent, high-quality service delivery across all international territories.
• Reward & Benefits: Manage global compensation structures, payroll alignment, and benefits packages to ensure the business remains competitive and compliant in every region.
• Talent Acquisition & Lifecycle: Oversee end-to-end recruitment strategies to attract top-tier software and managed services talent, while managing seamless onboarding and offboarding.
• Employee Relations & Compliance: Act as the final point of escalation for complex ER matters, including sensitive investigations, disciplinary matters, formal grievances and ensure the business remains fully compliant with diverse local labor laws.
• Data Integrity & Insight: Maintain the accuracy of people data and utilise HR analytics to provide the executive team with regular insights into headcount, turnover, and engagement for our monthly board reporting.

Transformational Responsibilities

• Organizational Design: Support the management team in executing the newly designed target operating model from an HR standpoint.
• Performance Management: Overhaul legacy appraisal systems to design and implement a high-performance culture focused on measurable outcomes, continuous feedback, and professional rigor.
• Culture & Values Integration: Lead the road map for a new culture and values, embedding them into every touchpoint of the employee experience to drive unity.
• Strategic Incentive Design: Partner with the executive management team to architect and implement global bonus plans that are directly mapped to core business outcomes and key performance indicators (KPIs).
• Diagnose & Professionalise Processes: Audit and overhaul existing legacy processes to instill corporate best practices, moving the business from a reactive to a proactive HR model.
• Succession & Leadership Development: Identify high-potential talent and build robust succession plans to ensure the business is 'growth-ready' at the leadership level.
• Future Policy Redesign: Lead a comprehensive diagnostic and overhaul of all existing HR policies and processes and transform legacy frameworks into modern, scalable, and agile future-state systems.
• Retention & Turnover Strategy: Develop and execute a data-driven global strategy to increase employee retention and significantly reduce staff turnover. This involves diagnosing the root causes of attrition and implementing targeted initiatives - from engagement programs to enhanced career pathways - that foster long-term commitment and stability across all regions.
• Benchmarking: Establish a rigorous annual benchmarking process to evaluate our compensation and benefits packages against global industry standards. Ensure our total reward offering remains highly competitive within the managed services and software sectors to attract and retain top-tier talent.

Success Measures / Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

• Provide a 180-day plan for core responsibilities & priorities.
• Quality & accuracy of deliverables.
• Timeliness of project or task completion.
• Compliance with policies and regulatory standards.
• Staff turnover rates / survey engagement and ratings.

Skills & Experience - Essential

• Executive HR Leadership: 15+ years of progressive HR experience, including at least 5 years as a HR Director within a global organization.
• High Energy & Gravitas: Charismatic, highly motivated, and driven to operate at pace while confidently influencing board-level stakeholders.
• Sector Expertise: Proven experience within a managed services or professional services model. Needs to understand the commercial drivers of a business where timesheets, billable hours, and utilization are core to the organizational makeup.
• Transformational Toolkit: Track record of professionalizing HR functions with expertise across the full HR value chain, specifically in organizational design, the architecture of bonus schemes, and the execution of global talent strategies.
• Global Footprint: Demonstrable success in a multi-region role, with specific expertise navigating the labor markets, cultural nuances, and compliance landscapes of the UK, India, and the Middle East.
• Talent Management: Expert-level ability in designing talent acquisition strategies, leadership development programs, and internal communication frameworks that drive high employee engagement.
• Autonomy & Commercial Ownership: Highly comfortable operating in fast-paced, entrepreneurial, and scaling environments. Takes full ownership of the HR domain, proactively providing strategic recommendations and driving execution without the need for micro-management.
• Stakeholder Mastery: Exceptional communication skills with the gravitas to influence board-level stakeholders and the ability to act as a commercially-minded advisor to the executive team.
• Global Mobility: Flexibility and willingness to travel regionally and globally as required to support our international offices.
• Technical Proficiency: Advanced knowledge of HRIS, data analytics tools, and modern HR technologies to drive evidence-based decision-making.

Skills and Experience - Desirable

• Advanced degree or professional certification.
• Experience in global territories beyond UK, India and Middle East.
• Knowledge of process improvement methodologies (e.g. Lean, Six Sigma).
• Working knowledge of DarwinBox and SAP.
• Previous experience in change consultancy organisation/environment.
• Experience leveraging AI-enabled HR operations to automate workflows and optimize analytics.
• Navigating private equity backed environments or businesses undergoing rapid growth, with a proven ability to thrive in ambiguous, fast-paced, and chaotic landscape.
• Experience within the technology sector—ideally the SAP ecosystem—coupled with a strong understanding of offshore delivery challenges and cross-cultural alignment.