People Lead: PPB Pan-Africa

Absa Bank is seeking a seasoned Human Capital professional to join their team as a People Lead, focusing on their Pan-Africa Personal and Business Banking (PBB) division. This senior role is pivotal in bridging the gap between Absa's overarching people strategy and the specific needs of the PBB Pan-Africa Executive Committee (Exco) portfolio. The incumbent will be instrumental in translating group-level people initiatives into tangible outcomes related to workforce planning, talent management, organisational effectiveness, and fostering a strong, future-fit culture.

This is a strategic business partnering position, requiring a proactive individual who can operate as a trusted advisor to Exco members and senior leadership within the allocated portfolio. The People Lead will collaborate closely with various Human Capital functions, including Centres of Expertise and People Operations, to ensure the seamless and consistent delivery of people-related priorities. The ultimate goal is to empower customer-led growth and drive execution discipline across the division.

About the Role

The core responsibility of the People Lead is to act as a strategic partner to an assigned PBB Pan-Africa Exco member and their leadership team. This involves deeply understanding the business strategy and translating it into integrated people plans. You’ll be expected to identify the workforce implications of strategic decisions, proactively flag people-related risks and opportunities, and ensure that the people agenda directly supports business outcomes, ultimately accelerating growth and profitability.

A significant aspect of the role involves building future-ready leadership capabilities and ensuring robust succession depth within the portfolio. This includes identifying and nurturing talent, strengthening leadership pipelines, and promoting internal mobility. Furthermore, you will champion digital adoption, drive transformation initiatives, and ensure the workforce is equipped with the necessary skills for the future. Strengthening organisational effectiveness, enhancing decision-making speed, and improving execution discipline are also key objectives.

Your day-to-day responsibilities will encompass a broad range of Human Capital disciplines, tailored to the specific needs of the PBB Pan-Africa portfolio. Key accountabilities include:

• **Strategic Business Partnership:** Collaborating with leadership to align people strategies with business objectives and ensuring workforce considerations are integrated into all strategic planning.
• **Workforce Planning and Future Capability:** Utilising workforce insights, skills data, and market trends to identify critical future capabilities, roles, capacity needs, and resourcing strategies.
• **Leadership, Talent, and Succession:** Partnering with business leaders and the Talent function to enhance succession planning, develop leadership pipelines, manage critical skills retention, and build future-fit leadership capabilities.
• **Organisational Effectiveness and Change Management:** Diagnosing organisational design, decision-making structures, and ways of working to recommend interventions that improve execution speed and accountability. You'll also play a role in assessing and enhancing change readiness.
• **Performance and Culture Development:** Influencing leadership teams to cultivate high-performing, inclusive, and accountable cultures that are aligned with the PBB Pan-Africa strategic imperatives.
• **Integrated HC Delivery:** Coordinating efforts across Centres of Expertise, People Operations, and country-specific HC teams to ensure consistent delivery of agreed-upon people priorities, adhering to enterprise-wide frameworks.
• **Executive Advisory and Stakeholder Management:** Serving as a trusted advisor to senior executives, leveraging people insights to inform and influence complex business decisions.
• **HC Governance, Risk, and Compliance:** Identifying, managing, and escalating people-related risks within the portfolio, and ensuring adherence to approved HC frameworks, governance standards, and policies.
• **Data, Analytics, and Insight Generation:** Translating workforce and business data into actionable insights that support leadership decision-making and drive value.

What They're Looking For

To excel in this role, candidates will need a strong academic foundation and substantial practical experience. A postgraduate degree in Human Resources, Organisational Psychology, Business, Commerce, or a related field is a minimum requirement.

Crucially, you will need significant experience in Human Capital Business Partnering, ideally within complex, matrixed, or multinational organisations. Proven experience partnering directly with executive and senior leadership teams is essential. Your background should demonstrate expertise across key HR domains, including talent management, organisational effectiveness, workforce planning, and change management. Experience operating across multiple geographies and managing diverse stakeholder groups will be highly advantageous. While not mandatory, experience within the financial services or fintech sectors would be considered a strong asset.

Key competencies include strategic thinking, customer focus, business acumen, strong influencing and communication skills, collaboration, leadership presence, a results-orientation, adaptability, and sound decision-making abilities.

In South Africa, senior Human Capital Business Partner roles like this often carry significant responsibility and are typically compensated accordingly. While specific remuneration varies greatly, such positions usually form a crucial part of the strategic leadership team within large organisations. Absa, as a major financial institution, offers a wide array of career development opportunities and operates within a dynamic and regulated environment.

MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS:

Qualification:

• Postgraduate degree in Human Resources, Organisational Psychology, Business, Commerce or related field.

Experience:

• Significant experience in Human Capital Business Partnering within a complex, matrix or multinational environment.
• Experience partnering executive and senior leadership teams.
• Experience across talent, organisation effectiveness, workforce planning and change disciplines.
• Experience operating across multiple geographies and stakeholder groups. Financial services and fintech experience advantageous.

Technical Skills:

• Strategic Human Capital Partnering
• Workforce Planning; Talent Management
• Succession Planning
• Organisation Design
• Change Management
• Culture and Engagement
• Executive Coaching
• Stakeholder Management
• Data Analytics
• HC Governance

Critical Competencies:

• Strategic Thinking
• Customer Focused
• Business Acumen
• Influence
• Communication
• Collaboration
• Leadership
• Delivering Results
• Adaptability
• Decision Making

Education

Postgraduate Degrees and Professional Qualifications: Business, Commerce and Management Studies (Required)

Absa Bank Limited is an equal opportunity, affirmative action employer. In compliance with the Employment Equity Act 55 of 1998, preference will be given to suitable candidates from designated groups whose appointments will contribute towards achievement of equitable demographic representation of our workforce profile and add to the diversity of the Bank.

Absa Bank Limited reserves the right not to make an appointment to the post as advertised