The posting
Job Description
Shape and co-drive business strategy by defining the organizational, leadership and workforce capabilities required for competitive advantage, partnering with functional and regional leadership teams. Serve as a trusted advisor and challenger, shaping workforce, talent, leadership, culture, organizational effectiveness and the people dimensions of transformation within US CP Commercial Sales + Key Account Management. Balance the needs of that remit with enterprise-wide priorities, work actively across organizational boundaries, and contribute early to strategic choices such as portfolio shifts, transformation priorities, market moves and capital, capability or talent allocation.
Key Accountabilities
- Shape and co-drive business strategy through an integrated people and organization strategy, partnering with functional and regional leaders to align workforce, talent, capability and culture with business, functional or regional objectives while balancing the needs of the defined remit with enterprise-wide priorities and actively working across organizational boundaries to avoid silos.
- Lead workforce planning for the Geographic Areas to ensure the organization has the capabilities and capacity required to achieve its goals, using build, buy, borrow, partner and automate choices to shape future capability and workforce options. Help leaders make explicit trade-offs about where talent and capabilities should be invested, developed, redeployed or sourced as business needs evolve, using relevant insights to enable informed people and business decisions.
- Prioritize and deploy BP capacity against the highest-value strategic priorities, organizational complexity, transformation efforts and leadership challenges, rather than attempting to cover every people-related topic; use the One HR model to route operational, advisory and specialist work to the appropriate teams.
- Own the talent and succession agenda within the Geographic Areas steering critical role pipelines, enabling cross-silo mobility and treating talent as a shared enterprise asset, and sponsoring capability building and leadership development initiatives in partnership with CoEs.
- Lead the people and organizational dimensions of business transformation and change, shaping the people and organization strategy behind transformations, redesigns and operating model changes, and ensuring business leaders are equipped to lead change effectively.
- Act as a trusted advisor, challenger and coach to functional and regional leaders on organizational design, leadership and team effectiveness topics, challenging decisions, behaviors and people implications, and influencing key choices through a people, capability, culture and business evidence lens.
- Use people analytics, predictive and prescriptive workforce insight, digital literacy and external signals to diagnose organizational health, identify risks and opportunities, model scenarios and anticipate future organizational, capability and talent needs before they become business challenges, enabling evidence-based decisions across leadership, talent and workforce within their business, functional or regional remit.
- Identify and address organizational effectiveness issues that span global, functional, regional and business-unit boundaries, including interfaces, governance layers, decision rights or bureaucracy that slow decision velocity or destroy business value; work with leaders across the matrix to simplify accountabilities and improve enterprise-wide effectiveness.
- Anticipate, manage and escalate whenever needed people risks within their business, functional or regional remit and across connected parts of the enterprise, including talent pipeline exposure, workforce risk scenarios, and critical capability, knowledge and talent continuity risks. Ensure these risks are explicitly considered in transformation and organizational design decisions, partnering with Legal, People Partnering and CoEs to develop mitigation strategies and protect long-term organizational health.
Qualifications
Critical Knowledge
- Good understanding of business strategy, organizational effectiveness, talent management, workforce planning and strategic capability choices across build, buy, borrow, partner and automate.
- Knowledge of leadership development, succession planning, organizational design, and change management principles within a business or functional context.
- Good understanding of the overarching HR operating model and ecosystem (HR processes, employment practices, and talent strategies) within a global organization.
- Good understanding of org design principles, operating model frameworks and diagnostic methods.
- Understanding of business economics, commercial drivers, financial planning cycles and the agricultural science value chain, including R&D, regulatory, supply chain and market drivers relevant to Syngenta.
- Proven ability to apply people analytics, predictive insight, sentiment and attrition signals, organizational health analysis and scenario modelling to enable data-driven decision-making.
- Knowledge of people risk, ER and workforce risk management within a business or functional context.
Critical Skills
- Strategic thinking and problem-solving.
- Influencing, constructive challenge and coalition building across functional and regional leadership teams, with ability to shape decisions and engage leaders without direct authority through knowledge, judgement and business evidence.
- Organizational design, change management and complexity reduction, including clarity of decision rights, accountabilities and governance interfaces.
- Leadership coaching and consulting skills.
- Data interpretation, digital literacy, storytelling, predictive workforce insight and business insight generation.
- Excellent communication, facilitation, and presentation skills, with the ability to frame people and org issues in business language for senior leadership audiences.
- Ability to navigate ambiguity and operate effectively in complex matrix environments.
- Building trusted partnerships across business, HR and CoE stakeholders.
Critical Experience
- Proven experience partnering with leaders in an HR Business Partner or equivalent role.
- Demonstrated experience leading and supporting organizational change and transformation initiatives within similar business, functional or regional remit.
- Experience owning and contributing to talent strategies, succession planning and leadership development within similar business, functional or regional remit.
- Proven ability to influence business decisions through people insights and analytics.
- Experience advising or coaching functional and regional leadership teams on people, organizational and strategic matters.
- Experience operating in complex, global, matrixed organizations.
Syngenta Core Dimensions
Accountability: owns outcomes, not just activity
Takes personal accountability for the people and organization agenda within their business, functional or regional remit. Follows through on commitments to leaders. Does not hide behind process or shared ownership when things go wrong.
Courage: challenges with conviction
Willing to raise uncomfortable truths about people, culture, capability or leadership decisions with functional and regional leaders. Does not revert to operational activity to manage relationships. Raises risks early and directly, including where current leadership, capability or organization design will not support the stated business strategy.
Collaboration: builds enterprise partnerships
Works across global, functional, regional and business-unit boundaries, as well as People Partnering, CoEs and People Operations, as a connected and generous enterprise partner. Understands that BP impact is amplified through others, orchestrates One HR with clear boundaries and hand-offs, and does not optimize only within the assigned remit or work in isolation.
Curiosity: thinks ahead, diagnoses deeply
Brings intellectual curiosity to every business challenge — asking questions, reading signals early and connecting people data to business context.
Critical Success Factors
- Access to and credibility with business leaders: the Business Partner must be seen as a credible strategic partner, engaged in business planning and key people decisions.
- Scope and capacity discipline: the BP maintains clear boundaries from operational and case-driven work, prioritizes capacity against the highest-value strategic, transformation and leadership priorities, and uses the One HR matrix to clarify what sits with Business Partnering, People Partnering, CoEs and People Operations.
- A functioning People Partnering and HR Ops layer: the BP can only focus on business-facing work if People Partnering is absorbing the operational, advisory and ER workload.
- Credibility through evidence: the BP's influence with leaders depends on the quality of data, insight and business-context judgement they bring. Relationships alone are insufficient.
- Active CoE partnership: the BP cannot deliver the talent, capability or culture agenda alone. Success depends on effective, trusted working relationships with key CoEs.
Key Challenges
- Balancing short-term business priorities with long-term talent and organizational needs.
- Maintaining scope discipline through clear One HR accountabilities and hand-offs, resisting pressure to absorb operational or case-driven work, particularly during the transition from the traditional HRBP model.
- Building credibility as a strategic advisor, challenger and business co-pilot with leaders who are accustomed to a more responsive, hands-on HRBP model.
- Leading transformation in complex and rapidly changing environments.
- Influencing without direct authority across matrix organizations.
- Managing competing stakeholder expectations while maintaining alignment with enterprise and business objectives.
- Translating complex, predictive and organizational health data into actionable business insights and choices.
- Influencing cultural change and sustaining behavioral shifts over time without owning the delivery agenda.
Additional Information
Expected Outcomes/Impact
- Better functional or regional leadership decision-making through people insights, business evidence and predictive workforce intelligence.
- Strong alignment between business and people strategy, with the BP helping shape enterprise and remit-level choices, including explicit trade-offs on where talent and capabilities are invested, developed, redeployed or sourced, rather than only translating strategy into HR plans.
- Successful transformation and organizational evolution.
- Sustainable talent pipelines for critical roles.
- Improved organizational capability and workforce readiness.
- Increased employee engagement and organizational effectiveness.
- Enhanced business performance through effective people partnering, measured by business speed, organizational health and performance outcomes, not HR process completion alone.
WL 6A
