The posting
Role: HR Business Partner, Global Digital & Technology
Location: Bangalore, India Business Area: Global Digital & Technology
Role purpose
The HR Business Partner will shape and deliver the People and Organisation agenda for employees across Cybersecurity and Digital Business Operations within Global Digital & Technology. The portfolio operates across a geographically dispersed organisation, including teams in key hubs and specialist capability locations driven by business and geopolitical requirements.
Working as a trusted adviser and constructive challenger to senior leaders, the HRBP will translate business priorities into practical organisation, workforce, talent, leadership, capability, culture and change interventions.
This role requires someone who can move comfortably between strategic partnering and hands-on execution. The successful candidate will simplify complexity, challenge senior stakeholders confidently, hold leaders accountable and take direct ownership of workforce insights, employee data and the effective use of HR systems.
Key accountabilities
1. Business and leadership partnership
- Build a strong understanding of the Cybersecurity and Digital Business Operations strategy, operating environment, workforce and transformation priorities.
- Translate business priorities into a focused People and Organisation agenda with clear outcomes, ownership and measures.
- Act as a trusted partner and constructive challenger to senior leaders, including Vice Presidents and their leadership teams.
- Coach leaders on organisational effectiveness, leadership impact, talent, performance and employee responsibilities.
- Bring an objective and commercially grounded perspective to sensitive or complex people and organisation decisions.
- Ensure leaders remain accountable for the employee experience and people outcomes within their teams.
2. Organisation design and workforce planning
- Translate business plans into organisation and workforce requirements covering structure, accountabilities, capability, capacity, location and cost.
- Lead organisation design and operating-model interventions, identifying duplication, unclear ownership, organisational friction and unnecessary complexity.
- Partner with Finance and business leaders on workforce and overhead planning.
- Maintain visibility of the employee population, vacancies, workforce movements, critical roles and priority capability gaps.
- Support leaders in making informed trade-offs between cost, capacity, capability and organisational risk.
- Lead the People elements of restructuring, role changes and operating-model evolution.
3. Talent, succession and capability
- Own the talent and succession agenda for the supported organisation.
- Identify critical roles, scarce skills, pivotal talent populations and retention risks.
- Lead robust talent and succession discussions with the leadership team and ensure agreed actions are completed.
- Strengthen the depth and diversity of talent pipelines across teams, functions and geographies.
- Identify the capabilities required for the future Digital and Technology organisation and develop focused plans to close material gaps.
- Partner with Talent and specialist HR teams where enterprise solutions or deeper expertise are required.
4. Performance, culture and leadership effectiveness
- Help leaders establish a high-performance environment with clear expectations, accountability, feedback and development.
- Coach leaders to address underperformance and make fair, evidence-based performance and talent decisions.
- Assess and strengthen leadership-team effectiveness, including purpose, accountabilities, decision rights and ways of working.
- Use engagement and employee insights to identify cultural priorities and organisational risks.
- Reinforce inclusive leadership, trust, collaboration and effective execution across dispersed teams.
- Challenge leadership behaviours or organisational practices that are inconsistent with the desired culture.
5. Change and transformation
- Lead the People and Organisation elements of business transformation and significant organisation change.
- Develop practical change plans covering organisation, roles, talent, capability, culture, communications and employee impact.
- Assess organisational readiness, identify adoption risks and coach leaders to sponsor change visibly and consistently.
- Balance the pace of transformation with organisational capacity and employee experience.
- Work with People Experience and specialist teams on consultation, policy, employee-relations and implementation requirements.
6. Data, systems and HR delivery
- Work directly with workforce, talent, performance and engagement data to diagnose issues and support leadership decisions.
- Translate data into clear insights, risks and recommended actions rather than reporting activity alone.
- Maintain strong ownership of the supported employee population, locations and workforce information.
- Use enterprise HR systems and People Insights capabilities effectively, maintaining appropriate attention to data quality.
- Coordinate delivery across HR Partners, People Experience, Centres of Expertise, People Insights and other HR teams.
- Combine strategic advice with the willingness to work through detailed data, systems and execution requirements when needed.
Experience required
The successful candidate will typically bring:
- Strong HR Business Partnering experience in a complex, matrixed or globally connected organisation.
- Experience partnering senior business or functional leaders and constructively challenging leadership teams.
- A track record of translating business priorities into practical People and Organisation plans.
- Strong organisation design, workforce planning and organisation-change experience.
- Experience partnering Finance on workforce, cost or overhead decisions.
- Strong capability in talent management, succession planning, performance and leadership development.
- Experience supporting significant business transformation.
- Confidence in working directly with HR systems, workforce data and people insights.
- Experience operating across multiple countries, locations or organisational boundaries.
- The judgement and discretion required to manage sensitive leadership, talent and organisational matters.
Critical capabilities and attributes
- Business and commercial understanding: Connects People decisions to business, financial and organisational outcomes.
- Strategic partnering: Converts complex business requirements into a focused, actionable People agenda.
- Organisation expertise: Understands the connection between structure, accountabilities, capability, culture and performance.
- Leadership challenge: Builds trust while being prepared to challenge senior stakeholders and address difficult issues directly.
- Talent judgement: Makes differentiated, evidence-based talent and succession recommendations.
- Change leadership: Anticipates resistance and helps leaders land change effectively.
- Data orientation: Is comfortable working directly with systems and detailed workforce information, not only high-level dashboards.
- Enterprise mindset: Works effectively across business, HR, functional and geographical boundaries.
- Execution discipline: Combines strategic thinking with practical delivery and follows through reliably on commitments.
“Our commitment to Equality, Diversity & Inclusion”
Unilever embraces diversity and encourages applicants from all walks of life! This means giving full and fair consideration to all applicants and continuing development of all employees regardless of age, disability, gender reassignment, race, religion or belief, sex, sexual orientation, marriage and civil partnership, and pregnancy and maternity.
Note: "All official offers from Unilever are issued only via our Applicant Tracking System (ATS). Offers from individuals or unofficial sources may be fraudulent—please verify before proceeding."
