INSPIRE | EXHILARATE | DELIGHT

For over six decades, Chalhoub Group has been a partner and creator of luxury experiences in the Middle East. The Group, in its endeavour to excel as a hybrid retailer, has reinforced its distribution and marketing services with a portfolio of eight owned brands and over 300 international brands in the luxury, beauty, fashion, and art de vivre categories. More recently, the Group expanded its expertise into new categories of luxury watches, jewellery, and eyewear.

Every step at Chalhoub Group is taken with the customer at heart. Be it constantly reinventing itself or focusing on innovation to provide luxury experiences at over 750+ experiential retail stores, online and through mobile apps, each touch point leads to delighting the customer.

Today, Chalhoub Group stands for 14,000 skilled and talented professionals across seven countries, whose cohesive efforts have resulted in the Group being ranked third in the Middle East and first in Saudi Arabia as a Great Place to Work®.

To keep the innovation journey going, the Group has set up “The Greenhouse”, which is not just an innovation hub, but also an incubator space and accelerator for start-ups and small businesses in the region and internationally. This is just one of the several initiatives taken by the Group to reinvent itself, catalysed by forward thinking and future-proofing. The Group has also been embedding sustainability at the core of its business strategy with a clear commitment towards people, partners and the planet, and by being a member of the United Nations Global Compact Community and signatory of the Women's Empowerment Principles.

What you'll be doing  

As an experienced People Partner, you will be responsible for helping attract, develop and support an exceptional group of people. You will be working closely with the brand/functional management team to provide: operational HR support, strategic advice, guidance and best practice solutions. You will do so in line with Group HR policies and principles, whilst also creating bespoke initiatives to enhance the employee experience and support the achievement of business strategies and culture change.

This is a role that combines operational and strategic responsibilities, requiring a solid HR background in addition to sound commercial exposure and mindset to successfully partner with and influence all areas of the business.

Key Responsibilities: 

• Define, develop and implement our people vision to support our ambitious business strategy
• Review the brand/function’s operating model and workforce planning approaches to ensure optimal organizational structures are in place to support future focus, growth, scalability and employee satisfaction
• Work with the team to consider competitor and industry approaches and translate these insights into roadmaps that define the employee experience, reveal gaps and pain points, and identify key opportunities for business enhancements and innovation
• Provide guidance and recommendations on the most complex issues, supporting our team in all related people areas including: recruitment, performance management, succession planning, retention, talent development, compensation and rewards, employee relations, and employee engagement
• Provide clear and inspirational leadership to motivate and develop the team to deliver high quality, customer‐centered services
• Be an active and effective member of the Leadership Team, ensuring the high visibility, focus and delivery of the People and Culture strategy
• Act as a change agent by looking for new ways to improve the employee experience and define our brand/function employee value proposition
• Lead the development of initiatives in line with Localization Strategy
• Continually assess our existing policies, procedures, and programs and put forward recommendations to improve efficiencies and employee satisfaction.
• Lead the on-going design and execution of brand/function specific employee onboarding, training and development programs to improve the depth and breadth of the team’s skills set and to raise awareness around behavioral, technical and leadership competencies
• Work with the Group’s Talent Acquisition team to ensure internal and external recruiting strategies result in relevant, high caliber candidates being identified
• Work closely with Group HR to implement the annual performance management cycle and act as a change agent within the brand/function to support the introduction of new approaches and performance platform
• Continually review and monitor the effectiveness of employee commission schemes and put forward recommendations for change
• Identify our HiPOs through employee profiling; educate teams around career paths and support all succession planning and talent development activities
• Encourage a “growth mindset” amongst team members by collaborating with our Learning team to assess training needs so relevant and inspiring training and development programmes are available and monitor the brand/function’s training budget and individual’s learning consumption
• Use all available HR data to ensure HR analytics supports all reporting, action planning and decision making and put forward recommendation for change
• Act as a coach and mentor to our people and provide advice and guidance to our leadership team, using HR data analytics, external benchmarks and best practice approaches to support decision making
• As part of our cultural transformation, provide advice and guidance to leaders and managers around how to act as role models to create a positive and inspiring team climate
• Champion both Group and brand/function specific Diversity and Inclusion initiatives, with a key focus on culture change, nationalization and employee wellbeing
• Collaborate with the Group’s People Experience team to design employee engagement surveys, and be accountable for the necessary action planning and improvement goals
• Develop key performance indicators to help identify progress and improvements made on employee engagement and ensure continual improvement
• Manage all people and process related employee communications, using My Chalhoub and other inspirational approaches to embed key messages.
• Lead/Support annual manpower planning with Brand/Function Leaders and ensure vacancies are managed in line with the approved budget and executed as per the correct recruitment process
• Assess current roles and provide recommendations for new roles in coordination with Business Head and Vertical Head of People
• Participate in the recruitment process through assessment centers or competency-based interviews
• Review all proposed internal transfers within the vertical and provide recommendations
• Ensure all escalated employees’ grievances are closed

What you’ll need to succeed

• Excellent knowledge of HR best practices and industry standards
• Proven experience of acting as change agent to bring about change
• Able to influence without authority and to be regarded as a credible trusted advisor to the business
• Employee centric with the ability to build trust and act as a coach and mentor for employees
• Self-aware, with the appropriate leadership skills to inspire, manage and develop high performing teams
• Comfortable with healthy challenge and able to operate at a strategic level
• Experience of working in a fast-pace, matrixed environments
• Commercially minded with the ability to manage budgets, and interpret complex data & analytics to support decision making
• Resilient and able to effectively balance multiple priorities in line with deadlines
• Exceptional communication, relationship-building, and project management skills
• Future focused with the ability to use creative and inspiring approaches to enhance employee experience programs, concepts and techniques

What we can offer you  

With us, you will turn your aspirations into reality.  We will help shape your journey through enriching experiences, learning and development opportunities and exposure to different assignments within your role or through internal mobility. Our Group offers diverse career paths for those who are extraordinary, every day.  

We recognise the value that you bring, and we strive to provide a competitive benefits package which includes health care, child education contribution, remote and flexible working policies as well as exclusive employee discounts.  

We Invite All Applicants to Apply

It Takes Diversity Of Thought, Culture, Background, Differing Abilities and Perspectives to truly Inspire, Exhilarate and Delight our customers. At Chalhoub Group, we are committed to inclusion and diversity.

We welcome all applicants to apply and be part of our exciting future. We ensure equal opportunity for all our applicants without regard to gender, age, race, religion, national origin or disability status.