People Director Europe

job description:
**People Director - Europe**

**Reporting to**:European CEO & Chief People Director

**Location**: Munich, Paris or Lisbon

**Other requirements**: Extensive travel throughout the region (France, Germany, Portugal, Ireland, Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Luxemburg).

**About Hiscox Europe**

Hiscox Europe is a culturally diverse business unit with ambitious plans for the future. There is a focus on strong and collaborative partnerships with Brokers and Banks, launching innovative new products, delivering superior service and growing the Direct to consumer business. Our people are integral to our success and help us drive through innovation and stay agile in a fast paced market.

In line with the Hiscox Group strategy of balancing the portfolio between our catastrophe exposed business and our less volatile local specialty business, Hiscox Europe is a key operating division for Retail and has seen good growth and profitability over a number of years. The business plan for the next few years contemplates double digit growth.

Hiscox Europe employs a team of 600+ people in operating units in Germany, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Ireland, Luxembourg, Portugal and Spain. In addition, Hiscox Europe has centralised in Lisbon a large number of front, middle and back-office processes for all the European countries as well as most of the European functions (Operations, Finance, IT, Change, BI, Data Privacy,).

**The role**

The People Director is the strategic people partner for Hiscox Europe, reporting directly into the Europe CEO and to the Chief People Officer. The day-to-day focus of the role is to work in close partnership with the CEO of Europe to drive the people agenda.

There is an ambitious change agenda across the company. Front and centre of this is ensuring Hiscox has the right talent, leadership, future skills and business model to be market leading.

You will work closely with CoEs (Reward and Performance, Careers and Experience, People Operations) to deliver activity in line with the Group priorities and will build a strong pipeline of talent, ensuring the business remains competitive and equipped for the future. You will sit on the People Leadership team and will be expected to contribute to the Group Hiscox People Strategy.

**Key responsibilities/deliverables**
- Lead the development of an effective people strategy that is aligned to the business priorities and linked to the Global People Strategy
- Partner with the CEO, Europe on all people matters, providing short and / or longer-term interventions as necessary
- Develop trusted partnerships with the BU’s leadership team, provide challenge, guidance, coaching and advice; enhancing the leadership team effectiveness
- Deliver strategic workforce planning and capability development.
- Partner with the BU Leadership team to positively impact employee engagement and retention, encouraging two way communication and a culture of speaking up
- Actively promote a culture of DEI to create an environment where everyone can perform at their best
- Work as part of a global People leadership team, contributing to the wider agenda and representing the BU by deeply understanding the BU activities and ambitions
- Work collaboratively with CoE’s. Be the custodian of talent management, succession planning, strategic reward and recognition. Utilise workforce data and analytics to deliver insights and challenge the status quo
- Ensure the People function is an integral part of the BU and highly respected by all its stakeholders
- Provide inspirational leadership to the People team, ensuring that the team is equipped with the necessary functional and commercial skills to deliver on the BU strategy
- Be a visible and active member of the People leadership team, leading or supporting global initiatives to ensure consistency on policies and procedures

person specification:
**Global/matrix** - experience of partnering with global client groups and or working in a matrix environment and leading teams in these complex environments

**International experience** - skills to handle national differences and differences in size of the entities

**Remuneration** - credible managing remuneration conversations with the business and able to manage remuneration with support from the CoE reward colleagues

**Talent management** - proven capability and experience in strategic talent management, change management, OD and DEI

**Ability to operate within the People operating model context** - will play a key leadership role in ongoing transformation of the People function, evolving the function towards a more advisory/ partnership-led model

**Leadership competencies**

**Curious**
- Future-focused, inquisitive and open-minded; seeks out evolving and innovative ways to add value to the organisation
- External orientation: understands the external landscape and brings market insights

**Skilled influencer / Senior management credibility**
- Worked as part of a lead