Global Senior Manager People Operations

At Booking.com, data drives decisions, technology is at the core, and innovation is everywhere.

Role Description

The Senior Manager Global People Operations is responsible for Global People Operations. This role provides People Services in the most effective and efficient way at the right cost, ensuring an optimal experience for employees. The Senior Manager People Operations works closely with other teams across the organization to drive harmonization of policies, standardization of processes, and optimization of capabilities to achieve execution excellence while leveraging technology to maximize employee and manager self-service. The role represents People Services in day-to-day operational matters and HR projects, ensuring input from other People Services teams to resolve issues and challenges with quality, while structural corrective actions are taken and preventive measures are in place. In addition, the role shapes the strategy of People Operations, covering the operating model, scope of services, technology requirements, and process redesign aligned with People Services, People, and business strategy.

Key Job Responsibilities and Duties

Operations Management

• Installs and gatekeeps a best-in-class, benchmarked service performance management and operations management framework.
• Ensures day-to-day execution excellence and strong control execution by reducing waste in processes and practices and establishing a culture of continuous improvement and capability building.
• Monitors the performance of Global People Operations and adapts procedures and organizational structure to achieve objectives and the service experience strategy.
• Ensures that Global People Operations activities are conducted effectively and comply with Booking.com policies and standards as well as relevant global and local regulations and laws.
• Steers and optimizes the SSC/COE team.
• Enables onboarding of remaining operations activities that still sit with HR Advisory and People COEs.
• Ensures continuous internal and external benchmarking around KPIs related to efficiency, effectiveness, service levels, user experience, and costs, and identifies and acts on opportunities for savings or cost avoidance.
• Installs enablers and works with peers to secure required buy-in, such as process ownership and policy ownership, that allow growth and increased maturity of the People Operations team and the People Department as a whole.
• Manages vendors to maximum performance through a strong governance model and KPI framework and acts as the contract owner.
• Uses data and insights to drive decisions and changes and raise the bar within the People Ops team.
• Provides insights to HR stakeholders to increase business adoption, such as first-time-right data flow and processing, and improve HR processes from an end-to-end perspective.
• Ensures end-to-end data quality and engages with upstream process and data owners.
• Manages data operations-related activities for the People Department, including mass upload, data entry, data corrections, and validations, and feeds challenges back to respective owners and the Master Data Management team.
• Supports continuous enhancement of self-service, automation, and simplification of processes and activities.

People Management and Leadership

• Manages a global team of 4 Regional Team Leads HR Ops, and indirectly a large group of team members of approximately 60.
• Manages G-level managers and a People Operations team at career levels D, E, and F. Expected team size is approximately 20–30 FTEs.
• Ensures the development of individuals within the organization, coaching and directing people to achieve both organizational and individual objectives while ensuring Operations is a strong talent pool for the People Department.
• Acts as the Change Leader and creates a change mindset with direct reports and Team Leads to enable delivery of the People Services transformation, such as the Service Experience Program and maturity initiatives.
• Builds a network with Global Operations Leads from other companies to exchange learnings and apply good practices in People Ops.
• Is the custodian of the end-to-end service experience for employees.
• Shows and embeds a customer-centric mindset and holds people accountable.
• Serves as a member of the People Services Management Team, providing guidance and direction to the broader function globally.

Strategy

• Drives the People Services strategy deployment while enriching the strategy for People Operations-related components.
• Ensures that services are regularly benchmarked through standardized, widely used industry KPIs and SLAs.
• Works with peers from other functions, such as Finance and Procurement, that have similar operational activities and services to identify commonalities across process design, technology, and ways of working and ensure an integrated service experience.
• Works closely with People Systems to leverage technology to simplify and automate processes and to drive and optimize self-service.
• Drives transition of services that are not only transactional but also all employee- and basic line manager-facing services and HR support.
• Explores opportunities to further expand scope of services while maintaining cost effectiveness and capacity to keep performance above SLA targets.
• Reshapes the operating model to address challenges and support the business strategy.
• Shapes and deploys a future-fit organization that is scalable for volume and scope increase.
• Further transforms People Operations from reactive into a proactive and preventative mindset and ways of working.
• Transforms People Operations from back-end and perceived as administrative only into front-facing for employees and managers and a services partner to HR Advisor, COEs, and business leaders.

Stakeholder Management

• Builds and maintains strong relationships with HRD/Ms and COE Leads to align on roadmaps and structurally address challenges, as well as with stakeholders outside HR such as Finance, Legal, Comms, and Risk & Control.
• Aligns with senior managers and directors in the People Department to assure congruent People processes and procedures as well as sharing knowledge and best practices.
• Agrees upon and delivers against agreed SLAs and KPIs, and reports on status and progress.
• Encourages the team to run active listening moments with stakeholders to drive continuous improvements and provides status updates to improve relationships and perception.

Project Management

• Drives various People Operations initiatives, projects, and procedures including implementation and communication.
• Represents People Operations as a project member in global People initiatives, projects, and procedures.
• Plays a key role in the People Services Experience program.
• Ensures projects are on track and reported at People Ops level.
• Grows project management capabilities within the People Ops team, in line with guidance and best practices.
• Ensures portfolio management is set up and uses it to manage capacity and make prioritization decisions.

Functional Ownership

• Acts as the functional owner of ServiceNow and Workday by ensuring that the respective People Ops and functional SMEs provide clear requirements to systems product owners.
• Acts as the global functional owner and expert for employee life cycle processes.
• Supports the Change Manager and functional SMEs with communication and training of the People Operations team.
• Gatekeeps the quality of ServiceNow, Workday, and related changes from the employee and user perspective.
• Identifies areas for improvement related to operational processes and tooling.
• Is the sponsor for key projects related to ServiceNow and Workday that impact the ways of working of the People Ops team.

Communication

• Plays a pivotal role in communication toward all stakeholders in and outside the People Department.
• Ensures communication to employees and managers via different media such as posts and articles.
• Acts as the front person and ambassador of People Operations and People Services in case of issues or escalations, creating awareness and cooperation among stakeholders.

Qualifications & Skills

• Knowledge of HR Operations, Service Performance Management, Process Management, Operations Management, HR Advisory, Payroll, and preferably People Systems.
• 12+ years of relevant job experience.
• Excellent strategic, management, and leadership skills.
• Excellent communication skills, including influencing, coaching, and mentoring. Expert in delivering large-scale organizational change programs and/or people roadmaps.
• Ability to work cross-functionally and partner with different stakeholders to impact business decisions.
• Ability to drive and own large change programs with a strategic mindset.
• Ability to work globally across different business models and with stakeholders and teams from different cultural backgrounds.

Benefits & Perks - Global Impact, Personal Relevance

• Annual paid time off and generous paid leave scheme including parent, grandparent, bereavement, and care leave.
• Hybrid working including flexible working arrangements, and up to 20 days per year working from abroad in the home country.
• Industry-leading product discounts of up to 1400 per year for yourself, including automatic Genius Level 3 status and Booking.com wallet credit.