Business Manager to Chief People Officer – Africa Regions (VP)

Empowering Africa’s tomorrow, together…one story at a time.

Job Summary

The Business Manager to the Chief People Officer (CPO) for Africa Regions provides strategic operational integration and leadership coordination support to ensure effective execution of the regional Human Capital agenda across a complex, multi-country environment.

The role integrates activities across Country HC teams, Group Centres of Expertise (CoEs), Human Capital Services, and enterprise functions such as Finance, Risk, and Technology, ensuring alignment between regional priorities, group strategy, and country-specific regulatory environments.

The role acts as a central integrator and operational orchestrator for the Africa HC leadership agenda, enabling coherence across initiatives, strengthening leadership governance and culture, and ensuring the smooth execution of the regional HC operating model.

Through data-enabled insights, digital collaboration tools, and structured operating rhythms, the Business Manager enhances organisational effectiveness, promotes cross-border collaboration, and supports the CPO in building a future-fit, digitally enabled HC function that drives performance and cultural alignment across the Africa Regions portfolio.

Job Description

Key Focus Areas:

• Regional Human Capital strategy integration and execution
• Leadership coordination and operating rhythm for the Africa HC leadership team
• Cross-country and cross-function integration across the HC ecosystem
• Culture and organisational effectiveness enablement
• Governance, regulatory alignment and risk awareness across markets
• Data-enabled decision support and leadership insight
• Digital enablement of Human Capital collaboration and workflow
• Stakeholder integration with Group CoEs, HC Services and enterprise functions

Detailed Key Accountabilities:

1. Regional Human Capital Strategy Integration and Execution:

• Translate the regional Human Capital strategy into coordinated operational priorities across Africa Region countries, ensuring alignment with Group HC strategy and business objectives.
• Integrate initiatives across Country HC teams, Group Centres of Expertise and HC Shared Services, ensuring coherent delivery of programmes and initiatives across markets.
• Maintain visibility of strategic priorities and progress across the region, enabling the CPO and leadership team to track execution and manage interdependencies.
• Coordinate regional planning cycles including strategic planning, workforce priorities, capability programmes and transformation initiatives.
• Support the CPO in aligning regional priorities with enterprise strategic cycles, ensuring that HC contributions to business strategy are integrated and well-coordinated.

2. Leadership Coordination and Operating Rhythm:

• Establish and maintain an effective operating rhythm for the Africa HC leadership team, including leadership forums, governance meetings, and strategic discussions.
• Coordinate leadership agendas, ensuring that meetings are structured to support strategic decision-making, integration across teams, and clear accountability.
• Prepare briefing material, insight packs, and strategic discussion documents to enable effective leadership conversations.
• Track leadership decisions, commitments and actions to ensure execution across teams and countries.
• Support the CPO in maintaining leadership alignment across geographically dispersed teams and complex organisational structures.

3. Cross-Country and Cross-Function Integration:

• Act as the central coordination point for collaboration between Country HC teams, Group HC Centres of Expertise, HC Services and enterprise functions such as Finance, Risk and Technology.
• Facilitate integration across country markets, recognising the unique regulatory, labour and socio-economic contexts of each jurisdiction.
• Ensure that global and group-wide HC initiatives are effectively adapted and implemented within local market environments.
• Identify interdependencies between programmes and teams, ensuring alignment and avoiding duplication or fragmentation of initiatives.
• Strengthen collaboration between regional HC teams and enterprise partners to support effective delivery of organisational priorities.

4. Culture, Leadership Alignment and Organisational Effectiveness:

• Support the CPO in driving a consistent leadership culture and values-based operating environment across Africa Regions.
• Coordinate regional culture and engagement initiatives in partnership with Group CoEs and country HC teams.
• Facilitate dialogue and collaboration across HC leaders to strengthen trust, shared purpose, and integrated ways of working.
• Monitor organisational health indicators, engagement trends, and cultural signals across the region to identify opportunities for improvement.
• Enable the leadership team to address cross-country organisational challenges through structured dialogue, insights, and coordinated actions.

5. Governance, Regulatory Alignment and Risk Awareness:

• Coordinate governance processes across the Africa HC portfolio to ensure alignment with enterprise governance standards and regulatory requirements.
• Maintain visibility of key people-related regulatory considerations across different African jurisdictions and support the leadership team in understanding implications for HC practices.
• Ensure that regional HC activities are conducted in line with internal policies, ethical standards and risk management frameworks.
• Coordinate reporting and documentation for relevant governance forums and committees.
• Partner with Risk, Legal and Compliance teams to ensure effective oversight of people-related risks and regulatory obligations across markets.

6. Data-Enabled Leadership Insight and Decision Support:

• Develop and coordinate leadership insight packs that provide a clear view of workforce trends, organisational performance and HC delivery across the region.
• Leverage workforce analytics and HC data to support strategic decision-making and proactive leadership conversations.
• Translate complex HC data into meaningful insights and narratives that enable leaders to understand workforce dynamics and organisational trends.
• Partner with HC analytics teams to ensure consistent and reliable data sources for regional reporting.
• Drive the use of dashboards and digital reporting tools that provide transparent visibility into people metrics and organisational outcomes.

7. Digital Enablement of Human Capital Collaboration:

• Promote the adoption of digital collaboration tools and platforms that enable effective cross-border coordination and knowledge sharing.
• Support the digital enablement of the HC operating model by embedding technology-enabled workflows and collaboration practices.
• Work with HC Technology and Digital teams to align regional ways of working with the broader digital HC strategy.
• Identify opportunities to simplify processes and enhance efficiency through digital solutions and automation.
• Encourage digital fluency within the HC leadership community to strengthen data-driven decision making and modern HC practices.

8. Strategic Communication and Stakeholder Engagement:

• Support the CPO in coordinating communication with key internal stakeholders including executive leadership, country leadership teams, and enterprise partners.
• Develop strategic communication materials that articulate the regional HC agenda, priorities and progress.
• Facilitate alignment between HC leadership and business leadership across Africa Regions.
• Act as a trusted advisor and sounding board to the CPO on organisational dynamics, leadership alignment and stakeholder engagement.
• Strengthen transparency and shared understanding across stakeholders regarding the regional Human Capital strategy.

Knowledge, Skills and Future-Fit Capabilities:

Knowledge:

• Deep understanding of Human Capital operating models in large, complex organisations.
• Knowledge of pan-African business environments, including regulatory diversity, labour frameworks and cultural contexts across multiple jurisdictions.
• Familiarity with HR digital ecosystems, including HRIS platforms, workforce analytics tools and collaboration technologies.
• Understanding of organisational effectiveness, culture and leadership development practices.
• Awareness of risk, governance and regulatory considerations within financial services environments.

Skills:

• Strategic integration and coordination across complex organisational systems.
• Strong stakeholder engagement and executive communication capability.
• Ability to manage interdependencies across functions and geographies.
• Analytical capability with the ability to translate data into leadership insight.
• Facilitation of leadership dialogue, alignment and collaborative decision-making.
• Strong organisational planning and programme coordination skills.
• Digital fluency and comfort with modern collaboration and analytics tools.

Future-Fit Competencies:

Systems Integration: Understands and integrates multiple organisational systems, ensuring alignment across HC functions, enterprise partners and country operations.

Digital Intelligence: Leverages digital platforms, analytics and technology to enable modern, data-driven HC operations.

Strategic Coordination: Orchestrates complex portfolios of work across teams and geographies to ensure effective delivery of strategic outcomes.

Organisational Insight: Interprets organisational dynamics, culture and leadership behaviours to support effective people strategies.

Collaborative Influence: Builds strong partnerships across leaders and teams to achieve shared outcomes in a complex, matrixed environment.

Adaptive Leadership:  Navigates complexity and ambiguity while enabling alignment and progress across diverse organisational contexts.

Education

Bachelor`s Degrees and Advanced Diplomas: Business, Commerce and Management Studies (Required)

Absa Bank Limited is an equal opportunity, affirmative action employer. In compliance with the Employment Equity Act 55 of 1998, preference will be given to suitable candidates from designated groups whose appointments will contribute towards achievement of equitable demographic representation of our workforce profile and add to the diversity of the Bank.

Absa Bank Limited reserves the right not to make an appointment to the post as advertised