Director, HRBP

Purpose

This critical Director, HRBP role acts as a strategic partner to the Chief Operations Officer and their leadership team, while partnering effectively across the Product Triangle, including the Chief Merchandising Officer and Chief Creative Officer.

The role connects the people agenda across the Product Triangle and a broad population encompassing Corporate Strategy, Data & Analytics, Design, Merchandising and the end-to-end Supply Chain. Spanning upstream manufacturing and production operations, integrated planning and merchandising functions, and downstream distribution, fulfilment and customer delivery teams, the role will shape and deliver a cohesive people strategy that enables business performance, organisational effectiveness and sustainable growth.

As the senior HR leader for these functions, the role is accountable for defining and delivering the people strategy, translating business priorities into clear people outcomes, and ensuring leaders are equipped, empowered and held accountable for creating high-performing, inclusive and engaged teams. This is a highly influential leadership role requiring strong commercial acumen, global HR expertise and deep experience of talent, leadership and organisational development within the luxury sector or a complex, matrixed global organisation.

Responsibilities

Strategic Partnership & Leadership

Consult and engage with the Chiefs and their leadership teams to build a high-performance culture, embed inclusive leadership and ensure Burberry remains a destination for world-class talent. Promote the engagement and visibility of all leaders across the functions.

Understand Burberry Forward and specific challenges across Operations, Design & Merchandising to translate business needs into actionable HR plans and projects.

Act as a trusted advisor to the Chiefs and their leadership teams, coaching and challenging leaders to role model Burberry's values, strengthen leadership effectiveness and create high-performing, accountable and inclusive teams.

Talent Management & Development

Use business insights to own the execution of applicable talent strategies to attract, retain and develop exceptional talent globally, with a focus on promoting diversity, equity and inclusion.

Partner closely with relevant CoE leads to embed the Burberry talent philosophy across the functions. Lead robust talent and succession reviews, ensuring leaders identify, develop and retain critical talent, address capability gaps and take accountability for building diverse succession pipelines.

Drive excellence in performance and talent management, holding leaders accountable for effective goal setting, performance differentiation, calibration, development planning and timely interventions to improve performance and capability.

Organisational Development & Change Management

Deploy external insight and organisational awareness to own organisational design, restructures, workforce planning, change management initiatives, and culture development, seeking to continuously refine the structures to ensure they are fit for purpose in an ever-changing external environment.

Partner with leaders to lead organisational change effectively, ensuring clear communication, meaningful engagement and visible leadership throughout change programmes. Hold leaders accountable for delivering change outcomes while maintaining employee engagement, wellbeing and performance.

Embrace Burberry Forward as the “north star” to connect individual purpose to Burberry’s strategic goals, fostering a culture of belonging and alignment to Burberry’s values.

HR Operations & Policy

Ensure leaders effectively utilise and adhere to the HR operating model, driving clarity of accountability across the employee lifecycle and maximising the value delivered through HR services, processes and technology.

Act as a key stakeholder in the evolution of the HR operating model, using business feedback, service performance metrics and organisational insight to identify opportunities for continuous improvement and influence future enhancements.

Provide senior oversight and judgement on complex, high risk or sensitive employee relations matters, partnering with ER, Legal and relevant HR colleagues to ensure fair, consistent and legally compliant outcomes. Maintain strong knowledge of UK employment law and sufficient awareness of global employment considerations to identify risk and engage the appropriate local expertise.

Partner with Centres of Excellence to ensure solutions are commercially relevant, scalable and fit for business need, proactively identifying opportunities to improve processes, policies, employee experience and ways of working.

Utilise HRIS systems to champion data-led decision making, ensuring insights drive strategic planning and execution.

HR Leadership & Capability

• Lead, coach and develop three Senior Managers across Operations, Merchandising and Design. Set clear direction, build organisational and HR capability, and ensure a consistently high standard of strategic partnering and delivery across the team.
• Contribute as a member of the extended global HRLT, ensuring the CPO and HRLT remain closely connected to business priorities, organisational risks and emerging talent opportunities.
• Champion the Operations, Merchandising & Design functions within the HR function.

Experience

• Proven track record in a senior HR leadership role, with demonstrated ability to influence and partner with multiple C-suite executives.
• Highly agile and resilient, with the ability to navigate ambiguity, organisational change and competing executive priorities while maintaining focus and delivering results.
• Comfortable operating within complex, matrixed and global organisations, preferably with experience supporting global supply chains or within Product environments.
• Exceptional leadership capabilities with experience managing high-performing teams across multiple locations.
• Strong business and commercial acumen, with a strategic mindset and pragmatic execution.
• Deep understanding of managing large-scale change and transformation, and executing through others.
• Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills.
• Passion for innovation, creativity, and the luxury fashion industry.