Head of HR Strategy & Planning
Employer not yet confirmed · UAE
Role : Head of HR Strategy & Planning
Location : Abu Dhabi
Role Purpose:
Provide executive leadership in shaping and executing ADIB’s enterprise people strategy, ensuring alignment with business priorities, growth ambitions, and future workforce requirements. Serve as a strategic adviser to the GCHRO on workforce planning, talent, organizational capability, and performance priorities, while leading the integration of Talent Acquisition, Workforce Planning & HR Governance, Learning, and Talent Development & Performance Management.
Drive workforce and talent initiatives that strengthen leadership pipelines, succession readiness, critical capabilities, and a high-performance culture. Lead strategic workforce planning, people analytics, Emiratization, and HR transformation initiatives while ensuring strong governance, regulatory compliance, and measurable business outcomes that support ADIB’s long-term growth and organizational success.
Key Accountabilities of the role
- Provide strategic leadership for talent acquisition and onboarding, ensuring ADIB attracts, selects, and integrates high-caliber talent aligned with current and future workforce requirements.
- Oversee the end-to-end recruitment lifecycle, ensuring robust governance, compliance, service excellence, and alignment with workforce plans, succession needs, and business priorities.
- Strengthen ADIB’s employer brand and optimize talent sourcing strategies, recruitment partnerships, and vendor performance to enhance the attraction and acquisition of high-caliber talent.
- Leverage recruitment analytics and market intelligence to improve hiring quality, operational efficiency, candidate experience, and overall recruitment effectiveness.
- Promote fair, inclusive, and merit-based hiring practices while advancing Emiratization objectives and ensuring compliance with regulatory and organizational requirements.
- Define and lead ADIB’s enterprise learning strategy to develop critical capabilities, support future workforce requirements, and enhance organizational performance.
- Oversee learning needs analysis, learning plans, academies, digital learning, leadership development programs, and targeted upskilling initiatives to drive continuous capability enhancement.
- Ensure effective governance of learning operations, including the Learning Management System, training administration, compliance training, and service delivery standards.
- Manage learning budgets, vendor relationships, and program effectiveness, ensuring optimal return on investment and alignment with business priorities.
- Foster a culture of continuous learning and professional development while supporting Emiratization and leadership capability-building initiatives.
- Lead the talent development and performance management agenda to strengthen succession readiness, leadership capability, critical talent pipelines, and organizational effectiveness.
- Oversee talent reviews, succession planning, high-potential development, leadership assessments, coaching, mentoring, and competency management frameworks.
- Direct the enterprise performance management cycle, including goal setting, mid-year reviews, year-end reviews, calibration, performance improvement, governance, and reporting.
- Ensure alignment between business objectives and performance outcomes through consistent, fair, and effective performance management practices across the organization.
- Utilize talent and performance insights to identify capability gaps, succession risks, leadership priorities, and targeted development interventions that support long-term business success.
- Establish governance frameworks, strategic scorecards, KPIs, budgets, and operating mechanisms to monitor performance, manage risks, and drive accountability across all functions within scope.
- Ensure compliance with applicable laws, regulations, internal policies, audit requirements, and risk management standards while maintaining effective governance and control environments.
- Build and maintain strong partnerships with senior leadership, business stakeholders, regulators, and external partners to support strategic workforce and talent decisions.
- Lead, coach, and hold accountable the functional heads, fostering collaboration, strategic alignment, operational excellence, and a culture of high performance and ownership.
- Drive enterprise-wide people transformation and strategic workforce initiatives that enhance organizational effectiveness, strengthen leadership capability, and deliver sustainable business value.
Specialist Skills / Technical Knowledge Required for this role:
- Enterprise HR strategy development and strategic workforce planning.
- Broad expertise across talent acquisition and onboarding; workforce and headcount planning; HR data management and governance; learning; talent and succession development; leadership development; and enterprise performance management.
- Workforce costing, manpower budgeting, headcount governance, scenario planning, and business case development.
- HR analytics, data interpretation, executive dashboards, KPI design, and evidence-based decision-making.
- Knowledge of HR technology, Human Resources Management Systems, Learning Management Systems, data models, and digital HR solutions.
- Knowledge of UAE employment and Emiratization context, banking-sector regulatory expectations, and HR governance requirements.
- Strong commercial and financial acumen with the ability to connect people decisions to business outcomes.
- Excellent written and verbal communication, executive presentation, influencing, negotiation, and stakeholder management skills. Proven ability to lead large, multidisciplinary teams and complex enterprise-wide transformation or change programs.