About the job

Our Team:

The Head of Capability Operations is a member of Sanofi’s Organization Capability & Transformation leadership team, comprising People Analytics, Transformation Office, Organization Capability & Consulting and Learning. The mission of the function is to elevate Sanofi’s Organization and Employee Capability, and to steward the successful execution of our Play to Win transformation.

Main responsibilities:

The Head of Capability Operations will manage a team that is responsible for the integrated operations of the Organization Capability & Transformation (OC&T) team. This includes managing capability infrastructure and taxonomy, cross-functional project management, OC&T annual planning cycles and activity (aligned with other key processes such as strategy & budget cycles) as well as integrated change management & engagement of employees, managers, and leaders.

The role reports to the Head of Organizational Capability & Transformation (a member of the People & Culture (HR) Leadership Team) and will manage a team of 6-10 people.

This role can be based in any of the Sanofi Hubs given its global nature. It does require the ability to connect across global time zones and some travel will be required.

The key activities of the Head of Capability Operations (and their team) will include:

• Defining and evolving the infrastructure required to manage capability & transformation across Sanofi. This will include:
  • A plan to evolve our job architecture, to enable a shift towards one common taxonomy for capability (e.g., skills vs. competencies) that works across the people ecosystem.
  • Defining the optimal architecture of our digital ecosystem in partnership with Digital, including exploration of new digital capabilities to support org capability (e.g., People Analytics, Workforce Planning, Learning etc.)
  • This will create the foundation upon which we can define, assess, measure, and manage the capabilities that Sanofi will require to succeed, and track and manage the success of the transformations that will enable execution of our strategy.
• Co-defining and activating the function's operating model and planning cycle and activities, linking capability planning to strat planning, budget cycles, talent cycles, workforce planning, learning design & delivery plans. This will include defining and managing our process for strategic, total workforce, and operational workforce planning in partnership with the Finance function.
• Project leadership for key cross-OC&T projects, as well as projects across other COEs (e.g., Rewards & Performance, Talent, DEI/EX/Culture) as well as with other partners such as Finance, Digital and Legal.
• Change management for key initiatives across the function and ensuring employee-centric change comms that drive adoption and understanding of our products and services, as well as those delivered in partnership with other COEs and partners (e.g., Career/Talent Development in partnership with Talent).
• Oversight and management of budget and third-party contracts.

About you

• Experience:
  • The successful candidate will be experienced in designing, implementing and managing the operational aspects of organizational & employee capability and transformation. This could include (as examples) defining competency & skills taxonomies, approaches to capability planning, strategic & operational workforce planning, total workforce management, delivering complex projects across multiple HR COEs or just helping employees put it all together and understand how to do their best in their current jobs and grow their career. But it's important you can demonstrate experience across several of these areas, with tangible results.
  • Ideally, the candidate will have the ability to plan strategically, be a strong operator with execution discipline (agile/waterfall as needed) and use design thinking to ensure our initiatives are built for the employee, manager and leader.

• Soft skills:
  • Where you thrive is being the connector, glue, multiplier of multiple functions – making the whole more than the sum of its parts. You influence without authority and align stakeholders to achieve something much bigger than they could achieve on their own.

• Technical skills:
  • Strategic Planning
    • Guiding the team through the Strategic Planning cycle to identify:
      • Strategic Priorities
      • Interdependencies
      • Resources required (financial/headcount/external workforce)
      • Enablers (e.g. infrastructure, digital)
    • Partnering with other stakeholders on interdependencies, e.g. P&C LT members and their teams.
  • Operations Management
    • Laying out an annual roadmap of key activities for the function, including strategy setting, budget
    • Managing ongoing reviews of progress against objectives (e.g. Quarterly Business Reviews and summaries for key stakeholders)
    • Documentation of the functional operating model, and key SOPs as part of the Sanofi Operating Model
    • Identifying and managing any key risks/issues on behalf of the function
  • Project & Program Management acumen for large projects, and familiar with both agile and waterfall concepts, and when which are best employed.
  • Digital Product Management / Agile Release Management for key digital infrastructure (not driving software development, but ensuring we are customizing and maximizing the potential of our digital infrastructure, e.g. LXP, Workday, Analytics tools etc. and have visibility to functionality enabled by future updates/releases e.g. integration with third party learning, language support etc.)
  • Knowledge and experience of using collaboration platforms, to enable our function to work well together synchronously and asynchronously via Teams, SharePoint, Mural/Miro etc.
  • Change management - ensuring the function has a clear "go-to-market" approach that feeds the right messages, through the right channels, in an engaging on-brand and employee-centric way.
• Education:
• Languages: Given the global nature of this role, we require full business fluency in English.