Senior Consultant, Strategy & Operations (People Team)
Xero
People & HR, Operations
Sydney, NSW, Australia
Posted on Jan 20, 2025
Xero is a beautiful, easy-to-use platform that helps small businesses and their accounting and bookkeeping advisors grow and thrive.
At Xero, our purpose is to make life better for people in small business, their advisors, and communities around the world. This purpose sits at the centre of everything we do. We support our people to do the best work of their lives so that they can help small businesses succeed through better tools, information and connections. Because when they succeed they make a difference, and when millions of small businesses are making a difference, the world is a more beautiful place.
This team works closely with the People Experience (PX) Leadership Team, Global Business Operations & Strategy team and other cross-functional stakeholders to help ensure our people strategy is designed thoughtfully and executed effectively.
In this role, you will support the development and operationalisation of Xero’s people strategy. You will help refine PX’s strategic roadmap and turn it into an executable plan with processes that are measured and continuously improved, while also supporting the implementation of these programs in partnership with PX program leads and uplifting the PX team abilities.
Working closely with the GM of PX Operations and your peers, you will be a key contributor to overseeing the effective running of the function, which includes all PX related forums, working with the GM PX Operations and PXLT on board papers and general business management of the PX function.
What you’ll do
- Strategy Development and Alignment
- Refine and operationalize the PX strategy, ensuring alignment across all PX teams and key partner functions
- Develop and maintain the PX operating plan, including metrics, measurement frameworks, and operational rhythms
- Support the development, cascade, and tracking of PX OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) to drive strategic alignment
- Insights and Decision Support
- Deliver concise, data-driven insights through impactful written communication to enable informed decision-making by senior management and stakeholders with an emphasis on making the complex simple.
- Prepare materials and presentations for the PX strategic plan, including initiative updates and key performance metrics for the leadership team and board.
- Support the development of the monthly People Data Insights by identifying trends and providing actionable recommendations in collaboration with people analytics and PX partnering teams.
- Collaboration and Problem Solving
- Partner with peers and PX stakeholders to understand pain points, challenges, and opportunities. Apply structured problem-solving to address strategic and operational issues.
- Facilitate alignment across PX teams by identifying dependencies and promoting consistency in approach.
- Collaborate with cross-functional teams, including business operations, communications, and change management, to ensure seamless integration and execution.
- Process Optimization and Efficiency
- Identify and champion opportunities for process optimization, enhancing efficiency and scalability within PX and across the broader organization.
- Proactively recommend and implement change to drive alignment across PX, including automating reporting processes and streamlining workflows.
- Stakeholder Engagement and Facilitation
- Design and facilitate strategic workshops and working sessions with key stakeholders, driving consensus, alignment, and actionable outcomes.
- Develop and align PX messaging with the organization’s broader strategic narrative in collaboration with the communications team.
- Provide programmatic and portfolio-level support for large cross-functional projects and major PX initiatives, including risk identification and mitigation
- Capability Building
- Support the continuous improvement of data literacy, analytical rigor, and strategic capabilities within the PX team.
- Foster a culture of learning and innovation by championing best practices and sharing insights across teams.
What you’ll bring to the role
- Experience:
- Ideally 3+ years of consulting experience (HR experience an added bonus but not required)
- Contributed to the development of senior stakeholder messaging and proven experience in making the complex simple
- Experience as part of high performing teams in an operations, strategy, project management, change and/or transformation capacity
- Experience in driving or supporting drive large scale organisational change and/or complex cross-functional projects
- Experience in workshop facilitation / delivery in various formats (e.g. virtual, in person)
- Critical competencies:
- Data Analysis and Interpretation: Confident in extracting meaningful insights from data, identifying trends and patterns, and using analysis inform strategic recommendations
- Process Improvement and Optimization: Ability to analyse existing processes, identify areas for improvement, and design and implement more efficient and effective workflows that drive operational excellence.
- Collaboration & Change Management: Ability to engage broadly and bring others on the journey of operational excellence through transformation, collaborating across HR disciplines and cross-functionally; mitigating resistance and ensuring successful implementation
- Plans & Aligns: Ability to rapidly get to an ‘80/20’ answer, and the analytical approach as necessary given project timelines
- Ensures accountability: Proven ability to independently drive initiatives from concept to execution
- Instils trust: Ability to work with and maintain confidentiality on sensitive matters
- Communicates effectively: High EQ – strong ability to ‘read the room’ and adjust approach, management tactics, and communication style as appropriate. Expert verbal and written communicator – ability to cut through the noise and make the complex simple
Why Xero?
Offering very generous paid leave to use however you’d like (plus statutory holidays!), dedicated paid leave to care for your physical and mental wellbeing as well as an Employee Assistance Program to access mental health care for you and your family, health insurance, life insurance, and income protection, wellbeing and sports programmes, employee resource groups, 26 weeks of paid parental leave for primary caregivers, an Employee Share Plan, beautiful offices, flexible working, career development, and many other benefits that reflect our human value, you’ll do the best work of your life at Xero.