Head of People & Culture, Commercial IOI

Head of People & Culture, Commercial Diageo IOI

Location: Dublin, Ireland

Reporting into: People & Culture Director IOI

Type: 12 month fixed term contract starting June 2026

Diageo IOI

Diageo IOI is the leading premium drinks business and one of the largest and best-performing food and drink exporters in Ireland.  Our success is built on a rich Irish heritage. From the founding of the Guinness brewery in 1759 to the creation of Baileys four decades ago, we are one of Ireland’s longest standing businesses and best-known brands. Our operations have a positive impact on the economy across the island of Ireland. With over €1 billion in exports, we are the leading exporter of alcoholic beverages.

Our business is sustained through innovation, and we are constantly looking to create new experiences for, and responding to, the changing needs of our customers and consumers.

In the Island of Ireland Market, we employ 250 people, who are part of a wider team of 1,200 highly skilled professionals across five operations, including brewing, production of liqueurs, marketing, sales and commercial support.

As an inclusive, high performing team, we are focused on building sustainable growth, and we live our purpose of celebrating life, every day, everywhere across the Island of Ireland.

The Overview 

As People & Culture Partners, our role is to ensure we have the right conditions in place to develop and release the potential of our talent; our leaders and their teams. We are there to challenge and support in equal measure; to help strategically shape the future organisation to deliver the biggest possible performance outcomes.

The purpose of the role is to be a connected and accountable People & Culture Partner to the Commercial Leadership teams enabling growth and performance through focusing on the four Global People Strategy areas of focus: Advantaged Capabilities, Sustainable Talent, Thriving Organisation and Operational Effectiveness for the market.

About the Function

Our Human Resources (HR) team bring brilliant people together to help us continue building iconic brands. We harness the diverse talents of our people to help them excel. We champion an inclusive and collaborative culture, where all voices and perspectives are celebrated and valued.

HR is at the heart of markets around the world, finding and developing talent that will unearth new ideas and inspire innovation. From creative problem solvers and entrepreneurs to scientists and engineers — whatever your experience and ideas, we’ll help you to harness your talents, empowering you to be the best you can be.

Purpose of Role

Financially this role is accountable for partnering with leadership teams, Global CoEs, Finance teams and Shared Services to ensure we maximize value for organisation, deliver against overheads AOP and deliver our key OE metrics while delivering improved financial performance.

This role operates across the full Island of Ireland Market. It is critical that the incumbent can navigate the matrix organisation, lead through others, build strong relationships and influence within all levels of the business. 

This role leads the people agenda across all of the Commercial functions within the Island of Ireland leveraging our global Centres of Excellence and shared service colleagues.

Key Accountabilities

·       Partner with the commercial leadership teams to build and deliver ambitious and sustainable talent plans which includes robust succession planning to future proof the business, resourcing for our biggest opportunities at pace, strong proactive pipeline of talent, and creating exciting career paths for people which accelerates their development. This will include ongoing collaboration with the Global Functions HRBPs in other markets.

·       Lead the Organisation Effectiveness agenda across the different commercial teams – grounded in the market strategy and by leveraging data and analytics creating possibilities that results in high performing and game changing performance,  delivers cost efficiencies and injects the right reinvestments.  The role provides change leadership across the organisation by pulling the levers of across capability, process, ways of working, culture and leadership to deliver the outcomes for the business.

·       Drive inclusion, diversity & equity agenda bespoke to each commercial area across all HR levers (talent, reward, culture, learning, etc) that creates an inclusive culture where each employee feels valued for their uniqueness and are able to maximize their performance impact.

·       Build high performing teams, coaching line managers to create an agile, stretching and focused performance culture to enable outstanding performance and fulfilling employee experiences collaborating with HR shared service teams and our Centres of Excellence.

·       Instill continuous learning throughout the organisation ensuring employees have access to stretching experiences and great learning content that fuels constant growth in their capabilities and our business performance.

Experience Required

• An innate curiosity to understand what drives the business and how the varying agendas across each commercial team contribute towards driving the market forward, enabling the leader to be able to add value through seeing each scenario through the lens of both the business objective and the people agenda
• Successful partnership of senior stakeholders at all levels, resulting in strong and positive outcomes
• Highly conceptual – is able to join the dots and paint a picture that makes sense and influences the business
• Deep understanding of organisational design principles and how to create principles for each commercial team to drive growth/progression
• Change and project management skills (including influencing change)
• Experience in working successfully with stakeholders at the most senior level – black-belt coach– influencing, supporting and challenging
• Exceptional ability to build and maintain genuine relationships based on mutual trust & respect
• Excellent talent judgement – ability to assess talent gaps, and suggest actions needed to strengthen the talent bench
• Being able to excel when dealing with ambiguity, complexity and working within a fast-paced, entrepreneurial and matrixed environment
• Ability to understand and drive insights from HR data, analysing to measure impacts, assess OE plans, diagnose trends and link to business performance outcomes
• Deep personal accountability for great performance
• Experience working across multiple countries/geographies/cultures

Working with us

Flexibility is key to our success. Talk to us about what flexibility means to you so that you’re supported to manage your wellbeing and balance your priorities from day one.

We recognise and value performance, offering our people a highly competitive Rewards and Benefits package.

Our purpose is to celebrate life, every day, everywhere. And creating an inclusive culture, where everyone feels valued and that they can belong, is a crucial part of this.

We embrace diversity in the broadest possible sense. This means that you’ll be welcomed and celebrated for who you are just by being you. You’ll be part of and help build and champion an inclusive culture that celebrates people of different gender, ethnicity, ability, age, sexual orientation, social class, educational backgrounds, experiences and more.

Our ambition is to create the best performing, most trusted and respected consumer products companies in the world. Join us and help transform our business as we take our brands to the next level and build new ones as part of shaping the next generation of celebrations for consumers around the world!

Feel inspired? Then this may be the opportunity for you!

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