Senior People Partner

Reporting to the Head of People & Culture (Corporate Centers or Commercial), the Senior People Partner will serve as the strategic people advisor and workforce transformation leader for a designated business portfolio, partnering with ExCo members, Directors and senior leaders to drive business performance, organizational effectiveness and workforce capability outcomes. The role is accountable for translating business strategy into integrated workforce, talent, organization and culture interventions that accelerate execution of Safaricom’s growth ambitions.
Operating within the People Partnering model, the role drives commercial intensity, leadership effectiveness, skills-based workforce deployment, workforce planning, talent management, organizational design and employee experience outcomes. The Senior People Partner acts as the primary interface between business leadership and the wider People function, orchestrating support across Talent, Skills & Careers, Reward, Employee Experience, Digital HR, Shared Services and Safety & Wellbeing functions to deliver integrated people solutions.
The role plays a critical leadership position in embedding agile ways of working, flow-to-work principles, workforce intelligence, AI-enabled people insights and future workforce readiness initiatives. Through strong business acumen and strategic influence, the Senior People Partner ensures workforce decisions are aligned to business priorities, productivity outcomes and long-term organizational sustainability.
The Senior People Partner is strategically accountable for: 

• Strategic Business Partnership: Partner with business leadership teams to align workforce, organization and people strategies with business objectives. Provide strategic challenge, guidance and insights that strengthen decision making and accelerate execution. Drive measurable business outcomes through people interventions linked to growth, productivity and organizational performance.
•  Workforce, Talent and Capability Leadership: Lead workforce planning, talent management, succession, leadership development and skills readiness initiatives across the supported portfolio. Ensure the business has the capabilities required to deliver current and future strategic priorities. Champion skills-based workforce approaches and talent mobility across the enterprise.
• Organization Effectiveness and Culture: Drive organization effectiveness, culture transformation, employee experience and agile ways of working across the business. Enable leaders to build high-performing, engaged and accountable teams. Ensure organization structures, ways of working and leadership practices support sustainable business performance.
• Integrated People Solutions: Act as the primary integrator across People Area Chapters and Digital HR Tribe to deliver seamless people solutions. Translate business needs into enterprise people priorities and interventions. Ensure consistent and impactful delivery of people programs, policies and initiatives.
• Agile Transformation & Ways of Working: Lead the adoption and maturity of agile ways of working across supported business units. Partner with business leaders, Agile PMO, Area Chapters and transformation teams to embed flow-to-work principles, improve organizational agility and strengthen delivery effectiveness. Ensure workforce, organization and capability decisions support enterprise agility and rapid execution of strategic priorities.
• Workforce, Talent & Leadership Capability: Lead workforce planning, talent management, succession, leadership capability and future skills readiness initiatives across the portfolio. Ensure leaders are equipped to effectively lead people, drive performance and build high-performing teams. Strengthen organizational capability through strategic talent, skills and leadership interventions.
• Safety Culture & Leadership Accountability: Partner with leaders to embed a proactive, behaviour-based safety culture that strengthens employee wellbeing, accountability and organizational performance. Ensure safety becomes an integral part of leadership practices, workforce decisions and day-to-day operations. Support the organization in creating a safe, healthy and high-performing work environment.
• Diversity, Equity & Inclusion: Champion enterprise diversity, equity and inclusion by embedding inclusive workforce practices, influencing leadership decisions and ensuring equitable talent outcomes that strengthen organisational performance and culture.
• AI-Enabled Workforce Insights & Strategic Analytics: Leverage AI-enabled workforce intelligence, predictive analytics and business insights to shape strategic workforce decisions, anticipate future capability requirements and improve organisational performance.
• Innovation & External Workforce Foresight: Lead innovation by translating emerging workforce trends, external benchmarks and future-of-work practices into strategic people interventions that strengthen organisational competitiveness.
• Enterprise Agility & Flow-to-Work Enablement: Partner with senior leaders to embed Agile operating models and enterprise flow-to-work principles that optimise workforce deployment, organisational agility and business responsiveness.
• Risk, Governance & Control Ownership: Embed and maintain effective risk, governance, compliance, and control practices within the function by proactively identifying and mitigating operational, regulatory, financial, people, technology, and reputational risks. Ensure adherence to internal policies, regulatory requirements, audit actions, and enterprise governance frameworks while driving accountability, ethical practices, and a strong controls environment across all areas of responsibility.

Health and Safety

• Uphold the company code of conduct, policies and procedures, ensuring integrity and accountability in every aspect of your work.
• All employees have a responsibility to adhere to safety, health, and wellbeing policies, guidelines and procedures in all actions and decisions.

Strategic Business Partnership
 

• Serve as trusted advisor to business leadership teams on workforce and organizational matters.
• Translate business strategy into actionable people, workforce and capability plans.
• Challenge and influence leadership decisions to strengthen business performance.
• Drive workforce productivity and organization effectiveness initiatives.
• Provide insights on workforce trends, risks and opportunities.
• Support business transformation, restructuring and growth initiatives.
• Facilitate strategic workforce discussions during planning and review cycles.
• Align people priorities to business outcomes and enterprise objectives.
• Build strong stakeholder relationships across business and People functions.

Workforce, Talent and Capability Leadership

• Lead strategic workforce planning activities across the portfolio.
• Drive succession planning and leadership pipeline development.
• Partner with Talent teams to strengthen talent identification and acceleration.
• Embed skills-based workforce planning and deployment approaches.
• Support capability development aligned to future workforce requirements.
• Facilitate talent mobility and flow-to-work deployment across functions.
• Monitor workforce risks related to capability, succession and critical skills.
• Guide leadership teams on talent and capability investment priorities.
• Strengthen workforce readiness for future business and technology demands.

Organization Effectiveness and Culture

• Lead organization design and effectiveness interventions.
• Support implementation of agile operating models and ways of working.
• Drive culture transformation initiatives aligned to business priorities.
• Enable leadership accountability for employee engagement outcomes.
• Champion employee experience improvements across key workforce journeys.
• Support implementation of safety and wellbeing initiatives.
• Facilitate change management and adoption activities during transformation.
• Drive continuous improvement in organizational effectiveness metrics.
• Strengthen leadership capability and team effectiveness practices.

Integrated People Solutions

• Coordinate delivery of integrated people solutions across CoEs.
• Partner with Digital HR teams to improve employee experiences.
• Translate business requirements into people program priorities.
• Ensure effective implementation of enterprise-wide people initiatives.
• Facilitate resolution of complex workforce and organizational challenges.
• Support governance and prioritization of people interventions.
• Leverage workforce intelligence and analytics to guide decision making.
• Drive adoption of people technologies and digital solutions.
• Ensure consistent employee and leadership experiences across the portfolio.

Agile Transformation & Ways of Working

• Drive adoption of Safaricom’s Agile Operating Model within assigned portfolios.
• Partner with Agile PMO to improve agile maturity and business outcomes.
• Embed flow-to-work principles and workforce deployment mechanisms.
• Support leaders in designing agile structures, teams and operating models.
• Facilitate organization interventions that improve speed, productivity and collaboration.
• Build leadership capability in agile leadership and adaptive management practices.
• Identify organizational barriers impacting agility and execution.
• Drive workforce mobility and cross-functional deployment aligned to priority initiatives.
• Monitor and report on agile maturity, adoption and business impact measures.

Workforce, Talent & Leadership Capability

• Lead enterprise workforce planning and capability planning initiatives.
• Drive succession planning and leadership pipeline development.
• Partner with Talent teams to identify and accelerate critical talent.
• Champion skills-based workforce planning and deployment.
• Build future-ready capabilities aligned to business priorities.
• Drive upliftment of people manager capability through leadership development, coaching and capability interventions.
• Equip leaders to effectively manage performance, engagement, culture and employee experience outcomes.
• Facilitate talent mobility and deployment across the organization.
• Strengthen workforce readiness for future business and technology demands.

Safety Culture & Leadership Accountability

•  Drive adoption of behaviour-based safety principles across supported functions.
• Partner with leaders to embed safety accountability within leadership practices.
• Support implementation of safety culture improvement initiatives.
• Use workforce insights to identify emerging safety and wellbeing risks.
• Facilitate leadership conversations on safety performance and culture.
• Promote integration of safety considerations into workforce and organization decisions.
• Support initiatives that improve employee wellbeing and psychological safety.
• Partner with Safety & Wellbeing teams to strengthen safety maturity.
• Monitor and drive progress against safety culture objectives and outcomes.

Diversity, Equity & Inclusion

• Support to drive the DEI agenda.
• Influence executive leaders to champion inclusive leadership and equitable workforce practices.
• Embed DEI into workforce planning, organisation design and talent decisions.
• Govern diversity representation, inclusion and belonging outcomes.
• Champion psychological safety and inclusive organisational culture.
• Report enterprise DEI performance and continuous improvement priorities.
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AI-Enabled Workforce Insights & Strategic Analytics

• Translate AI-enabled workforce intelligence into strategic business recommendations.
• Develop predictive workforce insights supporting future talent and capability planning.
• Analyse workforce productivity, performance and organisational health trends.
• Identify emerging workforce risks using advanced analytics and predictive modelling.
• Advise leadership using evidence-based workforce insights.
• Drive adoption of AI-enabled people analytics across supported business areas.
• Partner with Digital HR and Workforce Intelligence teams to integrate enterprise workforce data.
• Build executive dashboards that support workforce governance and business performance.
• Champion data-driven decision making across leadership teams.

Innovation & External Workforce Foresight

• Monitor external workforce, technology and future-of-work trends.
• Translate external insights into innovative people strategies.
• Lead experimentation with new people practices and operating models.
• Partner with Strategy and Innovation teams on workforce innovation initiatives.
• Identify emerging workforce risks and future capability requirements.
• Benchmark global people practices and recommend improvements.
• Drive continuous innovation across people programmes.
• Build leadership awareness of future workforce trends.
• Scale successful innovations across the enterprise.

Enterprise Agility & Flow-to-Work Enablement

• Advise leadership on Agile People Models and enterprise agility.
• Enable flow-to-work deployment aligned to strategic business priorities.
• Support workforce mobility across tribes, chapters and enterprise missions.
• Embed Agile governance and workforce deployment principles.
• Partner with EAOE on Agile maturity improvement initiatives.
• Remove organisational barriers affecting workforce agility.
• Coach leaders on Agile leadership and organisational adaptability.
• Support enterprise operating model transitions.
• Monitor Agile adoption and organisational effectiveness outcomes.

Core competencies, knowledge and experience:

Customer Obsession

• Deepen team connection to our customers and communities.
• Foster authentic relationships with customers and partners that build trust.
• Explicitly take customer-centric decisions and take personal ownership to achieve results.
• Simplify processes through digitalization and promote a digital mindset and digital first customer experience.
• Stay focused on the big priorities, know when to make meaningful trade-offs and demonstrate brilliant execution.

Purpose

• Create an inspiring vision for your team to drive strategy and performance.
• Show ambition and courage, empowering others to go beyond the plan.
• Bold and challenge teams to reimagine how things are done.
• Prompt new thinking and ideas by asking “what if” questions.
• Use knowledge of the external environment (customers, partners, competition, external bodies) to identify and act on opportunities for growth at pace.

Innovation

• Create psychological safety so everyone can have an impact.
• Fuel innovative ideas from others and test them to enable growth.
• Explore successes and failures with curiosity and resilience; fearlessly recognizing lessons learned.
• Share your ongoing learning and personal purpose with others.
• Learn fast from digital adoption, using learnings to drive simplicity, scale and efficiency.

Collaboration

• Articulate your team’s role in making our strategy happen, prioritizing and aligning resources with current and future needs.
• Actively collaborate to break silos and hold your team accountable to do the same.
• Develop others to make the most of their talents and coach them to take ownership to get things done.
• Create an inclusive environment ensuring the safety and wellbeing of others.
• Live our Purpose and demonstrate the highest Standard of integrity.

• Bachelor’s Degree in human resources, Business Administration, Organizational Psychology or related field.
• Master’s degree in Human Resources, Business Administration, Organizational Development or related field preferred.
• Minimum 10 years’ experience in Human Resources, Organizational Effectiveness, Talent Management or Business Partnering roles.
• Demonstrated experience partnering with senior leadership teams and executives.
• Strong knowledge of organization design, workforce planning, talent management and change management practices.
• Experience operating within agile organizations and transformation environments.
• Strong understanding of workforce analytics, talent intelligence and skills-based workforce models.
• Commercial and business acumen with ability to link people outcomes to business performance.
• Professional HR certification such as IHRM, SHRM-SCP, CIPD, HRCI or equivalent preferred.
• Strong stakeholder management, consulting, influencing and facilitation skills.
• Strong data, analytics and AI fluency with the ability to interpret workforce insights and translate them into strategic business recommendations.

How to Apply. If you feel that you are up to the challenge and possess the necessary qualification and experience, kindly proceed to create/ update your candidate profile on the recruitment portal and then Click on the apply button. Remember to attach your resume.
 

Safaricom is the leading technology company in East Africa. Our purpose is to transform lives by connecting people to people, people to opportunities and people to information. We keep over 60 million customers connected across Kenya and Ethiopia, and play a critical role in the society, supporting over 1.13 million jobs both directly and indirectly while our total economic value was estimated at KES 1.1 trillion ($ 8.5 billion) for the 12 months through March 2025.

Listed on the Nairobi Securities Exchange and with annual revenues of close to KES 388 billion as at March 2025, Safaricom provides connectivity through wide range of technology. Our 2G, 3G, 4G and 5G network in aggregate covers over 99% of Kenya’s population.

We run the world’s largest mobile payment system and Africa’s largest Fintech, M-PESA, the world’s first mobile money transfer system. By empowering millions of customers to transact, save or borrow money through their mobile phone, M-PESA has driven financial inclusion in Kenya to 84.8% of the adult population in 2024, from a low of 26.7% in 2006, and generated over KES 161 billion in revenue as at FY25.

Our subsidiary, Safaricom Telecommunications Ethiopia, has deployed world class network and services to contribute to Ethiopia’s digital transformation.

Safaricom is an equal opportunity employer, actively recruiting staff from different backgrounds reflecting the communities that we serve. We are committed to equal gender representation at all levels.

As part of our ongoing commitment to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), we continue to work towards improving energy and resource efficiency in our network and facilities to reduce carbon emissions and our fuel consumption. We remain committed to becoming a Net Zero carbon-emitting company by 2050.