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Spendesk, an AI-powered spend management and procurement platform, is seeking a Head of People Operations & Employee Relations to lead its People Operations function across five European countries (France, UK, Spain, Germany, Italy). You will report to the VP People and manage a team of two People Operations Specialists, supporting over 250 employees.
This is a leadership role focused on operational excellence and continuous improvement rather than building from scratch. You will own the People Operations and Employee Relations scope across these countries, ensuring processes are compliant, scalable, and employee-centric.
Key responsibilities include:
**People Operations Strategy**: Define and drive the People Operations roadmap aligned with company priorities. Clarify roles, responsibilities and escalation paths. Identify opportunities to simplify and standardize processes. Coach and develop your team while balancing day-to-day delivery with continuous improvement initiatives.
**Employee Journey & Payroll Operations**: Oversee the quality, consistency and timeliness of employee journey and payroll processes across all five countries. Act as an escalation point for complex or sensitive situations. Continuously assess and improve employee experience. Work closely with Finance and payroll providers on reporting, reconciliations and operational improvements.
**Automation & AI Integration**: Make automation and AI core to the People Operations model. Redesign workflows to reduce manual effort and improve data flows. Define and drive a roadmap of high-impact use cases including automated workflows, self-service resources and AI-enabled solutions, while ensuring thoughtful governance of sensitive people data.
**Employee & Labour Relations**: Co-lead employee representative and social dialogue matters across France, Spain and Germany, with particular focus on CSE activities in France and equivalent representative bodies in other countries. Manage social dialogue calendars, coordinate employee representative meetings, support elections and consultation processes.
The role uses a modern people ops stack including Personio, Siit, Dust, Claude, G-Suite and Notion.
**Requirements**:
- Proven experience leading a People Operations function or department (either building from scratch or developing an established scope)
- Significant international experience comfortable operating across multiple countries, local regulations and ways of working
- Hands-on experience with AI and automation (AI agents, automated workflows or similar solutions)
- Strong payroll expertise with ability to effectively challenge external payroll providers
- Experience managing Works Councils
- Strong compliance mindset and ability to embed compliance into People processes
- Rigorous, detail-oriented approach to handling confidential and sensitive information
- Ability to balance strategic thinking with operational pragmatism
- Employee-first approach while maintaining focus on scalability and efficiency
- Understanding of operational and business challenges and ability to translate them into effective People Operations processes
