PEOPLE MANAGER

PEOPLE MANAGER

LOCATION: Lilongwe

DESCRIPTION

Heifer International is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, religion, colour, national origin, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, status as a protected veteran, among other things, or status as a qualified individual with some form of disability.

THE ORGANIZATION

Since 1944, Heifer International has supported over 36 million smallholder farming families globally to lift themselves out of hunger and poverty while caring for the Earth. In Malawi, our aim is to help 500,000 of Heifer Africa’s 6.745 million households achieve sustainable living income by 2030. Through our maiden Signature Program, currently under design – we will set the pace, focusing on Dairy, Beef and Banana as primary value chains and Oil Seeds, and Poultry as secondary value chains.

FUNCTION

Reporting directly to the Country Director, with a matrix reporting relationship to the Senior People Director, this role partners strategically with the Country Shared Leadership Team to enable the organization to operate as a dynamic and adaptive living system. The role translates the Country Business Operations Strategy into an evolving People Strategy and delivers operational plans that respond to the organization’s changing needs and priorities. As a member of the Regional Community of Practice and the Global People Network (GPN), the role brings Malawi’s context and insights into regional and global conversations, contributing to the co-creation of both short- and long-term people strategies. Working closely with leadership, the role identifies emerging people needs, supports organizational change, and facilitates people-centered solutions that strengthen program impact and organizational effectiveness.

The role advances key people priorities, including Talent Management, Performance Management, Learning and Development, Organizational Development, Compensation and Benefits, and People Business Processes, ensuring these systems remain responsive, integrated, and aligned to the organization’s mission. It also fosters a strong service-oriented and frontline-focused culture, strengthening collaboration across teams and ensuring the effective delivery of People services in line with Heifer International Malawi’s standards.

RESPONSIBILITIES & DELIVERABLES

A. Shared Leadership (20%) Facilitate Leadership Collaboration: Ensure regular and effective communication among Country Shared Leadership Team members, promoting cross-functional collaboration and shared decision-making. Shared Decision-Making Processes: Design and implement frameworks for collective decision-making, ensuring that decisions reflect input from relevant stakeholders at all levels. Role Clarification: Support the leadership team in clarifying roles, responsibilities, and areas of ownership, ensuring that authority is distributed appropriately across functions. Leadership Circles/Committees: Establish and coordinate cross-functional leadership circles or working groups to address specific strategic issues or projects. Foster a Culture of Shared Leadership from Frontline to Leadership: Work closely with the Country Director, Shared leadership team to frontline to embed shared leadership values into the organizational culture through training, communication, and role modeling. Capacity Building: Develop and implement leadership development programs to enhance skills related to collaboration, communication, conflict resolution, and decision-making within a shared leadership framework. Team Building Initiatives: Organize team-building exercises to foster trust, collaboration, and a sense of collective ownership within the leadership team and across departments. Facilitate Open Communication Channels: Establish and maintain effective communication platforms (e.g., regular leadership meetings, online tools, feedback mechanisms) to promote transparency and ensure information flows across leadership levels.

B. Country People Strategy, Roadmaps and Policy Development and Alignment to Africa and Global Co-Design work (20%) Co-create and continuously evolve People strategies for Heifer International Malawi, ensuring alignment with the organization’s vision, mission, and values, while remaining responsive to the changing needs of the organizational ecosystem. Co-develop and implement Heifer International Malawi’s annual People Work Plan, ensuring it remains adaptive, integrated, and aligned within the business partnering framework. Contribute Malawi’s contextual insights to inform Africa and Global People Strategies and Policies, enabling shared learning and strengthening the organization as an interconnected and evolving system. Navigate and respond to complex organizational challenges by designing adaptive people solutions, anticipating risks, and fostering a continuous learning culture that supports innovation and resilience. Ensure that policies and procedures remain fair, contextually relevant, and compliant with Malawian labor laws, working collaboratively with local legal advisors and regional teams to interpret and apply guidance in a dynamic environment. Uphold the highest standards of confidentiality and trust, ensuring that People practices support the organization’s integrity and evolving needs.

C. Community of Practice (10%) Define Objectives: Work with leadership and team members to clearly define the goals, scope, and objectives of the Community of Practice, aligning it with the broader organizational strategy. Identify Key Stakeholders: Engage key stakeholders from different departments to participate in the CoP, ensuring cross-functional collaboration. Platform Management: Identify, set up, or oversee digital platforms for collaboration, knowledge sharing, and community discussions (e.g., forums, internal chat systems, knowledge repositories). Facilitate Meetings and Workshops: Organize and lead regular CoP meetings, workshops, and knowledge-sharing sessions that encourage dialogue, learning, and practical problem-solving. Knowledge Management and Sharing Curate Best Practices: Collect, document, and disseminate best practices, lessons learned, and innovative solutions from team members across the organization. Resource Creation: Develop guides, toolkits, and other resources to support the professional development of CoP members. Foster Peer Learning: Encourage peer-to-peer learning and mentoring within the CoP, ensuring knowledge transfer across all levels of the organization. Monitor Knowledge Gaps: Identify knowledge or skill gaps within the community and collaborate with learning and development teams to address these needs through training or other resources.

D. Delivery of the strategic strands by implementing the agreed workplans within the Business Partnering and Matrix Framework (30%)

People Business Processes Management Performance Management Compensation & Benefits Learning & Development Organizational Development, Culture and Change People Business Process Management The “hygiene” factors performed to a high standard and consistently checked for their relevance and standard. Ensure the implementation and effective use of business processes such as Zadock Star System – Standards Assessment Tool (SATs) strategy. Provide specialist advice and guidance to managers on employee relations issues (i.e. disciplinary, grievance, capability, bullying and harassment) in line with policies and statutory legislation, working with legal. Maintain confidential records related to grievances and complaints and coordinate their resolution. Facilitate employee process compliance with Heifer International’s policies, procedures and local labor laws including annual mandatory policy acknowledgement process. Administration of staffing changes promotion, transfers and terminations in consultation with the relevant line managers. Implement effective safe working practices and procedures. Manage and monitor expenditure against budgets for strategic and annual plans in adherence to financial guidelines, ensures value for money, and acts as appropriate within delegated authorities. Understand the established Heifer International business processes and systems and ensure continuous improvement such as Agresso and Coral. Talent Management People Planning/Workforce planning/Succession planning implementation in the operations. Manage organograms and set up discussions with Country Shared Leadership on future staffing needs. Coordinate the in-country succession planning sessions and employee engagement barazas. Ensure Job Creation control, management of staffing pattern and Job Benchmarking End to end recruitment coordination in an effective, timely, fair and transparent manner (including preparing and circulating job adverts, conducting assessment tools, screening, interviewing and making recommendations, reference checks, preparing job offers and related documentation). Provide guidance to the hiring managers on job reviews and development of job descriptions, grading, process. Coordinate the onboarding process and ensure all new hires have a good understanding of and subscribe to Heifer International’s vision, mission and values by understanding it’s approaches, policies, procedures, strategies and operations to perform their job. Coordinate and provide relevant statistical information and data on recruitment activities, gender analysis, and other applicable recruitment metrics. Recruitment support & weekly recruitment monitoring, reporting as per approved template. Work with Country Director and other stakeholders to assess talent needs for proposals and new projects. Recruitment and development of new skills required for effective programming and delivery of the Plan Performance Management Advocates a performance-driven culture underpinned by strong performance management capability. Challenges the local senior leadership to role model a performance culture through their decisions on performance and reward processes, policies, and escalated cases. Enforces Performance Management process and policies. Lead implementation and maintenance of a fit for purpose performance management system that is in alignment with organizational and goals that drives high performance. Learning & Development Identify in country training needs, plan, manage and coordinate the delivery of learning solutions across the business ensuring the completion of training plan including the mandatory training of the Organization. Coach Managers to identify employee learning and career aspirations and agree effective development plans. Recommend suitable learning methods and develop an annual Heifer International Malawi’s learning and development plan, supported by learning initiatives from the Regional People Team. Providing guidance on staff capacity building and in formulating the annual Learning and Development plan including in-house training programs such as performance management workshops and orientation programs, using coaching and mentoring mechanism Organization Development, Culture and Change Promote the inverted organogram and shared leadership culture as part of the frontline integration strategy. Promote Heifer International’s staff culture initiatives to enhance collaboration across the organization. Coordinate change initiatives within Heifer International Malawi to drive a positive work environment. Give accurate and appropriate advice, training and support to managers to recognize, respect and enable diversity, inclusion equity and belonging. Design and implement a coherent organizational structure that is consistent with Heifer Internationals’ practices and appropriate to program needs. Actively promote a coaching, mentoring culture, including secondment opportunities in consultation with and after Country Director Malawi’s approval to support staff development and career growth. Contribute to the development of an organizational culture that reflects our values, promotes accountability and high performance, encourages a team culture of learning, creativity and innovation, and frees up our people to deliver outstanding results for small holder farmers and excellent customer service for our staff, donors and partners. Has overall responsibility for ensuring, in partnership with the Regional People Team, in the creation of a positive employee relations climate within Heifer International Malawi in order to drive individual and business performance. Through constant engagement with stakeholders, identify improved ways of working. Total Rewards – Compensation & Benefits Works with the local senior management team to ensure goals and rewards are aligned across teams and individuals in the organization Compensation & Benefits Management & Implementation. Participate in compensation reviews and benchmarking and work closely with the Regional People team. Using the agreed pay decision framework, drives internal equity through following the applicable compensation policies and advising management on compensation levels based on internal equity and external competitiveness analysis. Provide advice to new staff on benefits entitlement (medical, pension and group life). Collaborate with the thematic Compensation and Benefits Lead at the Region and/or Africa People Director. Ensure relevant pay proposal for market competitiveness.

E. Frontline Execution, Operational Excellence and Customer Orientation (15%) Lead the Implementation of People Pillar Frontline Execution Strategy in Malawi by embedding the Annual Africa PD Frontline Roadmap. Ensure that all processes, procedures, People Strategy implementation and People interventions incorporate the feedback and needs of frontline staff. Ensure frontline delivery hub efficiency and effectiveness for smallholder farmer impact As part of the Shared Leadership, build a customer orientated team by embedding “customer focus” as way of life/DNA of Heifer International Malawi – from Small Holder Farmer to Front Line to Country Office. Establish, maintain, and improve active and regular working relationships with external stakeholders such as government authorities, service providers and comparable organizations etc.

F. Administration & Any Other Assigned Function (5%) May perform other job-related duties as assigned.

MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS

A Bachelor’s Degree in Human Resources, Business, or a related field. Continued HR education/certification is an added advantage. A minimum of 10 -12 years’ experience, 5 of which will be in managing HR functions in a dynamic organization. Experience in implementing strategy, meeting objectives, and working within a matrix structure. Excellent Organization Development/influencing skills, collaborative leadership, team management, active listening, negotiation, and presentation skills. Competence to build and effectively manage interpersonal relationships at all levels of the company. Good analytical skills. Effective negotiator, with the ability to positively influence cross departmental and cross sector working. In-depth knowledge of Malawi Labor Law. Previous experience with an International NGO is highly valued. Previous experience with HRIS. Local Human Resources Certification Key Behavioural Competencies Accountability Professional Excellence Humility Customer Orientation Empathy Innovation

Deadline for Application: 19th April 2026.

APPLY NOW Link