Organisation Design Lead at Unilever in Manchester, England, GB

Title : Organisation Design Lead

Reporting into: David Mee

Work Level : WL3X

Location: Sunlight House Kingston

Primary focus: Driving major organisation design programmes and complex restructures, with equal focus on artificial intelligence-enabled organisation design capability — methodology, self-serve tools, agent workflows and hands-on expert support

Role overview

Drives Unilever’s major organisation design programmes and its artificial intelligence-enabled organisation design capability, leading complex restructures hands-on while combining organisation design methodology, self-serve products, agent-supported workflows and expert support for complex restructures. The role translates organisation design judgement into scalable guardrails, diagnostics and decision support so leaders, People Business Partners and journey teams make better design choices.

Key accountabilities

Drive the global organisation design approach — principles, methods, guardrails and quality standards for routine and complex design decisions.

Develop artificial intelligence-enabled self-serve organisation design tools and agent workflows, translating organisation design expertise into prompts, diagnostics, option-generation logic and escalation rules.

Enable leaders, People Business Partners and journey teams to use organisation design tools for routine changes, while providing expert support for complex restructures and precedent-setting choices.

Apply organisation analytics — spans, layers, role clarity, cost, capability and workforce impact — to stress-test options and surface risks.

Maintain human-in-the-loop governance for organisation design agents, reviewing guardrail breaches and feeding learnings into tools, methodology and precedent library.

Partner with data experts so workforce scenarios and trusted data flow into organisation design choices and approved changes feed back to plans and systems of record.

Build organisation design capability across People teams and practitioners so major programmes are delivered consistently, at pace and with strong consultation discipline.

Required capabilities & experience

Deep expertise in organisation design and operating model design, including roles, spans and layers, decision rights, governance, cost and implementation risk.

Strong artificial intelligence and product mindset — able to translate organisation design judgement into guardrails, prompts, agent workflows, diagnostics and intuitive self-serve tools.

Experience supporting major restructures and senior leader decision-making in complex, matrixed organisations.

Ability to use organisation data and analytics to interpret health, structural options, workforce implications and design risk.

Strong facilitation and stakeholder influence, with judgement to identify trade-offs, guardrail breaches and escalation points.

Key partnerships

Business leaders and Chief Human Resources Officers — complex organisation design decisions and regional scaling

People Business Partners, People practitioners and journey teams — tool adoption and capability build

Workforce & Agentic Planning — workforce-to-organisation design scenario loop

Workforce Data and Artificial Intelligence Foundations — trusted data and agent/system integration

Finance; Legal and Employee Relations; Global Digital and Technology — cost, consultation, risk and technology enablement

Success measures

Routine organisation design changes completed through artificial intelligence-enabled self-serve tools within agreed guardrails.

Leaders and People Business Partners trust and use organisation design agents for options, diagnostics and risk flags.

Complex restructures supported with clear methodology, evidence and governance.

Organisation health insights available self-serve from shared data.

Cycle time and specialist load reduce without loss of design quality or risk control.

NOTES

What We Offer

Not only do we offer a competitive salary and pension scheme, we also offer an annual bonus, subsidised gym membership, a discounted staff shop and shares. You’ll have the opportunity to work directly with our renowned and exciting brands in a flexible and hybrid working environment.

Whilst the role is advertised on a full-time basis, we would be happy to discuss possible flexible working options and what this may look like for you. We are a key advocate of wellbeing and offer a variety of support for our people including hubs, programmes and development opportunities. We strive to achieve a family-friendly and inclusive workplace and to, above all, create possibilities for all.

Diversity at Unilever is about inclusion, embracing differences, creating possibilities and growing together for better business performance. We embrace diversity in our workforce. This means giving full and fair consideration to all applicants and continuing development of all employees regardless of age, disability, gender reassignment, race, religion or belief, sex, sexual orientation, marriage and civil partnership, and pregnancy and maternity. We are also more than happy to provide reasonable adjustments during our application and interview process to enable you to be present your best self. To find out more, including about our Employee Resource Groups, please click here Equity, Diversity & Inclusion at Unilever | Unilever.

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