Head - Human Resources - Retail/Fashion

Location: Corporate Office - Sector 32, Gurgaon (base location for this role) Manufacturing Facility - Ludhiana, Punjab (regular monthly presence expected) Role & Title: Head - General Manager (Senior GM may be considered for an exceptional profile) Reports to: MD & CEO Retail Footprint: 30 COCO stores, ~100 FOFO + COFO stores, ~300 shop-in-shops across large-format retail, plus D2C. Total Employees: 1,800 - approx. 1,000 at the manufacturing facility; approx. 800 across corporate, regional offices and front-end retail. Direct Team: 3 in Corporate (2 Payroll, 1 Talent Acquisition), 2 at Factory (Payroll). A dedicated PMS specialist hire is in progress and will report into this role. Work Week: 6-day work week (1st & 3rd Saturdays off) Financial Year: April to March Company Overview: Company is in a deliberate consolidation and reset phase: tightening costs, rebuilding margins, and institutionalizing governance, systems, and performance discipline to public-market-ready standards. HR today runs largely on legacy, informal, people-dependent practices. This position is therefore a transformation mandate, not a steady-state administration role. The Head HR is expected to convert the HR function from ad-hoc and discretionary to fact-based, process-driven, and professionally managed within 18 - 24 months - and to do so in a promoter-led environment where change must be won through credibility and data, not authority alone. Key Responsibilities: - Performance Management: Institutionalize a company-wide KRA/KPI architecture in which every role is traceable to a P&L lever (topline, gross margin, cost, or cash); run quarterly and annual appraisal cycles on time, against a declared rubric, with documented approvals. - HR Analytics & MIS: Build a single source of truth for headcount, attrition, and manpower cost; establish HR dashboards on a monthly CEO and quarterly Board cadence. Own attrition as a measured, targeted metric. - Digitization: Consolidate the payroll / time & attendance / HRMS stack into one integrated, adopted system; retire manual and parallel processes rather than layering tools on top of them. - Talent Acquisition: Lead leadership and specialist hiring for a professionalizing organization; institute measurable performance management of search and staffing partners (TAT, submission quality, closure rates). - Manufacturing HR & IR: Own industrial relations, statutory compliance, and blue-collar workforce productivity at the Ludhiana facility (~1,000 employees), working closely with the Production and Supply Chain managers. - Engagement & Culture: Establish and track an employee NPS baseline; drive SOP and process adoption starting with senior and middle management modelling compliance - accountability that is conversational, not surveillance-driven. - Compensation & Benefits: Design rational compensation structures, including the roll-out of performance-linked variable pay; eliminate undocumented or discretionary increments and ensure clean, auditable payroll governance. Candidate Profile: - Experience: 12 - 18 years of total experience, with at least 4 - 5 years leading an HR function or a major HR vertical. - Must have: Has personally led at least one HR transformation - manual/informal to system-led - in a promoter-driven or family-managed business transitioning to professional management. This is the single most important screening criterion. - Must have: Hands-on exposure to managing HR for a manufacturing facility, including IR, statutory compliance, and a blue-collar workforce. - Industry: Retail / fashion strongly preferred; FMCG or consumer durables acceptable where scale and multi-site complexity are comparable. Exposure to IPO-readiness, PE-backed, or listed-company governance environments is a distinct advantage. - Education: MBA preferred but not mandatory - demonstrated outcomes matter more than pedigree. - Orientation: A builder's temperament: data-first, comfortable with ambiguity, and able to hold a position with senior stakeholders while carrying the organization along.