Chief Human Resources Officer — Last-Mile Delivery Platform

The mandate

This last-mile delivery platform serves business and consumer customers through stations, employed teams and delivery partners. The business is working to strengthen service reliability and operational consistency. Route plans require closer alignment with actual attendance and productivity patterns; shift planning needs to reduce late changes and improve hand-off reliability; partner retention must be improved to preserve trained capacity; and frontline leaders need capacity to move from reactive gap-filling to proactive delivery improvement. The role will address workforce planning, partner engagement and frontline leadership capability during peak and normal operating periods.

The group is creating a Chief Human Resources Officer role to redesign workforce capacity around reliable, lawful work. The CHRO will own people strategy, workforce planning, organisation, talent, reward, employee relations, partner-labour standards and people operations. Operations owns routes and service; procurement owns commercial partner contracts; safety retains independent authority. The CHRO must connect demand, skill, attendance, working time and leadership into an executable capacity plan.

This urgent new appointment is not a recruitment campaign or a mandate to transfer risk to contractors. The board expects better workforce design, fair and predictable scheduling, stronger station leadership and clear accountability for partner conditions. Reliability must improve without relying on chronic overtime or unsafe route density.

Scope and operating context

Based onsite in Hamburg, the role influences approximately 2,150 employees and material partners across Germany and a wider international region. The perimeter includes stations, sorting, dispatch, employed delivery teams, workforce planning, people operations, labour relations, learning and partner-workforce governance. Works councils, unions, agencies and delivery companies are material stakeholders.

Demand varies by day, postcode, customer promise, parcel profile, weather and returns. Headcount alone does not describe capacity. Vehicle, licence, route familiarity, language, security, shift, station flow and supervisor coverage determine whether labour can deliver safely.

The workforce model spans different legal relationships. Contractors and partners remain responsible for their employees, but the platform cannot ignore unsafe, unlawful or exploitative conditions in a service carrying its brand. Control must be designed without creating contradictory direction or misclassification risk.

First-year agenda

The first seventy-five days will establish a demand-to-capacity baseline. The CHRO will connect forecast parcels and stops to attendance, scheduled hours, route duration, skill, vehicle, station, partner, overtime, absence, turnover, service and safety. Representative reliable and failing days will be reconstructed to identify which assumptions broke.

Workforce planning will move to station and skill level. Base, flex and peak capacity will be defined, with lead times and trigger points. Recruitment will follow credible demand and training capacity. Agency or partner labour will be used for appropriate variability, not to conceal a permanently understaffed operation.

Scheduling will prioritise predictability and lawful working time. Shift and route changes will be made with reasonable notice where operations permit, and employees will see how preferences and fairness are considered. Rest, breaks, overtime, leave and fatigue will be incorporated into capacity rather than treated as lost productivity.

Route and productivity standards will be reviewed jointly with operations and safety. They will account for parcel mix, buildings, parking, distance, customer interaction, equipment, weather and required checks. The CHRO will challenge incentives or algorithms that create unsafe pressure and will ensure drivers can report a route as unachievable without automatic penalty.

Partner workforce governance will set minimum evidence on lawful employment, pay, hours, insurance, training, safety, grievance, subcontracting and data. Procurement and operations will incorporate these standards into selection, pricing and performance. Serious or repeated failure will lead to corrective action or exit, with continuity plans.

Frontline leadership will be strengthened. Station managers and dispatch leads need skills in planning, feedback, attendance, incident, works-council engagement and partner management. Span and shift coverage will be assessed. Strong individual couriers will not be promoted without support into roles requiring difficult people decisions.

Retention work will focus on controllable causes. Onboarding, route readiness, equipment, pay accuracy, schedule, manager behaviour, progression and safety will be examined by cohort and station. Broad retention payments will not substitute for correcting unstable work. Critical seasonal and specialist roles may receive targeted measures with expiry.

Employee relations will move earlier. The CHRO will build constructive dialogue with works councils and unions around scheduling, technology, productivity, surveillance and restructuring. Consultation will distinguish real choices from decisions already made. Grievance and whistleblowing routes must work for employed and, where appropriate, partner workers.

People data and algorithmic tools will receive governance. Attendance, location, route and performance data may support operations but cannot become intrusive monitoring without lawful purpose and proportionality. Automated recommendations affecting scheduling, work or discipline require transparency, validation and human review.

By year-end, priority stations should show better staffed-plan attainment, lower unplanned overtime, improved partner stability and more reliable delivery. Safety and employee trust must move with service; improvement based on hidden fatigue will not count.

Leadership responsibilities

The CHRO will advise the group sponsor as an enterprise officer and bring workforce consequence into service and customer choices. They will make capacity and labour risk visible before commercial peaks are promised. Independent safety authority and protected employee voice will be respected.

They will lead people partners, workforce planning, labour relations, reward, learning and operations teams through clear roles. HR must be present at stations and practical in response while retaining standards. Leadership succession will focus on station and regional depth.

The role will maintain direct relationships with employee representatives, delivery partners and public stakeholders. During severe weather, disruption or labour conflict, the CHRO will coordinate people decisions and communication without compromising safety or lawful process.

Measures of success

The executive committee will track staffed-plan attainment, absence, turnover, time to competence, schedule change, overtime, fatigue, partner stability and station leadership coverage. Measures will be segmented by workforce model and location.

Service measures include on-time delivery, failed route, customer promise and capacity-related exception. Safety and people outcomes include incidents, near misses, grievance, pay accuracy, consultation and employee confidence. Labour cost will be assessed alongside reliability and lawful work.

Candidate profile

Candidates should bring 22–28 years in people leadership across logistics, parcel, retail, aviation, manufacturing or another large frontline network. They must have redesigned workforce planning and partner-labour governance while improving service and safety. German employee-relations experience is important.

The board will seek examples of challenging an unsafe productivity standard, stabilising a partner workforce and negotiating major scheduling or technology change with employee representatives. Candidates should understand capacity planning, working time, contractors, reward, safety, algorithms and frontline leadership.

The successful CHRO will be operationally credible and principled. They must engage with drivers and station leaders, confront unrealistic commercial assumptions and make changes through lawful, respectful dialogue.

Compensation and appointment terms

Base compensation is expected from EUR 285,000 to EUR 390,000, accompanied by annual incentive and long-term participation. Reward will balance reliable capacity, safety, employee outcomes, partner quality and leadership depth. Final terms will reflect comparable frontline scope and verified forfeited awards.

Confidentiality

The platform remains unnamed because customer volumes, workforce issues, partner performance and employee relations are sensitive. Detailed information will follow identity, conflict and confidentiality review. Applicants must not submit employee records, partner payroll data, route telemetry or confidential works-council materials.