Chief People Officer — Speciality-Materials Portfolio

The mandate

The portfolio produces speciality materials in campaigns for demanding industrial customers. Working capital has grown because sales, planning, production, quality and procurement each protect their own risk through stock. Incentives reward volume, service and purchase price separately; no leader owns the full cash consequence of grade proliferation, quality holds or campaign change. The Chief People Officer will reshape accountability, capability and reward so the financial reset can operate without undermining technical or safety judgement.

Approximately 1,175 employees and material partners sit across plants, laboratories, supply chain, sales and corporate functions. The CPO owns organisation design, executive assessment, industrial relations, workforce planning, reward, succession and people operations. Finance and operations own cash delivery. This role ensures that decisions, roles and measures make delivery possible and that employees are not asked to compensate for unstable processes through chronic overtime or unsafe shortcuts.

The hardest choices concern interfaces. Who may create a new grade, accept a customer forecast, extend a campaign, release held stock or approve strategic inventory? Today several committees discuss these questions and plant leaders absorb the result. The appointee will translate the operating model into named authority and ensure leaders are assessed on enterprise outcomes they can influence.

Cash pressure can distort people decisions. Vacancy freezes may remove laboratory or planning capacity needed to release inventory, while blunt variable-pay targets can encourage premature shipment or supplier stretching. Reward and workforce actions must include quality, safety, customer and supplier guardrails.

Contract labour and demographic risk require explicit treatment. Some plants rely on experienced contractors for packaging, material movement and turnaround work, while retirement exposure is concentrated among process and laboratory specialists. The CPO will create lawful conversion, vendor, apprenticeship and knowledge-transfer choices by work type. A lower employee headcount will not count as productivity if the same dependency reappears through unstable contractor capacity.

Why this seat is open

The incumbent CPO left unexpectedly because of a personal relocation. Interim HR leadership protects employee relations, but the working-capital programme requires a permanent executive voice immediately. This urgent replacement will receive a short handover and full access to the board sponsor; references and conduct checks remain non-negotiable.

What you will own

• Design decision rights across commercial, planning, manufacturing, quality and procurement for grade and inventory choices.
• Align executive and plant incentives to cash, service, yield, safety and quality rather than isolated functional volume.
• Assess leaders against the new operating model and address roles where authority or capability remains inadequate.
• Build planning, laboratory, process, maintenance and commercial capability required for lower inventory.
• Lead industrial relations and workforce consultation for role, shift or site changes.
• Establish workforce capacity measures that expose overtime, vacancy and contractor risk.
• Protect critical technical succession and apprenticeship pipelines through cost pressure.
• Build a people team capable of using operating evidence and challenging unsafe workforce assumptions.

The first 12 months

In the first 90 days, map decisions behind the largest inventory pools, review executive scorecards and visit plant and laboratory teams. Identify workforce or incentive causes that block release. Present target decision rights, leadership risks and immediate changes to measures whose unintended consequences are already visible.

By month six, implement new executive and plant scorecards, complete role and capability assessment, and launch targeted planning and laboratory development. Agree any shift or organisation transitions through proper consultation. Introduce workforce indicators into cash governance so delayed hiring, overtime and attrition are not hidden.

At twelve months, all material inventory decisions should have single accountable owners, 80% of critical roles should have ready-now or ready-soon successors and regretted attrition in laboratory and process roles should remain below 8%. Overtime in targeted areas should fall by 20%, leadership decision cycle by 25%, and incentive outcomes should reconcile with the board's cash release without a serious safety or quality deterioration.

What the board will measure

• Decision ownership and speed across grade, campaign and inventory choices.
• Reward outcomes aligned to sustainable cash rather than functional optimisation.
• Retention, succession and competence in critical technical roles.
• Industrial-relations quality through workforce change.
• Overtime, vacancy and contractor evidence within productivity and cash decisions.
• Credibility of leadership assessment and difficult appointments or exits.

The person

You have 22–28 years in people leadership within chemicals, materials, pharmaceuticals, food processing or another process-manufacturing business. You have changed operating roles and incentives as part of a cash or productivity reset and can show how people measures affected inventory, yield or service.

Your relevant scale includes at least 800 employees and partners across several plants. You understand industrial relations, technical succession and the difference between productive challenge and pressure that weakens control. The board will examine a scorecard you changed, a capability you protected during a freeze and the operating result after organisation redesign.

This onsite Vadodara role requires regular plant access and reports to the Group Chief Executive or designated executive sponsor.

Compensation and terms

The fixed range is ₹2.2–3.0 crore plus performance variable measured through organisation effectiveness, capability, succession, industrial relations and sustainable cash outcomes. This permanent onsite Vadodara role reports to the Group Chief Executive or designated executive sponsor and includes plant travel. Notice up to six months may be supported with interim coverage.

Confidentiality

The organisation, plants, products, workforce plans and inventory data are withheld. More detail follows fit, conflict review and written confidentiality. Figures and operating facts are composite; applicants must not contact unions, suppliers, customers or employees to infer the client.