Chief Human Resources Officer — Grocery And Convenience Platform

The mandate

The platform connects customers with groceries and convenience products through stores, dark sites, a digital marketplace and delivery partners. The role must address how incentives, authority and management behaviour shape service quality across fulfilment teams. Unavailable items may be substituted without sufficient judgement, pick-speed incentives can conflict with accuracy, delivery performance may be reported without the customer contact that achieved it, and customer-care colleagues are asked to resolve problems without authority or context.

The Chief Human Resources Officer will lead the people intervention needed to repair that system. The remit includes organisation, workforce strategy, reward, labour and employee relations, leadership, talent, learning, people operations, culture and speak-up governance. Operations retains service accountability, marketplace teams govern sellers and delivery relationships, and risk functions own formal investigation within their authority. The CHRO must connect role design, performance expectations and consequences so the organisation no longer asks people to choose between a metric and the right customer outcome.

This planned replacement requires a leader willing to work at front-line detail. The board is not seeking a culture campaign or a new list of values. It wants clear standards for employees and partners, fair investigation, better local leadership and incentives that reward complete service rather than one visible step. The CHRO must also protect workforce rights and avoid treating contractor status as a reason to ignore conduct, safety or experience in the extended operating model.

Scope and operating context

Based onsite in Singapore, the CHRO will shape an ecosystem of approximately 2,275 employees and material partners across Singapore and a wider international region. The workforce includes store colleagues, pickers, fulfilment teams, customer support, category and marketplace professionals, technologists and corporate functions. Delivery and some site labour may be provided through third parties under different legal and contractual models.

Work patterns range from permanent professional roles to shifts, peaks and partner-managed capacity. Availability expectations, scheduling, productivity and progression therefore need differentiated solutions. Common principles should govern safety, respect, customer integrity and escalation, while employment terms and management processes must remain lawful in each jurisdiction.

The trust issue has data as well as behavioural dimensions. Performance measures are drawn from order, substitution, refund, complaint, delivery and workforce systems that do not always share identifiers or definitions. The CHRO will work with operations and data leaders to ensure people decisions are not based on incomplete productivity measures, and that monitoring is proportionate, explained and subject to accountable review.

First-year agenda

The first ninety days will examine where incentives and authority shape customer outcomes. The CHRO will visit stores and fulfilment sites, listen to customer-care interactions, review delivery governance and analyse complaint, attrition, absence, grievance, safety and performance patterns. Particular attention will go to situations where colleagues know a decision is wrong but lack time, permission or confidence to change it.

The executive will then define a front-line performance contract by role. Pickers may need balanced measures of accuracy, freshness, substitution quality and speed; store leaders need service, people and control outcomes; customer-care teams require resolution authority and fair quality review; partner agreements should include conduct and remedy expectations. No scorecard should contain so many shared measures that individual accountability disappears.

Reward and recognition will be revised where incentives create foreseeable harm. Short-term productivity or delivery bonuses must incorporate quality, safety and verified customer impact. The CHRO will test for gaming and unintended effects before scale. Where commercial contracts govern partner behaviour, people and operations leaders will work with procurement and legal colleagues to translate standards into enforceable terms.

Leadership capability is the second major workstream. Site and shift managers need practical training in performance conversations, investigations, scheduling, mental-health escalation, safety and customer judgement. The CHRO will identify roles with weak succession or excessive span and create a field-led development path. High-performing colleagues should see routes into team leadership and specialist careers without leaving operations entirely.

Speak-up and case handling require visible credibility. Reports must be triaged by consequence, investigated independently where necessary and closed with clear evidence. Themes should change training, controls, staffing or incentives; confidentiality cannot mean the organisation learns nothing. By year-end, front-line teams should see that raising a concern leads to fair action rather than retaliation or silence.

Leadership responsibilities

The CHRO will advise the chief executive and board on workforce risk, leadership and culture with evidence drawn from operations. They will distinguish isolated misconduct from system design and ensure senior leaders accept responsibility for both. Serious matters involving customer harm, safety, discrimination, retaliation or financial integrity must reach the appropriate oversight promptly.

The executive will lead the people function through its own reset. Business partners should spend meaningful time in operating environments; centres of expertise need simpler, usable policies; and people operations must resolve front-line queries at the pace of the business. The CHRO will assess the senior team, strengthen succession and reduce dependence on external labour advisers for routine management.

Third-party workforces require principled governance. The organisation will not exercise employer control where it is not lawful or intended, but it will set contractual standards for safety, conduct, training evidence and customer remedy. The CHRO must be precise about which party owns scheduling, performance, investigation and support rather than allow responsibility to disappear between entities.

Measures of success

The board will review customer complaints linked to conduct or fulfilment, substitution quality, order accuracy, service recovery, safety events, grievance themes, substantiated misconduct, retaliation indicators and case closure. Workforce measures will include regretted attrition, absence, scheduling stability, internal progression, manager capability and critical-role succession.

Incentive effectiveness will be tested through balanced operational outcomes, not payout or productivity alone. Partner measures will include adherence to agreed standards, issue recurrence and remedy speed. Trust should improve in both customer evidence and employee willingness to raise concerns; a declining report volume without independent evidence of better conditions will not be assumed positive.

Candidate profile

Candidates should bring 22–28 years of people leadership in grocery, retail, e-commerce, logistics, hospitality, consumer services or another high-volume front-line environment. They must have managed complex labour models across countries and advised boards through conduct, employee-relations and operating-model change. Experience with partner or contractor ecosystems is essential.

The board will look for examples where a candidate changed incentives after evidence of customer or workforce harm, rebuilt local manager capability and restored trust in investigation or speak-up channels. Candidates should understand shift scheduling, performance measurement, workforce data and the boundaries of third-party governance. A record centred on corporate talent programmes without front-line accountability will be insufficient.

The successful CHRO will be present, fair and operationally exact. They must listen without becoming captured by anecdote, use data without reducing people to a productivity score and deliver difficult consequences through defensible process. Cultural range and experience in diverse Asian and international workforces are strongly preferred.

Compensation and appointment terms

Expected base compensation is SGD 420,000–570,000, supplemented by annual incentive and long-term participation linked to workforce, customer and enterprise outcomes. Final terms will reflect relevant operating scale, international experience and current arrangements. Relocation support and responsible treatment of forfeited awards will be considered individually.

Confidentiality

The platform remains unnamed because the succession, conduct themes and partner discussions are sensitive. Detailed case and workforce information will be disclosed only to shortlisted candidates after identity, conflict and confidentiality review. Applications must not contain personal employee data, identifiable complaints or protected investigation materials from another organisation.