Group Head of Rewards

Aldar Education is seeking an outstanding Group Head - Rewards to lead the organisation's Total Rewards, Performance Management, and Workforce Planning functions, ensuring competitive reward practices, effective performance frameworks, and workforce strategies that support business objectives, talent needs, and organisational growth.

This is an exciting opportunity to join the highly successful Aldar Education family of schools and play a key role in shaping the technology strategy and service delivery across some of Abu Dhabi’s leading educational institutions.

As the leading education group in Abu Dhabi, Aldar Education provides inclusive and innovative learning that inspires and empowers communities. We offer a range of educational brands for learners from nursery through to adult education, with the broadest choice of curricula across the largest number of locations in Abu Dhabi.

Working collaboratively, our education network aims to empower the next generation to shape our future while directly supporting the educational priorities of the Abu Dhabi Government. Our work is guided by the Abu Dhabi Economic Vision 2030, which seeks to build a sustainable, knowledge-based economy through premium education.

The Group Head - Rewards will be responsible for market benchmarking, salary reviews, bonus management, performance management frameworks, workforce planning, reward analytics, policy development, and compliance. Acts as a strategic advisor to leadership, driving data-informed decisions on rewards, performance, and workforce requirements, while overseeing benefits and insurance programmes and ensuring competitive, equitable, and business-aligned people practices.

Responsibilities

Main Duties

• Define and lead Group reward, performance, workforce planning and organisation design strategies, aligned with business objectives, growth and financial sustainability.
• Oversee Total Reward, including salary structures, benefits, allowances, recognition and incentive programmes, ensuring competitiveness, equity and affordability.
• Lead executive remuneration and short- and long-term incentive design, providing recommendations to the CPO, Executive Leadership and relevant Board committees.
• Own job evaluation, grading and job architecture frameworks, ensuring consistency in role scope, accountability and organisational impact.
• Lead the Group performance management framework, including objective setting, reviews, calibration and moderation, and ensure clear alignment between performance and reward.
• Lead strategic workforce planning, translating business plans into workforce requirements, capabilities, staffing models and manpower budgets.
• Drive workforce productivity and cost efficiency through capacity analysis, scenario modelling and workforce insights.
• Lead organisation design and restructuring, advising on operating models, structures, spans of control, management layers and accountabilities.
• Oversee workforce analytics and market benchmarking, providing insights on pay, performance, headcount, manpower costs and organisational effectiveness.
• Ensure compliance with applicable compensation and benefits regulations and provide leadership, coaching and capability development to the Total Reward team.
  

Specific Duties

• Ensure regular benchmarking and market related pay research is undertaken when necessary to enable the company to remain competitive and an employer of choice for UAE nationals and expatriates.
• Provide recommendations to management for improvement in reward, performance management and workforce planning related processes and policies. Collaborate with other functions in People & Culture teams, leaders and managers in the organisation and other key stakeholders on all reward, performance management, and workforce planning related matters.
• Guide, supervise and develop the reward team.
• Take overall leadership of benefits including medical and life insurance programmes.
• Review, redesign and leadership of compensation and benefits policy, process, and philosophy, including off-cycle review and adjustments.
• Overlook the annual company bonus program.
• Ensure employee benefits remain competitive with market practices and recommend enhancements where appropriate.
• Responsible to conduct annual salary comparisons within the educational sector, review, create and maintain policies and processes on all reward, performance management, and workforce planning areas in consultation with the Chief People Officer.
• Advise on industry related best practice for total reward, performance management, and workforce planning processes.
• Act as Senior P&C leader and provide insights and support to the Chief People Officer.
• Assist in setting up the annual P&C Departmental KPIs and ensure individual team KPIs are relevant to the same.
• Lead and continuously improve the organisation's performance management framework, including goal setting, performance reviews, calibration processes, and performance governance.
• Provide expert advice to the leadership and annual remuneration processes, performance ensuring the processes are fair and equitable and in line with the reward strategy.
• Lead and review the annual insurance policy renewal alongside key stakeholders.
• Lead scalable reward, performance management and workforce planning initiatives, from conception and design through project planning, implementation, documentation, measurement, and continuous improvement.
• Drive strategic workforce planning activities, including workforce analysis, organisational capability reviews, talent forecasting, succession planning, and organisational design initiatives.
• Partner with business leaders to assess current and future workforce requirements and develop plans to address capability and resource needs
• Be data driven and evaluate the effectiveness of reward, performance and workforce strategies with data analysis and effectively communicating results and findings back to leadership.
• Manage multiple projects simultaneously, balancing strategic and operational priorities while working collaboratively and independently to successfully execute on project objectives and related tasks with internal and external resources as necessary.
• Provide expert coaching, consultation, and facilitation to leaders and managers on reward, performance, and workforce-related matters.
• Define and implement a strategic approach to HR data analytics for HR and the business. Ensuring the provision of Strategic HR management information and performance data including reward and benefits audits.
• Keep abreast of the external market trends and ensure the HR systems continue to be compliant with data protection principles and related legislation.
• Foster and maintain relationships with other external professional bodies, advisers, consultants and benchmarking providers.
• Any other duties as reasonably expected.

Qualifications

Minimum Qualifications

• Preferred: Currently pursuing or completed a globally recognised HR qualification (e.g. CIPD or SHRM) and/or WorldatWork certification.
• Desired: Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in HR, Business, Finance or a related discipline, with formal study in reward where applicable.
• Formal training in job evaluation, compensation and benefits benchmarking.
  

Minimum Experience

• Essential: Senior HR leadership experience (Senior Manager level or above) within an organisation of 1,000+ employees, with direct team leadership.
• 5+ years’ experience in reward, or 7+ years’ generalist HR experience with strong expertise in reward, performance management and workforce planning.
• Proven experience in job evaluation using a recognised methodology (e.g. Hay, WTW).
• Experience across generalist HR, with a specialist focus on reward and strong understanding of performance management and workforce planning.
• Proven experience leading company-wide compensation and benefits reviews, performance management initiatives and workforce planning programmes, including implementation of recommendations.
• Experience developing and managing multi-layer incentive, reward and recognition programmes as part of an overarching Total Reward strategy.
• Hands-on experience with compensation benchmarking, pay analysis and company-wide reward reviews.
• Experience managing company bonus and incentive programmes.
• Strong experience partnering with senior leaders in complex, matrix organisations, including workforce planning and organisational effectiveness.
• Experience working across the Middle East is desirable, with UAE experience preferred.
• Experience managing UAE employee benefits and insurance programmes.
• Experience within education or other service-related sectors is preferred.
• Demonstrated career progression and stability, with experience operating at a senior HR level in complex organisations.
• Demonstrable commitment to equality, diversity and inclusion.
  

Job Specific Knowledge & Skills

• Excellent English communication, presentation and relationship-building skills, with the ability to communicate complex reward, performance and workforce matters clearly to diverse stakeholders.
• Strong business acumen and understanding of organisational structures, roles, workforce requirements and performance expectations across corporate and school environments.
• Advanced Excel, analytical and problem-solving skills, with the ability to analyse reward, performance and workforce data and translate insights into actionable recommendations.
• Proven track record of designing, implementing and sustaining high-impact reward, performance management and workforce planning initiatives.
• Strong organisational and project management skills, with the ability to manage multiple complex priorities and deliver initiatives within deadlines.
• Strong judgement, commercial awareness and decision-making skills, with the ability to assess complex and ambiguous situations and recommend practical solutions.
• Highly collaborative and proactive, with the ability to work independently and effectively across cross-functional teams.
• Demonstrated ability to build trust through credibility, integrity, confidentiality and strong stakeholder management.
• Experience working with external reward, compensation and benefits consultants.
• Flexible, adaptable and results-oriented, with the ability to operate effectively in a fast-paced and changing environment.
• Comfortable working autonomously while maintaining strong professional relationships and acting in the best interests of the organisation.

What We Offer

Aldar Education are a family of world-class, child centered, and innovative schools based in the UAE. We educate over 38,000 students across our group of owned and managed schools and as we grow so does our need for highly skilled, inspirational, and dedicated school leaders. We offer an attractive remuneration package. Our future-focused learning model includes both students and staff and so we place a special emphasis on professional development, coaching and training.

This job description is not all inclusive. Aldar Education reserves the right to amend this job description at any time. We are an equal opportunity employer, committed to a diverse and inclusive work environment. We are also mindful of our national development strategy and encourage UAE Nationals in their application at our company.

Aldar Education is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and young people and expects all staff to share this commitment. Offers of appointment are subject to satisfactory references and police clearance.