People and Culture Operations Lead - Maternity Cover Fixed Term Contract

People & Culture Operations Lead (Maternity Cover)

About the opportunity

Quintica is looking for temporary maternity cover on a fixed-term basis for up to six months. We are open to either of two options:

• Full-time employee (intermediate level): a fixed-term role for up to six months, working 8 hours a day.
• HR consultant (senior level): an HR consultant with 10+ years' experience, including HR consulting, available for at least 4 hours a day for up to six months.

Start date: candidates must be available in December 2026, ideally for the first two weeks of December for handover, and then start fully from 2 January 2027.

Role overview

Quintica is looking for a hands-on People & Culture Operations Lead to provide temporary maternity cover for up to six months. The role keeps day-to-day P&C operations running across South Africa, the UAE, Kenya and India.

This is a highly operational role. The Chief People Officer handles all strategy, complex IR cases and UAE labour law matters, so the focus here is recruitment, the employee lifecycle, leave, employee relations, policy updates and statutory admin.

Reports to: Chief People Officer, who is available for guidance throughout.

Key responsibilities

Recruitment (end to end)

• Run the full recruitment process once a role is approved, for up to four roles a month across ServiceNow technical and functional positions.
• Go to market through LinkedIn, direct headhunting and the company's recruitment agencies. The required recruitment licences are provided.
• Manage shortlisting, multi-stage interviews, case studies and psychometric assessments with the company's psychometrist.
• Identify and implement improvements to the recruitment process, and update the recruitment policy.
• Key focus: overhaul recruitment processes, templates and forms, and submit the revisions to the Chief People Officer for approval.

Onboarding and offboarding

• Manage and oversee onboarding and offboarding, including exit interviews. The UAE HR administrator handles the admin tasks.
• Identify and implement process improvements, and update the related policies.
• Key focus: review, revise and add to the onboarding and offboarding processes, and submit the changes to the Chief People Officer for approval.

HR systems

• Use BambooHR for day-to-day HR work, and ServiceNow for case management.
• Use AI tools such as Claude or Copilot to work efficiently, for example when drafting documents and communications.

Leave management

• Oversee leave across all four regions, including public holidays, leave forfeiture and unusual cases, with the HR administrators handling day-to-day admin.
• Translate legislative changes into policy updates and employee communications. One example is updating the South African leave policy for the recent paternity leave changes.

Employee relations

• Issue warnings and run performance improvement processes.
• Assist with operational employee relations issues across regions, with guidance from the Chief People Officer where needed.

Policy

• Review HR policies, propose amendments and draft rewrites for the Chief People Officer's approval.

South African statutory admin

• Upload WSP and ATR submissions and handle all related admin, getting certain inputs from the Chief People Officer.
• Help with B-BBEE documents and admin for the March 2027 verification.

Graduate programme

A graduate programme for young technical graduates starts in early 2027. The role will:

• Manage the graduates' onboarding and induction, and possibly some recruitment.
• Provide early management and mentoring before the graduates move into the business.
• Set up internal and external training, including basic soft skills and behavioural sessions, and run graduate initiatives.

Support for the Chief People Officer

• Prepare basic headcount reviews and data for the Chief People Officer.
• Provide operational and admin support on work the Chief People Officer is handling.
• Take on other miscellaneous P&C tasks as needed.

Requirements

• A degree or diploma in HR, industrial psychology or a related field is preferred.
• At least 6+ years of generalist or operational HR experience for the full-time option. For the consultant option, 10+ years' experience, including HR consulting.
• Good working knowledge of South African labour law.
• Proven end-to-end recruitment experience, including some direct headhunting.
• Experience running light disciplinary and performance improvement processes.
• Experience amending and drafting HR policies.
• Experience with WSP and ATR submissions.
• Able to use BambooHR, and ServiceNow or a similar case management system.
• Comfortable using AI tools such as Claude or Copilot.
• Highly organised, detail-oriented and able to work independently with minimal handover.
• Clear communicator who can guide team members and work with stakeholders at all levels.
• Experience running graduate or early-career programmes, including onboarding, mentoring and training.

Advantageous

• Experience recruiting for technical roles, especially in the ServiceNow or enterprise platform space.
• Exposure to B-BBEE verification documentation.
• Experience designing and delivering basic training, such as soft skills and behavioural sessions.