Director, Talent Management

About the role

GiveDirectly is looking for a Director, Talent Management to build its talent management function from the ground up. The role sets the vision and roadmap, owns the performance system, builds onboarding and manager development, and shapes employee listening and culture. It is based in Kenya and is not a recruiting, compensation design, employee relations or HR-systems role.

Key responsibilities

• Assess what talent management exists today within 90 days, recommend the first-year sequencing and agree it with the Head of People, then set the multi-year roadmap and propose the team.
• Connect talent management to workforce planning, compensation and recruitment, and build talent and succession planning for critical roles.
• Own the performance system redesign: calibrated ratings linked to merit increases and salary bands, calibration data, a global standard for low performance, and continuous improvement through feedback.
• Revamp onboarding content and experience, build a foundational manager program (feedback, coaching, difficult conversations) and extend into leadership development.
• Plan the values retreat, run listening and engagement research, and build an employee listening strategy.

Required profile

• 7+ years in talent management, performance or organizational design, including leading a function or major part of one.
• Hands-on builder who has created performance, onboarding, manager development or a whole function from scratch in a start-up or scale-up.
• Designed a performance system and kept it fair across different currencies, labor markets and manager quality.
• Deep experience in at least two of onboarding, manager development and employee engagement or listening.
• Track record of taking over a major project, working through disagreement with a senior partner and influencing without formal authority in a matrixed organization.
• Preferred: mission-driven or international experience, cross-country work including sub-Saharan Africa, vendor management, exposure to compensation design, and professional French or Portuguese.