Head of HR Strategy & Planning

Role : Head of HR Strategy & Planning
Location : Abu Dhabi

Role Purpose:
Provide executive leadership in shaping and executing ADIB’s enterprise people strategy, ensuring alignment with business priorities, growth ambitions, and future workforce requirements. Serve as a strategic adviser to the GCHRO on workforce planning, talent, organizational capability, and performance priorities, while leading the integration of Talent Acquisition, Workforce Planning & HR Governance, Learning, and Talent Development & Performance Management.

Drive workforce and talent initiatives that strengthen leadership pipelines, succession readiness, critical capabilities, and a high-performance culture. Lead strategic workforce planning, people analytics, Emiratization, and HR transformation initiatives while ensuring strong governance, regulatory compliance, and measurable business outcomes that support ADIB’s long-term growth and organizational success.

Key Accountabilities of the role

• Provide strategic leadership for talent acquisition and onboarding, ensuring ADIB attracts, selects, and integrates high-caliber talent aligned with current and future workforce requirements.

• Oversee the end-to-end recruitment lifecycle, ensuring robust governance, compliance, service excellence, and alignment with workforce plans, succession needs, and business priorities.

• Strengthen ADIB’s employer brand and optimize talent sourcing strategies, recruitment partnerships, and vendor performance to enhance the attraction and acquisition of high-caliber talent.

• Leverage recruitment analytics and market intelligence to improve hiring quality, operational efficiency, candidate experience, and overall recruitment effectiveness.

• Promote fair, inclusive, and merit-based hiring practices while advancing Emiratization objectives and ensuring compliance with regulatory and organizational requirements.

• Define and lead ADIB’s enterprise learning strategy to develop critical capabilities, support future workforce requirements, and enhance organizational performance.

• Oversee learning needs analysis, learning plans, academies, digital learning, leadership development programs, and targeted upskilling initiatives to drive continuous capability enhancement.

• Ensure effective governance of learning operations, including the Learning Management System, training administration, compliance training, and service delivery standards.

• Manage learning budgets, vendor relationships, and program effectiveness, ensuring optimal return on investment and alignment with business priorities.

• Foster a culture of continuous learning and professional development while supporting Emiratization and leadership capability-building initiatives.

• Lead the talent development and performance management agenda to strengthen succession readiness, leadership capability, critical talent pipelines, and organizational effectiveness.

• Oversee talent reviews, succession planning, high-potential development, leadership assessments, coaching, mentoring, and competency management frameworks.

• Direct the enterprise performance management cycle, including goal setting, mid-year reviews, year-end reviews, calibration, performance improvement, governance, and reporting.

• Ensure alignment between business objectives and performance outcomes through consistent, fair, and effective performance management practices across the organization.

• Utilize talent and performance insights to identify capability gaps, succession risks, leadership priorities, and targeted development interventions that support long-term business success.

• Establish governance frameworks, strategic scorecards, KPIs, budgets, and operating mechanisms to monitor performance, manage risks, and drive accountability across all functions within scope.

• Ensure compliance with applicable laws, regulations, internal policies, audit requirements, and risk management standards while maintaining effective governance and control environments.

• Build and maintain strong partnerships with senior leadership, business stakeholders, regulators, and external partners to support strategic workforce and talent decisions.

• Lead, coach, and hold accountable the functional heads, fostering collaboration, strategic alignment, operational excellence, and a culture of high performance and ownership.

• Drive enterprise-wide people transformation and strategic workforce initiatives that enhance organizational effectiveness, strengthen leadership capability, and deliver sustainable business value.

Specialist Skills / Technical Knowledge Required for this role:

• Enterprise HR strategy development and strategic workforce planning.

• Broad expertise across talent acquisition and onboarding; workforce and headcount planning; HR data management and governance; learning; talent and succession development; leadership development; and enterprise performance management.

• Workforce costing, manpower budgeting, headcount governance, scenario planning, and business case development.

• HR analytics, data interpretation, executive dashboards, KPI design, and evidence-based decision-making.

• Knowledge of HR technology, Human Resources Management Systems, Learning Management Systems, data models, and digital HR solutions.

• Knowledge of UAE employment and Emiratization context, banking-sector regulatory expectations, and HR governance requirements.

• Strong commercial and financial acumen with the ability to connect people decisions to business outcomes.

• Excellent written and verbal communication, executive presentation, influencing, negotiation, and stakeholder management skills. Proven ability to lead large, multidisciplinary teams and complex enterprise-wide transformation or change programs.