Senior Vice President - People and Culture

**Job Summary** : The **Senior Vice President \- People \& Culture** will build the people function that enables the company to scale rapidly across multiple verticals and geographies, prepare the organisation for the governance and regulatory requirements of a public listing, and do both while nurturing the ownership\-driven, high\-performance culture that has made BHIVE what it is today. BHIVE has a strong execution culture. The leadership team values conviction, speed, attention to detail, and systems that scale without creating bottlenecks. The **Senior Vice President \- People and Culture** will be expected to build a function that operates with high autonomy: clear ownership, proactive early\-warning systems, and outcomes\-first reporting that closes loops rather than opens new ones. **Key Responsibilities:** 1\. **IPO\-Ready People Infrastructure** • Own ESOP communication and allocation to eligible employees across verticals once the framework is established by Finance and Legal. Ensure employees understand the value proposition, timelines, and vesting structures as a retention and alignment lever ahead of IPO. • Build board\-reportable people dashboards: attrition (segmented by vertical and level), cost per\-hire, HRBP ratios, engagement scores, diversity metrics, and compliance status. • Establish SEBI\-compliant governance structures: insider trading policy, whistleblower framework, code of conduct, and disclosure protocols for a listed entity. • Prepare all HR policies, contracts, and documentation for due diligence readiness. The people function must be audit\-proof by Q2 FY27\. 2\. **Multi\-Vertical Workforce Strategy** • Own end\-to\-end people strategy across five distinct verticals: Workspace (operations \+ corporate), BHIVE Capital. • Design differentiated talent strategies, compensation structures, and engagement models for each vertical. A community manager at a co\-working centre and a fund analyst at BHIVE Capital are fundamentally different talent profiles. • Build workforce planning models that account for BHIVE’s aggressive expansion, including significant new capacity additions and new city entries on the roadmap. 3\. **Distributed Operations at Scale** • Design and deploy multi\-location HR delivery across all BHIVE centres in Bengaluru, with plans for multi\-city expansion. • Own frontline workforce management: high\-volume hiring, onboarding at scale, shift management, attrition containment for centre operations (community managers, front desk, housekeeping, F\&B staff). • Build robust compliance infrastructure: Shops \& Establishments Act across all locations, contract labour regulations, PF/ESI, POSH at scale, and vendor/contract workforce governance. • Establish standardized Minimum Standards checklists and SOPs that ensure consistent employee experience across every centre, independent of who manages it. 4\. **Culture Architecture** • Codify and protect BHIVE's existing culture: ownership over process, conviction over consensus, brand obsession, campus\-community identity, and "Work Life Harmony" (not work\-life balance). • Design the cultural evolution roadmap as BHIVE transitions from a high\-growth private company to a publicly listed, multi\-vertical group, without losing what makes it distinctive. • Build internal rituals, recognition frameworks, and communication architecture that reinforce these values at every level, from a barista at BHIVE Cafe to a VP at Workspace. • Own employer brand strategy: position BHIVE as an employer of choice in Bengaluru's competitive talent market, competing against both co\-working peers (WeWork India, Awfis, IndiQube) and the broader tech ecosystem. 5\. **Talent Acquisition \& Leadership Pipeline** • Lead talent acquisition strategy across all verticals, with a focus on building a leadership bench that can scale with the business. • Build succession plans for all critical roles. Excellence should be embedded in the system, not dependent on any single individual's presence. • Design and execute a structured onboarding program that accelerates new hire productivity while immersing them in BHIVE's culture and brand identity. • Strengthen the internal mobility framework: as BHIVE grows into new verticals and geographies, internal talent should be the first pipeline, not external hiring. 6\. **Performance, Rewards \& Retention** • Establish a performance management system that drives accountability, continuous feedback, and high performance. No tolerance for ambiguity in who owns what. • Design competitive compensation and benefits architecture benchmarked against industry, segmented by vertical and role type (operations vs. corporate vs. investment). • Build ESOP communication strategy that makes equity ownership a genuine retention lever, not just a line item on the offer letter. • Conduct regular compensation reviews to ensure internal equity and external competitiveness, partnering with Finance to align with business performance and IPO timeline. 7\. **Learning \& Organisational Development** • Design structured leadership development programs that build the next layer of leaders BHIVE needs at scale. • Create competency frameworks and career progression models for each vertical. • Drive organisational design initiatives as BHIVE adds verticals, geographies, and complexity. The org structure that works today will need to evolve as the company scales across multiple cities. • Lead AI readiness at the organisational level: build the policy framework for AI adoption, design reskilling initiatives for AI\-augmented roles, and create workforce planning models that account for evolving human\-AI collaboration across functions. 8\. **Change Management \& CEO Partnership** • Lead change management for the private\-to\-public\-company transition, the most significant cultural shift BHIVE will undergo. • Serve as a trusted partner to the CEO on all people\-related matters, progressively building the team and systems so that routine HR decisions are handled autonomously within the function. • Build routing and ownership maps so that people issues land with the right owner without requiring senior leadership escalation. The goal is a self\-routing system where the right person owns the right problem by default. • Equip people managers with frameworks and tools to make decisions autonomously, reducing dependency on central HR for routine matters. 9\. **Compliance, Governance \& Risk** • Ensure compliance across all applicable labour laws, statutory regulations, and industry standards for a multi\-location, multi\-entity, mixed\-workforce (permanent \+ contract \+ vendor) organisation in Karnataka, and eventually across states. • Establish HR governance frameworks that meet public company standards well ahead of IPO filing. • Handle complex employee relations matters with fairness, speed, and legal precision. • Proactively identify and mitigate HR\-related risks before they surface. At BHIVE, prevention is valued over intervention. **What Success Looks Like (First 12\-18 Months)** : 1\. ESOP communication and allocation rolled out to all eligible employees within 6 months of framework finalisation. Clear employee understanding of vesting, value, and timelines. 2\. HRIS deployed supporting all verticals and locations with real\-time dashboards on attrition, cost\-per\-hire, and engagement, scannable by leadership in under 2 minutes. 3\. Centre\-level attrition reduced by a measurable, defined target (establish baseline in Month 1, set target in Month 2, deliver by Month 12\). 4\. Leadership bench built: succession plans for all critical roles, with at least one ready\-now successor identified for each. 5\. AI readiness framework established: org\-level policies for AI adoption, reskilling roadmap published, and at least 2 functions piloting AI\-augmented workflows. 6\. Culture codified: BHIVE values, rituals, and employer brand articulated, published, and embedded in every HR touchpoint from offer letter to exit interview. 7\. Autonomous People function: clean ownership maps, early warning dashboards, and closure\-loop reporting in place. The CEO should be able to trust that People is a function that runs autonomously. **Experience and Qualifications** : • 15\+ years of progressive HR experience, with at least 5 years in a senior leadership role at a high\-growth, multi\-location, or pre\-IPO organisation. • Multi\-vertical or multi\-entity experience: track record of managing HR across business units with fundamentally different workforce profiles (operations \+ corporate \+ specialized). • Distributed workforce expertise: demonstrated success managing HR across multiple locations with a mix of permanent, contract, and vendor staff. • Real estate, hospitality, or operations\-heavy industries preferred: understanding the reality of high\-volume frontline hiring, attrition, and shift\-based workforce management. • ESOP communication and employee allocation experience is a significant advantage. • MBA or equivalent in Human Resources or related field. **Key Competencies** : • Systems thinking: ability to design scalable frameworks, not just solve individual problems. • Speed and execution orientation: BHIVE moves fast. This role must match the CEO's pace. • Detail orientation: BHIVE operates with high standards on quality, data accuracy, and brand consistency. This SVP must bring the same rigour to people operations. • Data\-driven decision\-making: ability to build and use people analytics, not just intuition. • Comfort with a high\-involvement leadership culture: ability to operate effectively in an environment where the leadership team is deeply invested in brand, quality, and strategic decisions. • Builder mindset: this is about creating from scratch, not optimising what exists. • AI\-forward orientation: genuine comfort with and enthusiasm for leveraging AI tools in HR operations. If you feel eligible and interested in applying, please fill the form which is a part of the pre\-screening process \- Senior Vice President – People and Culture \- Bangalore – Fill out form