Global Director Human Resources Cochlear Implants

The Global Director HR for Cochlear Implants & Advanced Bionics is accountable for end to end HR business partnering with the President CI BU and CI leadership team.

The role is accountable for fit-for-purpose organization design, workforce planning, the capabilities and talent build out, and the culture/change adoption required for CI BU to enable the market growth.

The incumbent will role-model future thinking, commercial HR: strong business acumen, high standards, and a deep commitment to people, culture of transparency and accountability and highest performance.

In this role, you`ll partner closely with Regional/Country HRBPs/People Partners and HR shared services in the countries where CI teams are present for the employee life cycle management.

The position is located in Valencia, CA, CI HQ with full time presence at the site and 30% international travel, including CI's main locations globally.

More about the role:

Organizational Development and Transformation

• Drive organizational effectiveness and business readiness to enable growth in CI BU.
• Provide strategic organizational design guidance to CI BU leadership, ensuring structures and capabilities support business strategy, scalability, and efficiency.
• Use data and employee insights to identify organizational bottlenecks and design interventions that improve agility, collaboration, and decision-making.
• Coach and challenge CI leadership on organization design, change leadership, talent, and complex employee relations topics.
• Embed a culture of high performance, accountability/transparency/collaboration, customer excellence. Drive the leadership accountability for employee engagement.

Talent, Skill and Leadership Development

• Own CI BU talent and workforce strategy in partnership with the HR CoEs: strategic workforce planning, critical roles, succession pipelines, and build/buy/borrow decisions (in partnership with Talent/TA COE).
• Define and build future CI core unique capabilities (sales, marketing/product mngt, etc). Partner with global functional HRBPs to ensure that the right R&D, Operations and Quality and Regulatory capabilies in line with CI BU strategy are available/ embedded in BU.
• Strengthen leadership capability at all levels—combining future CI business expertise with high-quality people leadership and team effectiveness.
• Create career paths and capability journeys for key CI functions, enabling internal mobility, progression, and transparent development pathways.
• Scale upskilling/reskilling through digital and blended learning solutions and targeted developmental experiences/development programs to enable a skills-based organization, unique to CI BU strategy execution. Leverage to a maximum all of the Sonova solutions created in Talent and Org development COE. Optimize training and development budgets, focusing on impact and measurable outcomes.

Total Reward and Compliance

• Partner with Group Total Rewards to ensure unique competitive, equitable and sustainable total rewards programs (with particular focus on sales incentives) within CI BU where relevant to CI BU strategy/competitvness and partner with the Regional/Country HRBPs for local compensation practices in the markets where CI presence is limited.
• Ensure a robust HR compliance framework adoption in CI BU in alignment with Group policies/governance and standards regional Sonova practices, employment regulationsm etc while allowing for CI BU innovation where it creates customer value in compliant way.

Digital HR and Process Excellence

• In partnership with Global COEs, harmonize and simplify unique CI BU HR processes into fit for purpose, tech-enabled journeys for employees and people leaders, balance global frameworks and BU specific needs. Drive continious improvement of HR processes.
• Drive adoption of Sonova standard HR digital tools, including self-service, automation, and AI-enabled solutions, to free up HR capacity for strategic work.

HR Team Leadership & Capability Building

• Lead, coach, and develop, set collaborative ways of working for BU HR team, aligned with business strategy and Group HR direction.
• Build contemporary HR Business Partnering capabilities (if relevant for specific BU HRBP roles), ie data literacy, consulting skills, change management)) and foster a culture of learning, experimentation, and continuous improvement within the team.
• Role-model cross-functional collaboration, ensuring HR acts as “one team” across all Sonova presence in the Region.

More about you:

• 10+ years in HR with significant time as a senior HRBP in customer-facing business (industrial, retail, healthcare, consumer, etc), in a global matrix context.
• Track record of executing people strategy in line with business strategy, directly impacting growth, profitability, innovation and transformation, experience in driving change during different business cycles (growth, turnaround, downsizing, etc).
• Experience in organizational development, OD/structure design and change management in a full end to end business (ie from R&D to Sales/Service), as a minimum proven experience to manage the HR agenda for organization with strong product management lifecycle organization
• Demonstrated ability to build leadership pipelines, run talent and succession processes, and develop front-line and mid-level leadership at scale.
• Experience shaping culture and improving engagement and retention, particularly in commercial organisations.
• Comfortable with contemporary digital HR tools, experience with leveraging data and people analytics to drive decisions and influence leaders.
• Strong influencing skills in global/matrix organizations, aligning Group, regional, country and functional stakeholders; proven track record to challenge and coach senior leaders with empathy and courage.
• Strategic and commercially minded, yet very hands-on.
• High learning agility, resilience, and comfort with ambiguity.

A minimum of 200Mb/sec download and 10Mb/sec upload speed internet connectivity is required to support any remote/hybrid employee functionality at Sonova.

Don't meet all the criteria?  If you’re willing to go all in and learn we'd love to hear from you! 

We are looking forward to receiving your application via our online job application platform. For this position only direct applications will be considered. Sonova does not recruit via app, telegram, carrier pigeon or any other format that does not include speaking with an actual human. If you are offered a job without speaking with someone please contact Sonova Human Resources.

 What we offer:

• Medical, dental and vision coverage*
• Health Savings, Health Reimbursement, Flexible Spending/Dependent Care Accounts
• TeleHealth options
• 401k plan with company match*
• Company paid life/ad&d insurance
  • Additional supplemental life/ad&d coverage available
• Company paid Short/Long-Term Disability coverage (STD/LTD)
  • STD LTD Buy-ups available
• Accident/Hospital Indemnity coverage
• Legal/ID Theft Assistance
• PTO (or sick and vacation time), floating Diversity Day, & paid holidays*
• Paid parental bonding leave
• Employee Assistance Program (24/7 mental health support hotline, 5 company paid counseling sessions and more)
• Robust Internal Career Growth opportunities
• Tuition reimbursement
• Hearing aid discount for employees and family
• Internal social recognition platform

*Plan rules/offerings dependent upon group Company/location.

This role's pay range is between $180,000/yr and $230,500/yr, depending on expertise and experience. This role is also bonus-eligible. 

More about what we offer  

As one of the world’s leading hearing care providers headquartered in Switzerland, we’re committed to building an inclusive culture. We want to create an environment where you can balance a successful career with your commitments and interests outside of work, through our flexible hybrid working model. We offer a wide range of training opportunities for both your professional and personal development, and there are exceptional growth opportunities with individual development plans.