People Relations, Senior Specialist, APAC

Summary

Job Description

As a Senior People Relations Specialist, you'll play a pivotal role in fostering positive employee and labour relations. You'll collaborate with internal and external stakeholders, analyze data, and develop strategies to enhance positive workforce sentiment. 

Your focus will be both proactive and reactive. You will improve the employee experience and reduce risk for Guidewire by identifying and addressing concerns early - resolving workplace issues before they escalate to a critical level requiring reactive action. You will also design and implement initiatives that strengthen employee and labour relations and foster a positive workplace culture.

This role requires quarterly travel to offices in APAC.

Core Purpose 

Promote a safe, fair, and trusted environment across our expanding markets; foster positive employee and labour relations while managing risk and compliance.
 

Key Deliverables
The role requires regional depth with global reach, delivering proactive and strategic People Relations support across APAC and other Guidewire markets in EMEA and the Americas. The remit combines complex casework with leadership of global initiatives, ensuring both immediate risk management and long-term organisational resilience. 

Strategic Global Initiatives (50%)

• Lead the design, productization and stakeholder buy-in and roll-out of global ER programmes and initiatives.

• Drive large-scale projects such as Manager Capability building, ensuring leaders are confident in handling complex people issues in a legally sound and values-driven way.

• Input into the development of global ER dashboards, toolkits, and corporate programmes (e.g., compensation scheme rollouts, reorganisations, post-acquisition integrations).

Risk Management & Prevention (20%)

• Analyse ER data and workforce signals (Peakon, dashboards, listening forums) to identify recurring themes, root causes, and early warning signals.

• Design and deliver preventative interventions that reduce escalation, protect employee experience, and mitigate legal/financial risk.

• Forward-plan for evolving legislation across EMEA; identify compliance gaps and recommend proactive policy and process adjustments.

• Profile labour relations risk across markets and set operational guardrails to help the business navigate union/works council environments.

Complex Casework & Investigations (20%)

• Independently manage high-stakes ER cases and investigations, especially those with reputational, legal, or financial implications.

• Ensure consistent application of company policies (Code of Conduct, grievance, disciplinary, discrimination, bullying & harassment).

• Take a strategic approach to involuntary exits, reducing both legal exposure and cost to the Company.

• Offer global backup capacity during peak workloads, appeals escalations, or holiday cover, ensuring resilience of the People Relations function.

Restructures, Integration & Business Change (10%)

• Lead cross-border restructures including impact analysis, redundancy planning, consultation strategy, and risk management in compliance with local labour laws.

• Provide guidance and execution support during post-acquisition integrations and large-scale business reorganisations.
   

OTHER KEY FOCUS AREAS 

Partnership & Engagement

• Build trust and alignment enabling the function to serve as a strategic advisor to business leaders.

• Partner closely with a dedicated Line of Business - acting as their aligned trusted Subject Matter Expert on all things ER/LR.

• Partner with other  Centres Of Excellence, Employee Resource Groups  and Legal to deliver cohesive, risk-aware people strategies.

• Lead or support crisis-management responses to urgent, high-stakes ER issues

• Undertake quarterly travel across the region to run listening forums, meet with employees, and transfer knowledge. 

SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE 

MUST-HAVE 

• 5–10 years of Employee Relations experience within APAC, in a multinational company or Tech sector.

• Proven track record in handling high-risk ER cases, disputes and formal investigations, whilst partnering with Legal teams

• Knowledge of Indian labor laws with focus on the Shops and Establishment Act and Prevention of Sexual Harassment (POSH) Act - as well as knowledge of the labour landscape in Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and Malaysia 

• Experience of business re-organisations across multiple markets 

• Highly collaborative with the ability to partner seamlessly with HR stakeholders and influence executive level management

• Robust skills in conflict resolution and coaching management

• Continuous improvement mindset with ability to recommend improvements and changes to ensure People Relations products are scalable, meet legal requirements, and are aligned to best practice

• Strong external network

DESIRABLE

• Certification in POSH Compliance

• Training in Mediation or Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR)

• Degree in HR, Law, or a related discipline

• Tech sector / SaaS experience 

About Guidewire

Guidewire is the platform P&C insurers trust to engage, innovate, and grow efficiently. We combine digital, core, analytics, and AI to deliver our platform as a cloud service. More than 540+ insurers in 40 countries, from new ventures to the largest and most complex in the world, run on Guidewire.

As a partner to our customers, we continually evolve to enable their success. We are proud of our unparalleled implementation track record with 1600+ successful projects, supported by the largest R&D team and partner ecosystem in the industry. Our Marketplace provides hundreds of applications that accelerate integration, localization, and innovation.

For more information, please visit www.guidewire.com and follow us on Twitter: @Guidewire_PandC.

Guidewire Software, Inc. is proud to be an equal opportunity and affirmative action employer. We are committed to an inclusive workplace, and believe that a diversity of perspectives, abilities, and cultures is a key to our success. Qualified applicants will receive consideration without regard to race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, citizenship, marital status, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, veteran status, or disability. All offers are contingent upon passing a criminal history and other background checks where it's applicable to the position.