Director - Organizational Development

GMG; United Arab Emirates; On-site; AED 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

An established industry player is seeking a transformative leader to drive organizational design and workforce planning initiatives. This role is pivotal in ensuring that operating models align with strategic goals while fostering a culture of continuous improvement. The successful candidate will leverage their extensive experience in organizational development and job architecture to enhance job relevance and accountability across divisions. With a focus on stakeholder engagement and change management, this position offers a unique opportunity to shape the future of the organization while promoting a vibrant and inclusive work environment.

Benefits

Comprehensive family medical insurance

Family residency sponsorship

Flight allowances

Up to 30% discount in premium retail stores

Up to 20% discount in pharmacy chain

Qualifications

• 12+ years in organizational development and job architecture.
• Experience in large, matrixed organizations is essential.

Responsibilities

• Lead design and implementation of operating models.
• Ensure alignment with strategic intent and scalability.

Skills

Organizational Development

Workforce Planning

Job Architecture

Change Management

Stakeholder Engagement

Education

Bachelor's degree in Business Administration

Master's degree or MBA in Organizational Development

Tools

Mercer Job Evaluation Framework

Capability Maturity Model

Job description

Who we are

GMG is a global well-being company retailing, distributing and manufacturing a portfolio of leading international and home-grown brands across sport, everyday goods, health and beauty, properties and logistics sectors. Under the ownership and management of the Baker family for over 45 years, GMG is a valued partner of choice for the world's most successful and respected brands in the well-being sector. Working across the Middle East, North Africa, and Asia, GMG has introduced more than 120 brands across 12 countries. These include notable home-grown brands such as Sun & Sand Sports, Dropkick, Supercare Pharmacy, Farm Fresh, Klassic, and international brands like Nike, Columbia, Converse, Timberland, Vans, Mama Sita's, and McCain.

Job Summary

The purpose of this position is to lead enterprise-wide organizational design and workforce planning initiatives with a dual focus: strategic future-state design and real-time validation of role execution across divisions. It ensures that operating models are not only well-architected on paper but also reflect the lived realities of incumbents. As part of this responsibility, the role institutionalizes a Job Description Reality Check (JDRC) framework to ensure job scopes, deliverables, and KPIs are fully aligned. The incumbent also oversees the implementation of a Capability Maturity Model (CMM) across all business functions to evaluate organizational health, operational readiness, and strategic maturity. Acting as a strategic partner to Rewards, the role is instrumental in driving Mercer-based job architecture, policy ownership, design governance, and functional health diagnostics. The position plays a key role in enabling organizational scalability, functional clarity, and people capability uplift.

Accountabilities

Core Responsibilities:

The incumbent will be accountable for leading the design and implementation of enterprise-wide operating models to ensure alignment with the organization's strategic intent, structural efficiency, and long-term scalability. This includes overseeing periodic division-wide Job Description Reality Checks (JDRC) to validate that documented roles reflect actual incumbent deliverables, thereby enhancing job relevance, accountability, and equitable design. A critical component of the role is driving the application of the Mercer job architecture framework across job families, career levels, and job family groups, ensuring a consistent and analytically robust approach to job evaluation and levelling. The role also includes the development and stewardship of a comprehensive Design Governance Policy that defines structural change triggers, formalizes approval workflows, and delineates clear accountability frameworks. The incumbent leads function-specific Capability Maturity Model (CMM) assessments, establishing baseline maturity levels (Levels 15), and ensuring that business units adopt structured pathways to achieve operational optimization. Furthermore, the role mandates the design and implementation of a recurring Function Health Check (FHC) across all business verticals to assess maturity, readiness, governance robustness, and functional capability. Integrated workforce planning is also a core deliverable, encompassing short-, mid-, and long-term modeling that aligns workforce supply-demand forecasting with financial and operational strategies. The incumbent owns OD-related policy frameworks, ensuring rigorous documentation, adoption, and compliance with structural principles and governance standards. As a key transformation agent, the role drives change management efforts through stakeholder engagement strategies, targeted communication plans, and capability uplift programs that embed new operating models and ways of working. The position leads analytical diagnostics related to span of control, managerial layers, and cost-of-structure, informing restructuring strategies through data-driven insights. In addition, the role supports the creation of tools and dashboards to monitor design efficiency, workforce distribution, maturity progressions, and organizational health KPIs. Strong cross-functional collaboration with Rewards, HRBPs, Business Strategy, and Executive Leadership is essential to ensure that the organizational design continuously evolves to support dynamic business needs and long-term talent strategies.

People Management:

The incumbent is responsible for setting clear objectives and performance targets in collaboration with team members, ensuring alignment with overall organizational goals. This role involves actively mentoring, guiding, and providing direction to the team to cultivate skill development, operational efficiency, and continuous improvement. The incumbent applies structured performance management practices to monitor progress, troubleshoot issues, and drive the team towards achieving periodic KPIs. Through strategic oversight and regular feedback, the incumbent fosters a results-oriented environment, empowering the team to meet and exceed established benchmarks while supporting both individual and collective growth.

Job Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in business administration, Organizational Psychology, Human Capital, or a related field. Master's degree or MBA with specialization in Organizational Development, HR Strategy, or Business Transformation is strongly preferred.
• Minimum 12 years of progressive experience in organizational development, job architecture, and workforce planning within large, matrixed organizations. At least 5 years of experience applying Mercer job evaluation frameworks, driving operating model transformation, and implementing maturity models or functional diagnostics across multiple divisions. Proven track record of aligning job design with real-time job execution and leading large-scale org health assessments.
• Fluency in English is mandatory (spoken, written, and technical). Arabic language proficiency is a plus. Must be able to articulate complex structural and maturity frameworks to diverse audiences, from technical specialists to C-suite leaders.
• Certifications: Mercer Job Evaluation Certification (e.g., IPE methodology) is strongly preferred. Certifications in Strategic Workforce Planning (e.g., HCI SWP), Change Management (e.g., PROSCI), and Organizational Design are desirable

Why Join GMG

At GMG, we're dedicated to nurturing a vibrant, inclusive, and engaging work environment that promotes growth, innovation, and well-being. Join us in our mission to inspire victories that make the world better for our team, our consumers, and our communities.

If you're seeking a challenging role where you can make a significant impact, we'd love to hear from you. Apply today to become a part of our journey.

What we offer

• An opportunity to become part of diverse teams with international exposure
• Comprehensive family medical insurance
• Family residency sponsorship and flight allowances
• Up to 30% discount in our premium retail sports brand stores
• Up to 20% discount in our pharmacy chain