Senior Manager, People Experience - EMEA

sonyinteractiveentertainmentglobal; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 70,000 - 110,000; Full time

Job summary

Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) is seeking an experienced HR Operations professional to lead Tier-1 HR services across Europe, including the UK. You will partner with Payroll, Legal, Global Mobility and regional leaders to ensure data integrity, policy consistency, and efficient onboarding and offboarding processes.

In this hybrid London-based role you will champion process improvements, automate workflows, manage SLAs/KPIs, and grow a capable team while upholding compliance and privacy

Qualifications

• Experience leading an operational HR services function with multi-site responsibility across EMEA.
• Proven track record managing SLAs/KPIs through a ticketing system and leading 5–10 direct reports.

Responsibilities

• Be accountable for all first-line HR support activities and data integrity feeding payroll and reporting.
• Oversee onboarding, offboarding, benefit administration, and employee changes.
• Manage HR compliance, Right to Work checks and screening across regions.
• Coordinate with cross-functional teams and external providers to meet SLAs and KPIs.
• Drive continuous process improvement and tech stack automation across Europe.
• Coach and develop team members to scale operations and reduce single points of failure.
• Produce leadership reports on KPIs, process changes and project progress.

Skills

HR operations management

SLA/KPI governance

Team leadership

Process automation

Data integrity

Stakeholder management

Tools

Workday HRIS

ServiceNow

Job description

Why Sony Interactive Entertainment?

Sony Interactive Entertainment isn't just the Best Place to Play - it's also the Best Place to Work. Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) is the company behind the PlayStation brand. As a subsidiary of Sony Group Corporation, we're part of a proud legacy of innovation and excellence. SIE is a dynamic technology company, delivering cutting-edge hardware and network services to more than 100 million people and an entertainment leader, home to some of the most beloved and recognizable intellectual properties (IP) in the world. Our role at SIE is to create and nurture the experiences under the PlayStation brand, a name synonymous with entertainment excellence and creativity.

Role Overview:

This role reports to the Senior Director, People Experience EMEA and is part of the global PX team. The role will be looking after for all operational elements of HR and is part of the core foundation to the success of our HR Operating model and enables us to continue to build a smooth and efficient employee experiences. Successful candidates will have worked in similar sized organisations with a remit of multiple countries. The remit is currently growing as we are centralising European Tier 1 activity into the center. The team consists of focused Advisory teams based in London as well as HR Managers who have hybrid roles (Tier 1 and Tier 2) based in France, Germany and Spain.

What you'll be doing:

Accountable for all activity associated with first line HR support (Tier 1), this includes: data integrity which feeds into Payroll and reporting. Key HR systems are Workday and ServiceNow (Nexus tickets); implement HR policies consistently, oversee country specific onboarding, offboarding, benefit administration, , administration of employee changes (starter, leaver, changes), employee screening, Right to Work checks, HR compliance, Tier 1 ticketing SLAs and continuous process improvement and tech stack automation focus across the region.

Develop and maintain strong relationships with key roles in the wider HR team such as PX Consultants, in-house Legal team, Payroll team, Global Mobility, PTS (technology), COEs (Talent, DEI, Total Rewards etc) as well as regional leaders to ensure you have a deep understanding of business needs and ability to schedule team resource. The key is to continuously improve and develop operational support best practice and review opportunities for improvement with a global lens even when the role is regional.

In partnership with the Senior Director People Experience and senior stakeholders, scope requirements for HR Operations across Europe with the aim to establish and maintain a full European HR Operations service. Countries currently in scope include France, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Portugal, Italy, UK and Ireland

Responsible for the team's adoption and successful achievement of current SLAs and KPIs on the Nexus ticketing system, goals and continuous improvement projects to align with changing business needs and re-establish a customer focused and proactive approach across the team and line with the globalisation of our function. Coach, develop and train team members to avoid single point dependencies and build for scale and knowledge sharing.

Create and maintain relevant external supplier relationships and regularly review their SLAs (e.g. pre-employment screening, Right to Work checks etc) as well as the budget related to yearly activities for Tier1

Present regular reports to leadership to illustrate KPIs, changes in processes/policies, noticeable trends and project updates with reflective learnings as well as proactive forward looking focal points. This role requires strong collaboration communication skills.

Build mechanisms to enable a self-service culture by ensuring core platforms are regularly reviewed and maintained including knowledge articles and regularly reviewing training material for the team and the business

Leads a continuous improvement culture, driving ongoing development, evaluation/testing, and maintenance of processes and documentation (e.g., Tier 0 Knowledge Base, Standard Operating Procedures).

Lead projects to improve processes and technology e.g. implementing screening, integrating new work streams

Maintain appropriate confidentiality in all of the above, ensuring legal and compliance requirements are met (e.g. employment legislation, data protection etc.)

What we're looking for:

Experience of managing an operational HR services function with multi-site accountability across EMEA, with specifically working with SLAs/KPIs through a ticketing system and managing a team of 5-10 direct reports.

Proven line management capability with a focus on driving performance, team development, continuous improvement as well as evolve the model as centralisation progresses.

Experience implementing new technologies and/or harmonising multiple systems and simplify / automate processes

Strong experience of building collaborati