Employee Journey Lead

Xero; Wellington; Hybrid; NZD 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Job summary

Xero in Wellington or Melbourne is seeking a People Experience professional to turn complex employee journeys into joined-up experiences using self-service, automation, AI and human support.

You will map journeys end-to-end, identify root causes, and pilot improvements with clear handover plans, working with cross-functional teams across Australia and New Zealand.

Qualifications

• Experience mapping complex employee journeys to improve UX in HR or People Experience.
• Ability to identify root causes and propose practical future states using automation and AI.
• Track record of cross-functional collaboration from discovery to implementation.

Responsibilities

• Collaborate with Employee Experience, Shared Services and PX Systems to define ownership and partnerships.
• Listen to employees and leaders to locate journeys where improvements matter.
• Map journeys end-to-end and design practical solutions with self-service, automation, AI, and human support.
• Lead a governed pilot with measurable success and a plan to hand over to the operations team.

Skills

Journey mapping

Service blueprinting

Root-cause analysis

Cross-functional collaboration

AI & automation awareness

Tools

Automation tools

Workflow systems

Job description

The role and its impact

Help shape how People Experience services work from start to finish as Xero moves towards an AI-first way of working. You’ll turn complex employee journeys into simpler, more joined-up experiences, using the right mix of self-service, automation, AI and expert human support.

You’ll work across People Experience and enterprise teams, taking selected high-impact ideas from discovery through design, pilot and handover. Service owners keep running their services, and you’ll make sure everyone knows who owns what so improvements stick.

The team and how they connect

You’ll join the Employee Programmes and Delivery team, a small group of utility players who spend their time working out what’s going wrong for people and fixing it in a way that sticks. We Go Together by bringing the right people in early, whether that’s service owners, operations, policy or systems. We try things small before we scale them, and we check whether they helped, not just whether we shipped them.

Initially, you will focus on

• Getting close to the work by spending time with Employee Experience, Employee Shared Services, PX Systems and service owners, so it’s clear where you lead and where you partner.

• Listening to employees, people leaders and service teams to find the journeys where change will matter most.

• Mapping those journeys end to end, finding root causes and shaping a practical future state across self-service, automation, AI and human support.

• Taking one well-scoped improvement into a governed pilot, with clear measures and a plan to hand it over to the team who runs it.

Where and how you can work

This role is based in Melbourne or Wellington. Xero is hybrid with no mandated office days, and most of the team come in around two days a week. A few of us work remote, and we keep things workable for anyone who does. The team is mostly based in Australia and New Zealand, so we share working hours and can work things through together. Important things get shared in writing, and we look at the impact you have, not how visible you are.

Here are some of the things we are looking for

• You’ll Go Bold by rethinking journeys from the ground up, using methods such as journey mapping, service blueprinting and root-cause analysis.

• A knack for seeing how people, processes, policies and technology fit together, and for making roles and handoffs clear.

• A track record of taking ambiguous, cross-functional work from discovery through pilot to handover, and knowing when to steer and when to partner.

• Curiosity about where AI and automation genuinely help, with sensible human oversight built in, and a habit of testing small and learning fast so you Go Fast without cutting corners.

• The ability to build trust quickly, influence service owners without formal authority, and explain your thinking in plain language to technical and non-technical partners.

• A desire to Go Further by sharing what you know, through reusable tools, playbooks and coaching that help others improve their own practice.