Senior Client Leader, Human Capital & Talent Strategy

Accenture in South Africa; Midrand; On-site; ZAR 900,000 - 1,500,000; Full time

Job summary

Accenture in South Africa is seeking a senior, client-facing practitioner to join our People & Organisation practice. You will work directly with client executives to redesign operating models, shape HR strategies, and build capabilities for sustainable performance.

You will lead engagements, manage executive relationships, and translate deep HR and organisational design expertise into measurable outcomes. Expect a high-impact, client-facing role with opportunities to shape multi-year

Qualifications

• 8-12 years of experience in human capital consulting or professional services.
• Proven track record leading engagements with senior stakeholders in large organisations.
• Experience managing client accounts, navigating commercial conversations, and contributing to business development.

Responsibilities

• Serve as the primary day-to-day client contact across human capital engagements, building trusted advisor relationships at a senior and C-suite level.
• Lead client workshops, steering committee presentations, and executive briefings - translating complex analysis into clear, compelling narratives.
• Manage client expectations, scope, and delivery quality across concurrent engagements.
• Identify opportunities to deepen and extend client relationships, contributing to account growth and new mandate development.
• Lead target operating model design engagements from current-state diagnostics through to future-state design and implementation roadmaps.
• Advise clients on organisational structures, spans and layers, role architecture, and governance frameworks that align to their strategic direction.
• Produce high-quality deliverables including design principles, Target Operating Model blueprints, and role accountability matrices.
• Translate operating model decisions into tangible operational processes - ensuring new ways of working are practical, embedded, and measurable.
• Build client-ready playbooks, governance toolkits, and implementation guides that drive adoption and accountability.
• Shape a clients HR transformation journey by defining their future HR operating model, service delivery approach, organisation structure and capabilities.
• Understand the end-to-end HR capability landscape across talent, workforce planning, learning, performance, rewards, employee experience, HR operations and people analytics.
• Connect HR operating model to technology by understanding platforms like Workday and SAP SuccessFactors and emerging AI solutions to enable HR processes, employee experience, automation and data-driven decision-making.
• Co-design enterprise talent strategies with clients - covering workforce planning, talent segmentation, critical role identification, and capability frameworks.
• Lead talent review and calibration processes, supporting clients to make better, more consistent decisions about their people.
• Advise on succession planning, leadership pipeline health, and strategic workforce planning tied to business transformation agendas.
• Lead complex change programmes by shaping and driving the change strategy for large transformations, covering stakeholder alignment, change impact, adoption, communications and business readiness.
• Design learning and capability solutions, translating new processes, technologies and ways of working into practical learning journeys, role-based training, leadership development and on-the-job enablement.
• Advise senior clients on adoption and behaviour change, working with executives and programme leaders to identify resistance, shift mindsets, strengthen sponsorship and embed new behaviours into the organisation.
• Support business development and client relationships, identifying opportunities, shape proposals, contribute to pitches and position change and learning as a critical part of transformation outcomes.
• Contribute to proposal development, pitch preparation, and thought leadership that positions our practice competitively in the market.
• Actively participate in the talent practice community, sharing client insights, building IP, and mentoring junior practitioners.
• Represent the firm at industry forums, client events, and relevant external networks.

Skills

Senior client-facing

Stakeholder management

Operating model design

Organisational design

HR transformation

Talent strategy

Change management

Business development

Executive facilitation

Client relationship management

Tools

Workday

SAP SuccessFactors

Job description

Accenture in South Africa is seeking a senior, client-facing practitioner to join our People & Organisation practice. You will work directly with client executives to redesign operating models, shape HR strategies, and build capabilities for sustainable performance.

You will lead engagements, manage executive relationships, and translate deep HR and organisational design expertise into measurable outcomes. Expect a high-impact, client-facing role with opportunities to shape multi-year