Senior Manager, Human Capital & Talent Strategy

Accenture in South Africa; Midrand; On-site; ZAR 1,200,000 - 1,800,000; Full time

Job summary

Accenture in South Africa is seeking a senior client-facing HR Transformation consultant to collaborate with client executives, redesign operating models, and build talent capabilities to sustain performance.

You will engage across HR strategy, workforce planning, leadership development, and change management, leveraging Workday and SAP SuccessFactors, with a strong emphasis on delivering measurable outcomes.

Qualifications

• 8–12 years of human capital consulting experience.
• Experience leading large-scale engagements with senior stakeholders.
• Client-facing consulting or professional services background.
• Strong written and visual communication skills.
• Ability to translate analysis into practical outcomes.

Responsibilities

• Serve as primary day-to-day client contact across human capital engagements at a senior/CSuite level.
• Lead workshops, steering committee presentations, and executive briefings.
• Manage client expectations, scope and delivery quality across concurrent engagements.
• Identify opportunities to deepen client relationships and drive account growth.
• Lead target operating model design engagements from current to future state.
• Advise on organisation design, governance, and role architecture.
• Produce design principles, TOMs, and role accountability matrices.
• Translate operating model decisions into actionable processes with measurable adoption.
• Shape HR transformation journeys across operating models, services, and capabilities.
• Connect HR design to technology such as Workday and SAP SuccessFactors and emerging AI solutions.
• Co-design talent strategies including workforce planning and capability frameworks.
• Lead talent reviews and succession planning to inform business transformation.
• Drive complex change programmes with stakeholder alignment and adoption.
• Contribute to proposals, pitches, and thought leadership for practice growth.
• Mentor junior practitioners and participate in external client networks.

Skills

Executive presence

Stakeholder management

Strategic thinking

Communication skills

Business development

Tools

Workday

SAP SuccessFactors

Job description

This is a senior client-facing role, sitting at the heart of our People & Organisation practice. You will be deployed directly with clients — working alongside their executive teams to solve their most complex human capital challenges, redesign how their organisations are structured and run, and build the talent capabilities that will sustain long-term performance. You will represent our practice externally, shaping client relationships, leading engagements, and translating deep expertise into outcomes that matter. This role demands equal strength in strategic thinking and stakeholder management — someone who can command a room with a CHRO as confidently as they can structure an operating model or facilitate a leadership engagement. You will bring a strategic mindset to the practice and clients as well as be comfortable in the adoption of technology and AI. You are comfortable building relationships with clients to solve their human capital challenges.

What You’ll Do

Client Engagement & Relationship Management

• 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.

Operating Model & Organisational Design

• 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.

HR Reinvention

• Shape a clients HR transformation journey by defining their future HR operating model, service delivery approach, organisation structure and capabilities required to support the business strategy.
• Understand the end-to-end HR capability landscape by bringing strong knowledge across areas such as talent, workforce planning, learning, performance, rewards, employee experience, HR operations and people analytics.
• Connect HR operating model to technology by understanding how platforms such as Workday and SAP SuccessFactors and emerging AI solutions to enable HR processes, employee experience, automation and data-driven decision-making.

Talent Strategy

• 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.

Change Management and Learning

• 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, strengthening 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.

Practice & Business Development

• 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.

Experience

• 8–12 years of experience in human capital with an understanding of HR, talent strategy, operating model and organisation design and change and learning with a significant portion in a client-facing consulting, advisory, or professional services context.
• Proven track record of leading engagements with complex, large-scale organisations at senior stakeholder levels.
• Experience managing client accounts, navigating commercial conversations, and contributing to business development.

Skills & Capabilities

• Outstanding client presence: credible, composed, and compelling in senior and board-level settings.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving capability; able to move between the strategic and the detail without losing either.
• Exceptional written and visual communication; able to produce boardroom-ready deliverables and present with confidence.
• High EQ and political acuity — skilled at managing complex stakeholder dynamics in client environments.
• Commercial awareness and an understanding of how people and organisation decisions create business value.

What Success Looks Like

• Clients view you as a trusted, go-to advisor returning for follow-on work and recommending you to peers.
• Engagements are delivered to a high standard, on time and on scope, with measurable client impact.
• You contribute meaningfully to the growth of the practice through new mandates, thought leadership, or team capability.
• Junior team members develop under your guidance, building confidence and craft in client settin