Head Industrial Relations & Manufacturing HR (General Manager)

Head Industrial Relations & Manufacturing HR (General Manager)
Location: Corporate office Mumbai
Reporting to: CHRO

Role Purpose
Heading the Industrial Relations and HR operations agenda across the manufacturing locations, ensuring a stable, productive and engaged workforce while building a high-performance employee culture. The role will be responsible for IR strategy, union management, workforce productivity, labour compliance, grievance management, disciplinary processes, and plant HR, while partnering closely with business and plant leadership.

Key Responsibilities:

A. Industrial Relations & Employee Relations

• Develop and implement the organisations Industrial Relations strategy aligned with business objectives.
• Manage relationships with trade unions and works committees.
• Lead collective bargaining, wage settlements, long-term settlements and productivity agreements.
• Maintain harmonious employee relations and proactively identify potential IR risks.
• Develop mechanisms for early identification and resolution of employee concerns.
• Lead negotiations during changes in working conditions, and productivity initiatives.

B. Workforce Productivity & Cost Optimisation

• Drive initiatives for labour productivity, and workforce flexibility.
• Review manpower deployment, absenteeism, attrition and productivity metrics.
• Partner with operations to improve man-hours per unit/output and labour cost productivity.
• Support automation, mechanisation and technology-led workforce transformation.
• Develop productivity-linked incentive schemes in partnership with business and finance.

C. Plant HR

• Provide strategic HR leadership to plant/location HR teams.
• Ensure effective execution of HR processes
• Build strong HRBP capability at plant level.
• Ensure consistent implementation of corporate HR policies across locations.

D. Labour & Statutory Compliance

• Ensure robust compliance with applicable labour laws, Industrial Relations Code and other applicable labour legislation.
• Coordinate with legal counsel and external labour-law advisors on complex matters.
• Conduct periodic compliance audits and close identified gaps.

E. Employee Engagement & Culture

• Develop initiatives to improve employee engagement, trust and organisational culture at plants.
• Conduct periodic employee interaction forums and skip-level meetings.
• Strengthen communication between management and the workforce.
• Develop recognition, suggestion and employee participation mechanisms.
• Support leadership in creating a respectful, inclusive and high-performance work environment.
• Establish early-warning indicators for IR risks.
• Present periodic IR/HR reviews to business leadership.

3. Strategic Responsibilities

The incumbent will be expected to move the organisation from reactive IR management to proactive Employee Relations, including:
Building a partnership-based relationship with workforce.

• Developing future-ready IR strategies for automation and digitalisation.
• Creating a strong pipeline of plant HR/IR leaders.
• Institutionalising productivity-linked employment practices.
• Building organisational capability to manage the changing workforce and labour environment.
• Developing a single, consistent IR framework across multiple plants while allowing for local requirements.

Ideal Candidate Profile

Education

• Graduate/Postgraduate in HR, Personnel Management, Industrial Relations, Labour Welfare or equivalent.
• MBA/PGDM in HR preferred.
• Labour-law qualification would be an advantage.

Experience

• 20+ years of HR/IR experience, preferably in large manufacturing, engineering, infrastructure, chemicals, automotive, mining & metals, cement or other labour-intensive industries.
• Significant experience in unionised manufacturing environments.
• Experience handling multiple plants/locations would be preferred.
• Strong exposure to collective bargaining and wage settlements.

6. Critical Competencies

• Industrial Relations expertise
• Collective bargaining & negotiation
• Labour-law knowledge
• Conflict resolution
• Workforce productivity
• Business partnering
• Stakeholder management
• Influencing & negotiation
• People leadership
• Strong communication skills
• High emotional maturity and resilience