Head of Employee Relations, India

About the role

The India Head of Employee Relations leads the full ER and People Relations agenda for BT India across ~14,000 colleagues. The role is responsible for ensuring BT operates a fair, safe, compliant, and values-driven workplace by driving ER governance, leadership advisory, POSH compliance, labour law readiness, transformation support, investigations, and proactive risk mitigation.

This role provides full leadership to the People Partners team who manage ER advisory, investigation support, redeployment, redundancies, manager guidance, business partnering for transformation, and colleague relations.

The role is also responsible for interpreting and operationalising India’s Four Labour Codes (Wage Code, Social Security Code, Industrial Relations Code, and OSH Code), leading policy redesign, transformation change, and cross-functional compliance readiness.

Given the scale, regulatory complexity, and risk exposure, this role must be held by leader capable of influencing senior stakeholders, balancing commercial and legal perspectives, driving organisational change, and safeguarding BT’s reputation and culture.

What you’ll be doing

• Lead the Employee Relations strategy for BT India, ensuring fair, consistent and timely resolution of complex and sensitive employee matters.
• Provide strategic ER leadership across business transformation, organisational change, workforce planning, redeployment, redundancy and restructuring activity.
• Lead, develop and coach the People Partners team, strengthening advisory capability, stakeholder influence and leadership support across the business.
• Partner with HR, Legal, Compliance, Finance, Security and senior business leaders to manage people risk and enable successful business outcomes.
• Oversee ER governance, reporting, quality assurance, case auditing, documentation standards and continuous process improvement.
• Act as the senior advisor and final authority on disciplinary matters, ensuring consistent, proportionate and legally defensible outcomes.
• Lead BT India's POSH framework, ensuring compliance, robust investigation standards, leadership awareness and proactive risk prevention.
• Provide expert guidance on Indian employment legislation, including Labour Codes, industrial relations, workforce regulations and statutory obligations.
• Lead policy and process redesign to ensure compliance with evolving employment laws and organisational requirements.
• Own employment compliance governance across BT India, including audits, statutory filings, inspections, record keeping and regulatory reporting.
• Represent BT with labour authorities, government bodies and regulators, managing enquiries, inspections and compliance matters.
• Oversee contractor labour compliance, vendor governance and remediation activity where required.
• Monitor external industrial relations trends and advise leaders on emerging risks and organisational impacts.
• Drive manager capability through training and coaching on employee relations, investigations, grievances, conduct, performance and workplace behaviours.
• Promote a culture of fairness, accountability, inclusion and psychological safety, using insights to influence leadership behaviour and organisational culture.
• Build organisational readiness for change by guiding leaders through legal, cultural and operational impacts of transformation initiatives.

Essential Skills / Experience

• Employee Relations & Employment Law Expertise: Deep knowledge of Indian employment law, including the Four Labour Codes, POSH legislation, complex ER investigations, disciplinary processes, redeployment, redundancy and industrial relations advisory.
• Strategic Leadership & Stakeholder Management: Proven ability to influence and advise senior leaders across India and the UK, make sound decisions in complex situations, and lead organisational change with confidence and credibility.
• Data-Driven & People-Focused Approach: Strong analytical capability with experience using ER metrics and ServiceNow insights, combined with high emotional intelligence, conflict resolution skills and the ability to navigate sensitive employee matters effectively.

Desirable Skills / Experience

• Demonstrates exceptional integrity, discretion and professional courage, handling sensitive and complex employee relations matters with confidentiality, fairness and accountability.
• Exercises balanced judgement and empathy, carefully considering business, legal and people implications to deliver pragmatic and equitable outcomes.
• Exhibits strong executive presence, confidently influencing, challenging and advising senior leaders on high-risk and business-critical issues.
• Builds credible and effective stakeholder relationships, fostering collaboration and maintaining constructive engagement across all levels of the organisation.

Our Package