HR Business Partner Portugal & GCC

Job Description Summary

The P&O Business Partner enables business performance by shaping and executing the people agenda for Portugal and the Global Competency Center (GCC). The role acts as a trusted advisor to business leaders, translating business strategy into people solutions, driving organizational effectiveness, talent outcomes, employee engagement, and a high-performance culture.

The position ensures a consistent employee experience across the full employee lifecycle while providing expert guidance on local labor law, employee relations, talent management, organizational design, rewards, and change management.

Job Description

Your Key Responsibilities:

Your responsibilities include, but not limited to:

Strategic Business Partnering

• Act as the primary P&O partner for Portugal and GCC leadership teams.

• Translate business priorities into people and organizational strategies.

• Coach and challenge leaders on organizational effectiveness, leadership capability, talent, and culture.

• Support business transformation, growth initiatives, organizational changes, workforce planning, and capability building.

Talent Management & Succession

• Drive talent reviews, succession planning, leadership development, and talent programs.

• Facilitate identification of critical talent and key successors.

• Partner with managers on career development, retention, talent mobility, and cross-functional opportunities.

Performance Management

• Lead the annual performance management cycle.

• Coach leaders on objective setting, performance differentiation, feedback, and development planning.

• Support high and low performance cases and foster accountability, continuous feedback, and recognition.

Organization Design & Change Management

• Advise leaders on organizational structures, role design, workforce optimization, and job evaluation.

• Lead implementation of reorganizations, restructurings, and business transformations.

• Ensure effective change management, stakeholder alignment, and communication plans.

Employee Relations & Labor Law

• Advise on employee relations, disciplinary cases, investigations, grievances, and performance-related actions.

• Serve as the sole P&O owner for Portugal compliance, ensuring ongoing compliance with Portuguese labor legislation, regulatory requirements, and company policies.

• Manage complex employee cases with Legal and P&O Centers of Excellence.

• Support interactions with employee representative bodies where applicable and proactively mitigate risk.

Talent Acquisition & Onboarding

• Partner with Talent Acquisition on recruitment strategies for Portugal and GCC.

• Support employer branding, local EVP activities, critical hiring, onboarding, and integration.

Rewards & Compensation

• Support annual compensation planning, salary reviews, bonus processes, recognition, job evaluation, and local benefits.

• Advise leaders on market competitiveness, internal equity, and pay transparency.

• Partner with Rewards on pay equity reviews and compensation-related requests.

Employee Engagement, Culture & DEI

• Drive engagement initiatives and action plans based on employee feedback.

• Champion Sandoz culture, values, inclusion, diversity, wellbeing, and employee experience.

• Support leaders in culture transformation and organizational health initiatives.

Global Competency Center Partnership

• Partner with GCC functional leaders supporting international and cross-border teams.

• Advise managers on leading diverse, multicultural teams.

• Support growth and capability strategies for the Madrid GCC and collaborate with global stakeholders.

What you’ll bring to the role:

Essential Requirements:

Education

• Bachelor's degree in Human Resources, Law, Psychology, Business Administration, or a related field.

• Master's degree in HR, Labor Relations, or Business is preferred.

Experience

• 5+ years of progressive HR / P&O Business Partner experience.

• Experience supporting senior leaders and leadership teams.

• Strong expertise in Portuguese labor law is required.

• Experience managing organizational change and restructuring projects.

• Experience in international and matrix organizations.

• Experience supporting shared service centers, capability centers, or GCC environments is highly preferred.

• Fluency in Spanish, Portuguese, and English is required.

• The role may be based in Lisbon or Madrid and requires approximately 20% travel.

Why Sandoz?

Sandoz is the global leader in Biosimilar and Generic medicines, a segment of the healthcare industry that delivers 80% of the world’s medicines at 30% of the cost, touching the lives of more than 1 billion people across 100+ countries! While we are proud of our achievements, we have an ambition to do more so that everyone can achieve the basic human right of good health. 

 

With investments in new development capabilities, production sites, new acquisitions, and partnerships, we have the opportunity to shape the future of Sandoz and help even more people gain access to low-cost, high-quality medicines, sustainably.  

 

Our momentum is powered by an open, collaborative culture driven by our talented and ambitious colleagues, who, in return for applying their skills, experience an agile and collegiate environment with impactful careers, where diversity of thought is welcomed and where personal growth is supported!  

  

Join us, help us make healthcare fairer and faster.  

 

Commitment to Diversity & Inclusion:

We are committed to building an outstanding, inclusive work environment and diverse teams representative of the patients and communities we serve.

 

#Sandoz

Skills Desired

Business Partnering, Knowledge Of All Relevant Policies And Practices, Labour Law, P&O Process Management