Senior Consultant - Process Excellence
Responsibilities:
About the Role
At Principal Financial Group, we consider our employees our greatest strength. As a Senior Consultant - Process Excellence, you will lead the design, standardization, and governance of global HR processes across the employee lifecycle. Act as an enterprise process owner without line authority, orchestrating decision‑making across COEs, HR Product/IT, and Shared Services to deliver measurable efficiency, compliance, data quality, and employee experience improvements.
Key Responsibilities- Process Development: Facilitate development workshops to define or enhance end-to-end global HR processes, including hire-to-retire, onboarding, and other critical functions.
- Standardization: Align processes across regions and business units, while allowing for essential local differences to guarantee smooth operations.
- Intake Support: Establish an intake-to-delivery model: triage demand, scope HR process work, deliver as-a-service process expertise for HR COEs/process owners.
- Documentation: Collaborate with COE leaders and process owners to formalize and manage process maps, SOPs, RACI, and DARE matrices. Utilize BPMN concepts to establish system swimlanes, data objects, controls, and hand-off documentation.
- Influence without authority: Facilitate decision forums around RACI/DARE and governance. Broker trade-offs and push back constructively when proposals compromise control, data quality or experience.
- Continuous Improvement: Apply Lean/Six Sigma methodologies to streamline and optimize HR operations for maximum efficiency. Partner with HR Product to prioritize efficiencies and HR IT to act upon enhancements.
- Performance Monitoring: Establish benchmarks and metrics to track the efficiency, compliance, and overall experience of HR processes.
- Story-Telling and Maturity: Translate process benefits using KPIs, benefit realization, and other key metrics to mature the HR Process function and garner buy-in from the broader HR community on this growing, vital function.
- Change Enablement: Work closely with HRBPs, IT, and Communications teams to ensure effective embedding of process changes.
- Privacy-by-design: Partner with HR Privacy & AI Governance to embed appropriate controls into processes and requirements.
- Improved Efficiency: Achieve significant reductions in manual effort, rework, and variation across regions.
- Scalability: Facilitate global growth and support future system implementations such as ERP and HCM.
- Consistency & Compliance: Minimize compliance risks and ensure consistent application of policies worldwide.
- Improved Employee Experience: Simplify processes to provide a smoother and more reliable employee journey.
- Informed Decision-Making: Enable better governance and planning through standardized metrics and reporting.
Qualifications:
Key Skills & Experience- Enterprise Process Leadership: Proven ability to lead cross-functional process redesigns and influence without authority across director/VP-level stakeholders, with experience spanning multiple HR systems (e.g., ATS, HCM, Payroll).
- HR Process Architecture: Expertise in mapping end-to-end HR processes utilizing BPMN and integrating capabilities of various HR systems.
- Lean/Six Sigma Continuous Improvement: Practical experience with DMAIC or Kaizen in HR operations, developing benchmark frameworks, and applying statistical methods to drive improvements.
- Focused Project Delivery: Strong background in converting process insights into prioritized backlogs and delivering changes in collaboration with HR Product Managers and engineers.
Qualifications
Must‑have
8–12 years in HR process excellence/operations with proven delivery across HR Systems.
Converts process designs into user stories/acceptance criteria; partners with Product/IT to deliver releases.
Nice‑to‑have
Exposure to ServiceNow HRSD, workflows/RPA sizing, and HR data controls (system‑of‑record vs. system‑of‑entry).
Familiarity with privacy in HR contexts (e.g., consent, retention, DPIA concepts); experience partnering with privacy/AI governance.
Prosci/ADKAR, Lean/Six Sigma Black Belt, or BPMN certification.
Additional Information:
What We Offer- An opportunity to contribute to a significant transformation within a leading financial services organization.
- A collaborative and inclusive work environment where your contributions are valued.
- Professional growth and development opportunities.
- Competitive compensation and benefits package.
Shift Timings: 2PM – 11PM IST