Manager, People at Bridge International Academies

Bridge began in order to help solve a single, seemingly intractable problem; one-in-two children are not learning. We help children in parts of the world where there is a shortage of learning, by boosting government schools or running complementary community schools. Since 2007, we have reached one million children through hundreds of schools across Africa and India.

We believe every child has the right to high-quality education. We work in partnership with governments, communities, teachers, and parents to support and deliver quality education to for primary and pre-primary children in developing countries. We are data-driven and evidence-based and our model adapts to the needs of individual governments. We have re-engineered every part of the education system, from teacher training and support, to lesson delivery, construction, and financial administration; making government schools and community schools as effective as possible.

In Nigeria we are supporting the government to improve every public primary school and teacher in Edo State; In Borno State we are part of a tripartite partnership with the Borno State government and the Nigerian Stock Exchange and in Osun and Lagos States we run community schools. In Liberia, we are part of a public private partnership; and, in Andhra Pradesh – south-east India – we have an infrastructure partnership. In East Africa, we run hundreds of community schools. Our model holds us accountable to governments and families and we are flexible about our approach so long as we can serve more marginalised communities and improve learning outcomes for children.

We are recruiting to fill the position below:

Job Title: Manager, People

Location: Benin, Edo
Employment Type: Full-time

Job Description

• We invite you to join this incredible endeavour that is having a world-changing impact across multiple continents. You will join a team of dedicated change-makers committed to ensuring that each decision we make keeps a child’s experience of learning as its guiding principle.

People Group:

• Our people are at the core of what we do, from the teachers in our schools to the software developers building our tech platform – and we do it at massive scale with rapid growth. We are the champions of Bridge culture. We find passionate change-makers across rural communities, informal settlements and global cities who want to lead the movement to reform public education. We help them grow through continuous learning, strong focus on performance and extensive collaboration. We rely on technology to engage with, innovate for and serve thousands of our people spread across multiple time-zones. We are evidence-based, outcomes driven and lead through service.

People Operations Department:

• The People Operations team provides operational support to every employee during their journey with Bridge. Our north star is to achieve excellence in an employee’s experience of Bridge, their authentic engagement with Bridge’s mission and for both to result in improved learning outcomes for our pupils. We own a diverse portfolio of touch points between any employee and Bridge and these range from: rolling out contracts, benefits management, placing teachers and school leaders in vacancies that arise from time to time, leading performance management and talent development initiatives, resolving conflict arising due to disciplinary reasons, grievances or other complaints and, provide accurate payroll inputs every month.
• We provide this support at scale, relying heavily on Technology, for the thousands of our employees with diverse backgrounds, spread across multiple locations, all working to bring life-changing education for our pupils. We work with large amounts of data which we use to gain better insight into employee behaviour and how we can collaborate with them to achieve our north star.

About the Role

• As the Manager, People for our office inEdo, you encompass all things People for this office.
• You will lead employee experience, people operations and administration functions within People.
• You will also support our talent acquisition efforts as we expand rapidly.
• As you deliver on your primary functions, you will also be asked to lead or support cross-functional projects for development and execution across our territories and support offices.

What You Will Do

• S / he will proactively manage and monitor the effectiveness of Human Resources policies and procedures across all staff,at our academies and across the region.
• S / he will manage investigations and grievances processes in conjunction with departments and Legal. The person will coordinate correspondences and communications between the people team and employees; ensure that management views are clearly and fairy represented.
• The manager will also be in charge of managing employee welfare initiatives; ensure that the Company understands employee motivations and needs/wants.
• S / he will proactively organize trainings across the Company to ensure that employees are updated on the skills they need. The manager will lead in considering new systems, tools, and processes to improve the ongoing service delivery operations of Human Resources.
• Managing payroll and personnel documents as well as working with the Director, People on specific HR projects.

What You Should Have

• Bachelor’s degree in Business or other related fields with top academic marks; MBA / grad degree or HR professional membership a plus.
• Minimum of five years of significant leadership experiences in operational roles for rapidly scaling companies.
• Strong analytical thinker, ideally with previous experience in board commercial and operational areas
• Self-starter; highly driven individual that will take ownership from the get-go and proactively look for improvement
• Emerging markets experience a major plus
• Strong leadership skills and demonstrated ability to work with a very diverse workforce
• Strong project management skills

You’re Also

• A detailed doer– You have a track record of getting things done. You’re organized and responsive. You take ownership of every idea you touch and execute it to a fine level of detail, setting targets, engaging others, and doing whatever it takes to get the job done. You can multi-task dozens of such projects at once and never lose sight of the details. Likely, you have some experience in a start-up or other rapid-growth company.
• A creative problem-solver – Growing any business from scratch comes with massive and constant challenges. On top of that, Bridge works in often fragile, sometimes volatile low-resource communities and with complex government systems. You need to be flexible and ready to get everything done effectively, quickly, and affordably with the materials at hand.
• A relentless advocate – The children we serve and teachers we empower never leave your mind. You know them, get them, have shared a meal with them (or would be happy to in the future). You would never shrink back from shaking a parent’s hand or picking up a crying child, no matter what the person was wearing or looked like. Every decision you make considers their benefit, experience, and value.
• A malleable learner – You believe you can always do better. You welcome constructive criticism and provide it freely to others. You know you only get better tomorrow when others point out where you’ve missed things or failed today.
• A data-driven decision-maker – When making decisions, you don’t rely on your intuition alone. You collect data, you analyze it and make decisions with clear justifications.
• A curious investigator – You ask why a lot. You don’t just take what you see and accept it. You wonder why it is that way, and are aware that the world we see is created by human choices and actions – and it could be different. You wonder, and see the world as wonderful even when you want to change a part of it that is unjust.

Application Closing Date
11th January, 2021