Our client is one of the world's most prestigious luxury fashion houses, renowned for its heritage, craftsmanship, and exceptional people culture. As the business continues to grow across the Middle East, they are seeking an experienced Compensation & Benefits / HR Controlling Manager to join their regional HR team.
This is a highly commercial HR position requiring an individual who combines strong compensation and benefits expertise with exceptional financial acumen and HR controlling experience. Working closely with HR leadership, Finance, Retail Directors and business stakeholders, you will ensure all people-related investments, workforce planning, compensation structures and HR budgets support both business performance and employee engagement.
This role is ideally suited to someone currently working within luxury retail, premium retail, fashion, beauty, hospitality or another fast-paced consumer environment where headcount, payroll costs and workforce planning are business critical.
Key Responsibilities
Compensation & Benefits
- Lead the development, implementation and continuous improvement of compensation and benefits strategies across the region.
- Ensure salary structures remain competitive through regular market benchmarking and salary surveys.
- Manage annual salary reviews, merit increases, bonus cycles and incentive programmes.
- Partner with senior HR leaders to design competitive reward frameworks aligned with business objectives.
- Provide guidance on grading structures, job evaluations and internal equity.
- Analyse market trends and recommend adjustments to remain competitive within the luxury retail industry.
- Support executive remuneration analysis where required.
- Ensure compensation practices remain compliant with local legislation and company governance.
HR Controlling
- Own the regional HR budget, monitoring headcount costs, payroll expenditure and people investment.
- Lead workforce planning exercises across boutiques, regional offices and corporate functions.
- Produce detailed HR financial reports, dashboards and executive presentations.
- Analyse labour costs, overtime, incentives, commissions and staffing efficiency.
- Partner closely with Finance to ensure accurate forecasting and budget control.
- Identify financial risks and opportunities relating to workforce costs.
- Monitor HR KPIs including:
- Headcount
- Labour cost
- Payroll variance
- Staff turnover
- Vacancy rates
- Recruitment costs
- Overtime
- Productivity
- Absenteeism
- Cost per employee
- Develop recommendations that improve both financial performance and employee experience.
Performance & Reward
- Manage the annual performance appraisal cycle.
- Support calibration sessions and performance moderation.
- Ensure performance ratings are aligned with compensation decisions.
- Provide analytics to leadership around performance distribution and reward effectiveness.
- Support talent reviews and succession planning through robust workforce data.
HR Analytics & Reporting
- Deliver regular executive reporting for senior management.
- Produce accurate workforce analytics to support strategic decision making.
- Build meaningful dashboards using HRIS and business intelligence tools.
- Analyse trends relating to turnover, recruitment, engagement, productivity and organisational effectiveness.
- Present complex HR and financial data in a clear and commercially focused manner.
Business Partnering
- Act as the key HR finance partner for regional leadership.
- Build strong relationships with Finance Directors, HR Business Partners and Retail leadership.
- Support organisational changes, restructures and workforce optimisation projects.
- Provide commercial recommendations based on detailed people analytics.
- Participate in annual budgeting, forecasting and strategic planning exercises.
Experience Required
- Bachelor's Degree in Human Resources, Finance, Business or related discipline.
- 5-8+ years experience in Compensation & Benefits, HR Controlling or People Analytics.
- Previous experience within luxury retail, premium retail, fashion, beauty, hospitality or another consumer-focused organisation.
- Strong understanding of compensation frameworks, bonus schemes and salary benchmarking.
- Experience managing HR budgets and workforce planning.
- Advanced financial analysis skills with the ability to interpret large volumes of workforce data.
- Strong commercial mindset with excellent business partnering capability.
- Experience working closely with Finance departments.
- Advanced Excel skills including Pivot Tables, Power Query and complex financial modelling.
- Experience with SAP SuccessFactors, Workday, Oracle or similar HRIS platforms would be highly advantageous.
- Excellent presentation and stakeholder management skills.
- Fluent English essential. Additional regional languages are advantageous.
