Strategy Lead

Job Title: Strategy Lead

To assist in shaping and governing HSBC’s location and outsourcing strategy by running evidence-based portfolio reviews and headcount movement decisions that optimise footprint, capacity, and cost-to-serve—while ensuring strong controls, compliance, effective stakeholder alignment, and a positive colleague experience enabled by data, tooling, and continuous performance tracking.

In this role, you will:

• Align location and outsourcing decisions to business strategy: Ensure all recommendations support HSBC’s strategic objectives, growth plans, operating model direction, and workforce plans (including 5-year horizons for strategic sites).
• Optimise footprint, capacity, and cost-to-serve: Identify and deliver opportunities to improve efficiency and reduce cost through site rationalisation, capacity optimisation, and disciplined planning that avoids short-term real estate investment.
• Lead evidence-based location & outsourcing assessments and portfolio reviews: Conduct structured reviews across strategic, tier 2 and sub-scale sites (including lease-expiry driven reviews), assessing demand/supply, talent, cost, resilience, and delivery constraints to inform consolidation, expansion, or exit decisions. Drive governance for major headcount movements: Prepare and steer decision-making through relevant forums, enabling timely placement of large-scale headcount movements, with clear trade-offs, dependencies, and benefits tracking.
• Synchronise headcount movements and maximise redeployment outcomes: Implement processes to coordinate workforce movements across sites, maximise redeployment opportunities, minimise severance impacts, and retain critical skills in partnership with People, Governance & Communications (PG&C) and GBGI COOs. Develop and embed frameworks, standards, and controls: Maintain clear principles, governance, and best practices for consistent location and outsourcing decisions, ensuring strong internal controls, auditability, and adherence to relevant policies and standards.
• Conduct market, regulatory, and risk assessments: Evaluate location and outsourcing options against market dynamics, regulatory requirements, operational resilience, and reputational risk; ensure compliance with local laws and internal policies (referencing relevant departmental instructions where applicable).
• Manage stakeholder and partner engagement: Build strong relationships across Group Business Group Infrastructure (GBGIs) and external partners/local authorities to enable right location and outsourcing strategy outcomes. Enable innovation through location & outsourcing strategy tooling and automation: Enhance and operationalise location & outsourcing strategy tooling (dashboards, automated data feeds, AI-enabled insights) to create transparency, accelerate decisions, and simplify the end-to-end headcount movements process at scale. (e.g., SiteSync, Migration Planning Execution and Governance (MPEG) automation)
• Promote cultural awareness and colleague experience: Ensure strategies are sensitive to local practices and cultural differences, balancing business outcomes with colleague impacts and sustainable change.
• Monitor, report, and continuously improve performance: Define KPIs and reporting for location and outsourcing outcomes (e.g., capacity risk, utilisation, redeployment rate, cycle time, cost avoidance, vendor performance), and run a quarterly cadence overlaying WFP and location strategy to drive ongoing optimisation.

To be successful you will:

• Location strategy & portfolio optimisation: Ability to assess, design and execute multi-site strategies (growth, consolidation, exit), balancing cost, capacity, talent and resilience. Workforce planning & demand forecasting: Interpreting multi-year Workforce Planning (WFPs), translating demand into site capacity plans and movement roadmaps.
• Real estate and capacity management literacy: Understanding desks/seats, utilisation, lease events, and how to avoid short-term capex/opex through better planning.
• Outsourcing strategy: Building outsourcing frameworks & supporting the GBGIs. Risk, regulatory and controls mindset: ensuring decisions are compliant and auditable within a strong control environment. Data analytics & decision support: Strong quantitative skills (scenario modelling, benefits tracking), with the ability to turn data into clear recommendations.
• Tooling/product capability (SiteSync/dashboarding/automation): Experience defining requirements, improving processes through automation, and partnering with tech teams to deliver dashboards and data feeds; familiarity with AI-enabled insights is a plus.
• Programme & change management: Planning and delivering complex migrations/movements with dependencies, timelines, governance, and stakeholder readiness.
• Stakeholder management & influencing: Confident engagement with senior stakeholders (e.g., GBGI Chief Operating Office (COOs)), ability to facilitate check-and-challenge sessions and drive decisions.
• Communication: Clear, concise writing and presentation skills - able to explain trade-offs, risks and recommendations to varied audiences. Commercial & financial acumen: Building business cases, understanding cost-to-serve, savings/avoidance, and tracking benefits realisation.
• Collaboration & cultural awareness: Working effectively across countries, time zones and cultures; designing approaches that consider colleague experience and local practices. Continuous improvement mindset: Identifying process gaps, standardising ways of working, and embedding repeatable governance and metrics.

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HSBC is an equal opportunity employer committed to building a culture where all employees are valued, respected and opinions count. We take pride in providing a workplace that fosters continuous professional development, flexible working and, opportunities to grow within an inclusive and diverse environment. We encourage applications from all suitably qualified persons irrespective of, but not limited to, their gender or genetic information, sexual orientation, ethnicity, religion, social status, medical care leave requirements, political affiliation, people with disabilities, color, national origin, veteran status, etc., We consider all applications based on merit and suitability to the role.”

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