dreamwork_
Home · University of Central Asia · Head of HR Operations & Business Partnering
Head of HR Operations & Business Partnering


Department: Human Resources

Reports to: Director of Human Resources

Duty Station: Bishkek, Kyrgyz Republic (with travel throughout Central Asia)

Deadline: 16 November 2026 

 

Summary of Position

  • The Head of HR Operations & Business Partnering is responsible for ensuring that UCA provides high-quality, responsive and reliable HR services across the institution, while developing a proactive HR business-partnering model that enables managers to lead and manage their people effectively.
  • A central purpose of the role is to strengthen managers' confidence and capability in leading and managing people, ensuring that they receive timely, practical and professionally sound HR advice while retaining accountability for their management decisions.
  • The role combines leadership of UCA's operational HR infrastructure with direct responsibility for building a strong relationship between HR and the University's academic units and professional functions. The Head will ensure that managers have access to timely, pragmatic and professionally sound HR advice, while employment processes, systems, records and controls operate consistently and effectively across UCA's different locations and jurisdictions.
  • A major initial responsibility will be to strengthen and professionalise UCA's HR operating model: clarifying responsibilities and service standards; improving employee lifecycle processes; strengthening employee-relations capability; improving HR data, systems and management information; and developing HR Business Partners who understand the areas they support and work proactively with their leaders.
  • The Head will work closely with the Director of HR and specialist HR colleagues responsible for Talent Acquisition, Compensation & Benefits, Learning and Development and other people functions. The role is intended to create an effective integrating layer between managers and HR specialist services, ensuring that workforce issues are identified early, appropriate expertise is brought to bear, decisions are implemented effectively, and managers experience HR as an enabling institutional partner.

 

Functional mandate: Subject to the authority of the Director of HR and UCA's governance and delegated-authority arrangements, the Head has functional responsibility for HR operations, HR business partnering and operational employee relations across UCA. Specialist HR functions retain responsibility for their respective areas of expertise; line managers remain accountable for managing their people. The Head ensures that these components connect through a coherent, responsive and accountable HR service.

Why Join UCA?

  • Impactful Teaching and Research: Contribute to an academic institution that is dedicated to fostering innovation and development in Central Asia and beyond.
  • Collaboration and Growth: Be part of a diverse, interdisciplinary academic environment, with opportunities for collaboration and research across multiple fields of societal relevance.
  • Regional Leadership: Lead the development of innovative solutions to regional challenges in climate adaptation, sustainable development, technology, data science, and digital policy.
  • Support for Female Scholars: UCA is deeply committed to supporting all scholars in all fields, providing opportunities to further advance gender equity in academia.

2. Principal Accountabilities

2.1 HR Operations and Service Delivery

  • Lead UCA's HR operations across locations, ensuring consistent, timely and professional service delivery.
  • Establish clear service standards, responsibilities, workflows and escalation arrangements.
  • Ensure effective administration of the employee lifecycle, including appointments, contracts, employment changes, probation, leave, transfers and exits.
  • Ensure accurate, complete and secure employment records and documentation.
  • Standardise and simplify HR processes while maintaining appropriate legal, policy and control requirements.
  • Develop a service culture characterised by accessibility, responsiveness, fairness, professional judgement and constructive problem-solving, ensuring that managers and employees receive clear, timely and respectful support.
  • Monitor service performance and drive continuous improvement.

2.2 HR Business Partnering and Manager Support

  • Develop and lead a modest HR Business Partnering model for UCA supporting academic units, campuses and professional functions.
  • Ensure HR Business Partners understand the strategy, workforce, operating environment and people challenges, of the areas they support and build trusted relationships with their leaders.
  • Work proactively with managers on workforce and workload planning, organisational design and change, capability, performance and other people matters.
  • Provide managers with advice and support on people-related matters, promoting early identification and effective resolution of employee issues.
  • Use workforce evidence and organisational insight to move HR from reactive case handling towards anticipatory support for institutional priorities.

2.3 Employee Relations and Case Management

  • Lead UCA's operational approach to employee relations, providing managers with timely and professionally sound advice on performance, conduct, grievances, absence, workplace conflict and employment policy.
  • Ensure effective end-to-end coordination and procedural management of disciplinary, grievance, performance and other employee-relations cases, with clear ownership of decisions, appropriate documentation, agreed timelines, active follow-up and formal closure.
  • Maintain oversight of active cases and escalate undue delay, non-compliance, procedural concerns or significant institutional risk to the Director of HR.
  • Work with Legal and other specialist colleagues where matters involve significant legal, safeguarding, ethical or institutional risk.
  • Build the employee-relations capability of HR staff and managers and use recurring themes from cases to identify opportunities for systemic improvement.

2.4 Workforce Analytics, HR Systems and Planning

  • Develop UCA's capability for systematic workforce and workload analysis, providing managers and institutional leadership with reliable evidence on staffing, deployment, vacancies, workload pressures, organisational capacity and trends.
  • Use workforce and workload evidence with managers and HR Business Partners to inform workforce planning, recruitment, organisational design and resource-allocation decisions, identifying under- or over-capacity, duplication and inefficient deployment.
  • Work with Finance and academic leadership to connect workforce information with financial, activity and workload data, enabling better understanding of institutional capacity and cost.
  • Ensure effective use of HR systems, high-quality workforce data and useful management information; for academic staff, provide the analysis needed to support the University's academic workload framework while leaving workload policy and individual allocation with academic leadership.

2.5 Performance, Payroll, Compliance and Controls

  • Ensure effective operational implementation of UCA's performance-management framework, supporting managers with objective-setting, review and performance-improvement processes and providing reliable institutional reporting.
  • Ensure the integrity and timeliness of HR-originated payroll information, working with Finance and Compensation & Benefits to ensure clear responsibilities, appropriate controls, reconciliation and effective resolution of recurring issues; the financial payroll function remains outside this role.
  • Ensure operational HR practices comply with applicable employment legislation and regulatory requirements across UCA's jurisdictions.
  • Maintain appropriate controls over employment documentation, approvals, personal data and HR processes, ensuring appropriate segregation of duties and audit trails.
  • Maintain oversight of HR operational risks and ensure timely response to weaknesses identified through management, Internal Audit or other assurance processes.

2.6 Leadership and Institutional Contribution

  • Lead, develop and hold accountable the HR Operations and Business Partnering team, building professional capability, judgement, confidence and a strong service ethos.
  • Contribute to HR strategy, workforce planning, organisational development and policy development under the leadership of the Director of HR.
  • Build effective relationships across UCA's academic and professional communities and locations, ensuring that colleagues experience HR as one coherent service rather than a collection of separate functions.
  • Work closely with specialist HR leads, respecting their functional accountabilities while ensuring effective hand-offs and coordinated support to managers.
  • Deputise for the Director of HR on specified matters when explicitly delegated.

 

3. Initial Priorities: First 12–18 Months

The successful candidate's initial priorities will include:

  • Assess existing HR operational capabilities, management needs and service requirements, and develop a phased approach to introducing HR Business Partnering, building on strengthened operational services and the capabilities of existing staff.
  • Establish the HR Operations and Business Partnering model, including clear portfolios, service standards and effective relationships with UCA's principal academic and professional areas.
  • Review and simplify the employee lifecycle and priority HR processes, improving accessibility, responsiveness and consistency and through this colleagues' overall experience of HR.
  • Strengthen employee-relations case management, manager support, follow-through and escalation.
  • Establish reliable HR data and management information, including a consistent institutional approach to workforce and workload analysis, enabling evidence-based decisions on staffing, recruitment, organisational design and resource deployment.
  • Clarify and strengthen the HR–Finance payroll interface and associated controls.
  • Strengthen employment compliance, documentation, audit readiness and the professional capability and service culture of the HR Operations/Business Partnering team.
  • Support the Director of HR with an evidence-based assessment of operational performance, risks and priorities for further improvement.
  • Demonstrate measurable improvements in HR service delivery and colleagues' experience, including responsiveness, case-resolution times, process reliability, manager satisfaction and constructive support for employees.

 

4. Decision-Making Authority

Within delegated authority and approved policies, the Head will:

  • Set HR operational service standards, processes and working arrangements within approved policy and delegated authority.
  • Allocate HR Business Partner and Operations responsibilities and provide authoritative operational HR and employee-relations advice within delegated authority.
  • Request and obtain relevant workforce, employment and case-management information in accordance with UCA's policies and delegated authorities; identify required corrective actions and escalate matters where necessary.
  • Coordinate HR involvement in organisational change and significant employee-relations matters, escalating significant risks appropriately.
  • Recommend improvements to HR policy, systems, organisation and service delivery.

5. Person Specification

The successful candidate will be an experienced HR leader combining strong operational discipline with strong professional judgement and a genuine business-partnering orientation. They will be comfortable moving between systems, processes and data on the one hand and complex conversations with senior managers and employees on the other.

Essential

  • Substantial professional HR experience, including significant responsibility for HR operations, business partnering and/or employee relations.
  • Demonstrated experience of leading and developing an HR team.
  • Strong track record of building credible relationships with senior managers and providing pragmatic, professionally robust HR advice.
  • Significant employee-relations and case-management experience.
  • Experience of improving HR processes, service standards and operational controls.
  • Strong experience of HR information systems, workforce data and management reporting, with analytical capability and attention to detail.
  • Sound understanding of performance management.
  • Ability to understand and operate across relevant employment-law and regulatory frameworks; multi-jurisdiction experience would be particularly valuable.
  • Ability to distinguish between issues requiring specialist expertise, managerial action and institutional escalation.
  • Excellent communication, influencing, coaching and relationship-building skills.
  • High standards of judgement, discretion, integrity and confidentiality.
  • Ability to work effectively across cultures, professional groups and geographically distributed teams.
  • Commitment to UCA's mission and willingness to work across its locations.
  • English is required. Fluency in Russian is required.
  • Knowledge of a Central Asian language (Kyrgyz, Kazakh, Tajik) is desirable.

Highly desirable

  • Professional HR qualification and/or relevant postgraduate qualification.
  • Experience of establishing or substantially improving an HR Business Partnering model.
  • Experience in a university, international organisation or other complex professional environment.
  • Experience of organisational restructuring or significant institutional change.
  • Sound working knowledge of employment legislation and HR regulatory requirements, with practical experience applying employment law in at least one relevant jurisdiction.
  • Knowledge of employment practice in Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and/or Kazakhstan is highly desirable.
  • Experience of strengthening payroll interfaces, HR controls or audit readiness.

 

UCA Background:

The University of Central Asia (UCA) was founded in 2000 as a private, not for profit, secular university through an International Treaty signed by the Presidents of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, and His Late Highness Prince Karim Aga Khan IV; ratified by their respective parliaments and registered with the United Nations. The Presidents are the Patrons of the University and His Highness Prince Rahim Aga Khan V is the Chancellor. UCA’s mission is to promote the social and economic development of Central Asia, particularly its mountain communities, by offering an internationally recognized standard of higher education and enabling the peoples of the region to preserve their rich cultural heritage as assets for the future. UCA is distinguished by its three schools: the undergraduate School of Arts and Sciences (SAS), the Graduate School of Development (GSD), and the School of Professional and Continuing Education (SPCE). For more information: www.ucentralasia.org

         

How to Apply

Ready to join our team? We kindly invite you to submit your application for this position by clicking the Apply button on this page. To facilitate a smooth application process, please create an account on our website. Be assured that the account setup and application steps are straightforward.

 

Applications will be reviewed when received. Early applications are strongly encouraged. Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted.

 

Review other job vacancies at: https://ucentralasia.org/career-opportunities