Job Summary: The Senior Vice President – People & Culture will build the people function that enables the company to scale rapidly across multiple verticals and geographies, prepare the organisation for the governance and regulatory requirements of a public listing, and do both while nurturing the ownership-driven, high-performance culture that has made BHIVE what it is today. BHIVE has a strong execution culture. The leadership team values conviction, speed, attention to detail, and systems that scale without creating bottlenecks.

The Senior Vice President – People and Culture will be expected to build a function that operates with high autonomy: clear ownership, proactive early-warning systems, and outcomes-first reporting that closes loops rather than opens new ones.

Key Responsibilities:

1. IPO-Ready People Infrastructure

• Own ESOP communication and allocation to eligible employees across verticals once the framework is established by Finance and Legal. Ensure employees understand the value proposition, timelines, and vesting structures as a retention and alignment lever ahead of IPO.

• Build board-reportable people dashboards: attrition (segmented by vertical and level), cost per-hire, HRBP ratios, engagement scores, diversity metrics, and compliance status.

• Establish SEBI-compliant governance structures: insider trading policy, whistleblower framework, code of conduct, and disclosure protocols for a listed entity.

• Prepare all HR policies, contracts, and documentation for due diligence readiness. The people function must be audit-proof by Q2 FY27.

2. Multi-Vertical Workforce Strategy

• Own end-to-end people strategy across five distinct verticals: Workspace (operations + corporate), BHIVE Capital.

• Design differentiated talent strategies, compensation structures, and engagement models for each vertical. A community manager at a co-working centre and a fund analyst at BHIVE Capital are fundamentally different talent profiles.

• Build workforce planning models that account for BHIVE’s aggressive expansion, including significant new capacity additions and new city entries on the roadmap.

3. Distributed Operations at Scale

• Design and deploy multi-location HR delivery across all BHIVE centres in Bengaluru, with plans for multi-city expansion.

• Own frontline workforce management: high-volume hiring, onboarding at scale, shift management, attrition containment for centre operations (community managers, front desk, housekeeping, F&B staff).

• Build robust compliance infrastructure: Shops & Establishments Act across all locations, contract labour regulations, PF/ESI, POSH at scale, and vendor/contract workforce governance.

• Establish standardized Minimum Standards checklists and SOPs that ensure consistent employee experience across every centre, independent of who manages it.

4. Culture Architecture

• Codify and protect BHIVE’s existing culture: ownership over process, conviction over consensus, brand obsession, campus-community identity, and “Work Life Harmony” (not work-life balance).

• Design the cultural evolution roadmap as BHIVE transitions from a high-growth private company to a publicly listed, multi-vertical group, without losing what makes it distinctive.

• Build internal rituals, recognition frameworks, and communication architecture that reinforce these values at every level, from a barista at BHIVE Cafe to a VP at Workspace.

• Own employer brand strategy: position BHIVE as an employer of choice in Bengaluru’s competitive talent market, competing against both co-working peers (WeWork India, Awfis, IndiQube) and the broader tech ecosystem.

5. Talent Acquisition & Leadership Pipeline

• Lead talent acquisition strategy across all verticals, with a focus on building a leadership bench that can scale with the business.

• Build succession plans for all critical roles. Excellence should be embedded in the system, not dependent on any single individual’s presence.

• Design and execute a structured onboarding program that accelerates new hire productivity while immersing them in BHIVE’s culture and brand identity.

• Strengthen the internal mobility framework: as BHIVE grows into new verticals and geographies, internal talent should be the first pipeline, not external hiring.

6. Performance, Rewards & Retention

• Establish a performance management system that drives accountability, continuous feedback, and high performance. No tolerance for ambiguity in who owns what.

• Design competitive compensation and benefits architecture benchmarked against industry, segmented by vertical and role type (operations vs. corporate vs. investment).

• Build ESOP communication strategy that makes equity ownership a genuine retention lever, not just a line item on the offer letter.

• Conduct regular compensation reviews to ensure internal equity and external competitiveness, partnering with Finance to align with business performance and IPO timeline.

7. Learning & Organisational Development

• Design structured leadership development programs that build the next layer of leaders BHIVE needs at scale.

• Create competency frameworks and career progression models for each vertical.

• Drive organisational design initiatives as BHIVE adds verticals, geographies, and complexity. The org structure that works today will need to evolve as the company scales across multiple cities.

• Lead AI readiness at the organisational level: build the policy framework for AI adoption, design reskilling initiatives for AI-augmented roles, and create workforce planning models that account for evolving human-AI collaboration across functions.

8. Change Management & CEO Partnership

• Lead change management for the private-to-public-company transition, the most significant cultural shift BHIVE will undergo.

• Serve as a trusted partner to the CEO on all people-related matters, progressively building the team and systems so that routine HR decisions are handled autonomously within the function.

• Build routing and ownership maps so that people issues land with the right owner without requiring senior leadership escalation. The goal is a self-routing system where the right person owns the right problem by default.

• Equip people managers with frameworks and tools to make decisions autonomously, reducing dependency on central HR for routine matters.

9. Compliance, Governance & Risk

• Ensure compliance across all applicable labour laws, statutory regulations, and industry standards for a multi-location, multi-entity, mixed-workforce (permanent + contract + vendor) organisation in Karnataka, and eventually across states.

• Establish HR governance frameworks that meet public company standards well ahead of IPO filing.

• Handle complex employee relations matters with fairness, speed, and legal precision.

• Proactively identify and mitigate HR-related risks before they surface. At BHIVE, prevention is valued over intervention.

What Success Looks Like (First 12-18 Months):

1. ESOP communication and allocation rolled out to all eligible employees within 6 months of framework finalisation. Clear employee understanding of vesting, value, and timelines.

2. HRIS deployed supporting all verticals and locations with real-time dashboards on attrition, cost-per-hire, and engagement, scannable by leadership in under 2 minutes.

3. Centre-level attrition reduced by a measurable, defined target (establish baseline in Month 1, set target in Month 2, deliver by Month 12).

4. Leadership bench built: succession plans for all critical roles, with at least one ready-now successor identified for each.

5. AI readiness framework established: org-level policies for AI adoption, reskilling roadmap published, and at least 2 functions piloting AI-augmented workflows.

6. Culture codified: BHIVE values, rituals, and employer brand articulated, published, and embedded in every HR touchpoint from offer letter to exit interview.

7. Autonomous People function: clean ownership maps, early warning dashboards, and closure-loop reporting in place. The CEO should be able to trust that People is a function that runs autonomously.

Experience and Qualifications:

• 15+ years of progressive HR experience, with at least 5 years in a senior leadership role at a high-growth, multi-location, or pre-IPO organisation.

• Multi-vertical or multi-entity experience: track record of managing HR across business units with fundamentally different workforce profiles (operations + corporate + specialized).

• Distributed workforce expertise: demonstrated success managing HR across multiple locations with a mix of permanent, contract, and vendor staff.

• Real estate, hospitality, or operations-heavy industries preferred: understanding the reality of high-volume frontline hiring, attrition, and shift-based workforce management.

• ESOP communication and employee allocation experience is a significant advantage.

• MBA or equivalent in Human Resources or related field.

Key Competencies:

• Systems thinking: ability to design scalable frameworks, not just solve individual problems.

• Speed and execution orientation: BHIVE moves fast. This role must match the CEO’s pace.

• Detail orientation: BHIVE operates with high standards on quality, data accuracy, and brand consistency. This SVP must bring the same rigour to people operations.

• Data-driven decision-making: ability to build and use people analytics, not just intuition.

• Comfort with a high-involvement leadership culture: ability to operate effectively in an environment where the leadership team is deeply invested in brand, quality, and strategic decisions.

• Builder mindset: this is about creating from scratch, not optimising what exists.

• AI-forward orientation: genuine comfort with and enthusiasm for leveraging AI tools in HR operations.