Senior Employee Relations Partner

Location: Cape Town / Paarl 

Advise. Resolve. Protect Our People and Business.

Are you an experienced Employee Relations specialist who brings sound judgement, commercial awareness and confidence in managing complex people matters fairly, pragmatically and in line with employment legislation?

At Sigma, we’re looking for a Senior Employee Relations Partner to lead our Employee Relations agenda, helping leaders navigate people matters with confidence while reducing risk and ensuring consistent, fair outcomes.

This is an exciting opportunity to provide expert ER leadership across a fast-paced operational environment, supporting complex case management, restructuring and retrenchment activity, coaching stakeholders and strengthening governance, compliance, consistency and quality across our people practices

What Your Day-to-Day Will Look Like:

• Lead and manage complex employee relations cases, ensuring matters are handled fairly, consistently and in line with employment legislation, company policy and business needs.
• Provide pragmatic, commercially aware advice to leaders on escalated conduct, grievance, absence and other people-related matters.
• Coach and guide stakeholders to make confident, balanced decisions that consider legal, colleague and commercial factors.
• Lead due diligence and ER input for restructuring, retrenchment and organisational change processes, ensuring consultation, documentation and decision-making are robust, fair and legally compliant.
• Provide leadership and subject-matter expertise on CCMA, Labour Court and other escalated employment litigation matters, partnering with internal stakeholders and external advisers to manage risk and protect the business.
• Set the standard for ER governance and quality assurance, driving consistency, disciplined decision-making and repeatable case outcomes across leaders, teams and locations.
• Use employment law knowledge and best practice insight to minimise people risk and ensure compliance across ER activity.
• Build trusted relationships with senior stakeholders, challenging constructively where needed to support fair and pragmatic resolution.
• Identify trends, risks and opportunities from ER activity, using insight to support improved attendance, retention and colleague outcomes.
• Lead, coach and enable People colleagues and operational leaders to build ER capability, confidence and consistency in how cases and change processes are managed.
• Focus on achieving balanced outcomes that protect our people, support the business and help reduce people risk.

What Amazing People Bring to the Role..

💡You’re an experienced ER professional who can influence with confidence, make sound decisions, solve complex problems and support leaders with clear, balanced and commercially aware guidance.

At your core, you’re passionate about leading ER with credibility, clarity and care. You bring strong employment law knowledge, experience of restructuring, retrenchment and external dispute forums, relationship-building skills, commercial awareness and the confidence to challenge constructively while keeping colleague experience, risk, consistency and business outcomes in balance.

Key measures of success will include case resolution effectiveness, ER compliance and governance, quality and consistency of outcomes, effective management of restructuring and retrenchment processes, CCMA and Labour Court risk management, retention and attendance improvement and stakeholder satisfaction.

You’ll ideally bring:

• Minimum 5 years’ experience in Employee Relations, HR or a related People discipline.
• Significant experience managing complex ER cases and providing pragmatic, commercially aware advice.
• Strong knowledge of employment legislation, ER compliance and best practice.
• Proven experience supporting or leading restructuring, retrenchment and organisational change processes, with strong attention to due diligence, consultation requirements, documentation and risk management.
• Experience managing matters involving the CCMA, Labour Court or equivalent external employment forums, including preparation, stakeholder coordination and outcome/risk management.
• Demonstrated ability to drive consistency across ER practice, frameworks and leadership decision-making in a complex operational environment.
• Experience coaching, guiding and influencing senior stakeholders through sensitive or complex people matters.
• Ability to balance legal, colleague and commercial considerations to achieve fair and practical outcomes.
• Strong commercial understanding, with the ability to connect ER activity to risk reduction and business performance.
• BPO, contact centre or multi-site experience would be advantageous.

This isn’t just another Employee Relations role.

It’s an opportunity to lead complex ER activity, strengthen governance, support leaders and help deliver fair, consistent and commercially sound outcomes that make a measurable difference.

If you’re ready to use your ER expertise to influence positive outcomes, reduce people risk and support leaders through complex people matters, we’d love to hear from you.

Join the Sigma Family.

📩 Apply today and help us #ImproveEverythingAlways.