People Operations Specialist

The Good Food Institute Europe (GFI Europe) is a non-profit think tank at the forefront of the movement to transform meat production in order to solve some of the world’s biggest problems, from climate change and global hunger, to antibiotic resistance and animal suffering.

We work with scientists, businesses and policymakers to make plant-based and cultivated meat (grown directly from cells) delicious, affordable and accessible. Please check out the rest of our website, our 2024 Europe Highlights blog post and our 2023 Year in Review to find out more about who we are and what our charity does.

As GFI Europe continues to grow, our People Operations team has the exciting mission of developing our function to ensure we’re set up to support each and every one of our team members to have a positive professional journey here. As such, the People Operations Specialist will play a key role in ensuring we achieve operational excellence whilst also contributing to the continuous development of our people policies, practices and experiences.

How You Will Make a Difference

Your role will span the entire employee lifecycle, with particular ownership of select areas. You will play a pivotal role in ensuring that People Operations runs smoothly and effectively, delivering a positive People experience to our team.

Reporting to the Deputy Head of Operations (People), your work will fall under the following categories:

Recruitment: Lead our end-to-end recruitment operations (from process design through to offer stage), working collaboratively with managers and providing guidance to colleagues. This will include:

• Acting as a thought partner to support hiring managers through the assessment design and feedback process,  as well as training them on our recruitment processes and methodologies, ensuring that they continuously have the tools and resources they require to hire.

• Continuously ensure a positive candidate experience, including effectively managing the Applicant Tracking System and all candidate communications.

Payroll and compliance:

• Lead our monthly payroll process, working collaboratively with other Operations colleagues to ensure our employees in each jurisdiction are paid correctly and punctually.

• Working with our payroll providers regularly to monitor employment legislation changes in all applicable countries.
  Take responsibility for ensuring relevant stakeholders are aware of key changes, create and update payroll documentation for each country, and make recommendations for essential contractual, policy or process updates.

Benefits and Professional Development:

• Work closely with the Deputy Head of Ops (People) to review our benefits offering, own a range of research and analysis-based tasks including monitoring employee wellbeing and satisfaction, and suggest and implement incremental improvements based on evidence.

• Own the process of administering benefits to employees across the organisation.

• Assist with Learning and Development tasks by gathering team or department L&D needs, looking for professional development opportunities, evaluating the success of initiatives, and supporting the internal organisation of L&D activities and/or events.

Policies:

• Work closely with the Deputy Head of People (Ops) to research and co-write content to update our People policies, ensuring they reflect our organisational culture, promote a fair, inclusive and equitable environment, and provide legislative protection to the organisation, also ensuring that DEI principles are embedded and embodied across the employee lifecycle.

Additional support:

• Create and maintain the annual People calendar to track key internal deadlines and tasks, for example conducting policy reviews and managing end-of-year annual leave balances.

• Act as backup for other Ops team members when they are absent or have limited capacity.

• Manage HR tools and systems that are relevant to your role, implementing new tools and systems as required.

• Provide other support where needed.

Who we’re looking for:

You must have:

• A passion for GFI’s philosophy and mission.

• Proven experience in taking ownership of a range of People Operations responsibilities, including managing or having high involvement with monthly payroll in at least one of our relevant payroll countries (Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Germany, or Spain).

• Proven experience of successfully managing in-house recruitment efforts, including a vested interest in ensuring recruitment processes are fair and effective, and deliver a positive candidate experience.

• The ability to work in a small, agile organisation: comfortable with coordinating projects, problem-solving, reprioritising and working with a high pace of change.

• Strong organisation skills and high attention to detail, with a commitment to ensuring accuracy in pursuit of operational excellence.
• High emotional intelligence with the ability to foster positive, strong and collaborative relationships with diverse groups of people at all levels in the organisation.

• Enthusiasm, a strong work ethic and self-motivation: a sense of ownership and responsibility to drive outcomes.

• An affinity with our commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion, and with maintaining our welcoming, supportive culture.

• Tech savviness: comfort using various software tools and platforms in a remote workplace, and a willingness to learn and adapt to new systems.

• Language skills: ability to work effectively in English.

It would be an advantage to have some or all of the following attributes, but none of them are prerequisites, and we welcome applications from candidates without any or all of them:

• A European Human Resources qualification.

• Experience in Human Resources, Talent Acquisition, Learning and Development and/or People Operations in more than one European country.

• Experience of implementing and/ or managing a HRIS.

• The ability to speak/work in European languages in addition to English.

We want the best people and we know that building a diverse, inclusive workplace leads to stronger, happier, more productive and resilient teams. We strongly encourage people of every ethnicity, orientation, age, gender, origin, socio-economic background, and ability to apply. Because we value a diverse workplace, we prioritise an inclusive culture absent of discrimination and harassment during the application process and after you join the team.

The Fine Print:

• Terms of employment: Full-time, permanent.

• Location: We will consider applicants from France, Germany, Belgium, Spain or the Netherlands. This is a remote role, and you will be able to work from home, or anywhere you choose. We are happy to consider supporting costs for co-working to enable you to work from an office if you wish.The whole GFI Europe team aims to get together in person approximately twice per year for around 3-5 days at a time. Travel costs will be covered by GFI Europe within our travel policy.

• Salary and benefits: The salary and benefits package for all of our roles are researched and benchmarked based on similar nonprofit roles in the country/location of hire. Due to capacity, we cannot complete that research for every country in advance, but approximate indicative ranges (total annual amounts received in gross salary plus benefits including home-working allowance) are likely to be: €40,000 – €44,000 if based in France.

• Right to work requirements: The successful candidate must, by the start of the employment, have permission to work in the country where they are based.

• Application Deadline: 10th February 2025, 11.59pm CET. We will get back to all candidates after that date, no matter the outcome of their application. You should expect to hear back from us within about a week of the deadline.

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