People Operations Lead at Wise

We’re looking for a People Operations Lead to join our People Operations team in London and to support our Wisers across UK and EU markets. This role is a unique opportunity to have an impact on Wise’s mission and assist business leads and teams in delivering a seamless employee experience throughout the entire ‘Wiser’ journey, and in turn growing as a people leader. This role will report to our EMEA People Operations Lead.   Your mission:  As part of the People Services team, our vision is to create fast, convenient, and transparent support, powered by smart tech and human advice. As the UK People Operations Lead, you are the operational guardian of the Wiser experience in our HQ, alongside smaller EU markets. You’ll lead the London and Brussels-based Support teams, ensuring that our operational engine runs at peak efficiency. You aren’t just managing a ticketing desk; you’re ensuring that every interaction a Wiser has with People Operations is seamless, compliant, and data-driven. You’ll be the bridge between global People strategy and local execution, ensuring our processes scale as fast as we do.   Here’s how you’ll be contributing to the team: • Team leadership and coaching: Lead and upskill a team of Support Specialists (4 in London, 1 Senior in Brussels). You’ll focus on their growth, performance against OKRs, and fostering a culture of ‘working smart’. • Operational excellence: Take full accountability for ticketing operations and SLAs. You’ll monitor volumes, identify bottlenecks, and ensure the team provides a high-quality, consistent service. • Process optimisation: Actively identify friction in the Wiser journey. You'll partner with other People teams to improve processes through automation and deflection, and ensure our internal knowledge base is the single source of truth. • Stakeholder and vendor management: Build strong, trusted relationships with local business stakeholders to ensure People Operations services align with their team needs. You’ll also act as the key liaison for our UK/EU vendors, holding them accountable for seamless delivery and a top-tier Wiser experience. • Compliance and audit: Ensure all UK/EU operations (from right-to-work checks to payroll inputs) adhere strictly to local labour laws and financial regulations. You'll be the "safe pair of hands" for local audits. • Data-driven insights: Use helpdesk data and feedback loops to tell the story of the UK/EU Wiser experience, providing the EMEA Lead with the BAU insights needed for future planning and improvements.   About you: • Proven HR experience: Your specialism is in HR operations within a fast-paced environment. • Experienced Lead: You feel comfortable leading, developing and optimising a team and being a champion of the ‘working smart’ principle.  • Customer-driven: You’re customer-centric, always thinking about how to automate and improve the Wiser experience while working smarter not harder, being able to understand diverse perspectives and vary your communication style based on the circumstance. • Data-driven: With your high proficiency in data tools and visualisation, you always start with data, facts and insights to help inform your approach through storytelling to solving problems and analysing needs. • Solutions-focused: You're able to proactively prioritise problems and initiatives to build solutions that have the most measurable business impact. • A heap of empathy and emotional intelligence: You’ll need to be able to communicate effectively with all kinds of people both in person and in writing. • Initiative: We’re not about “one size fits all” or looking for off-the-shelf solutions; we need you to think creatively and customise your outlook, and of course be proactive and make informed evidence-based and data-driven decisions. • Resilient change agent: You possess the skills and desire to change the status quo for the better, including the ability to manage all elements of organisational transformation, facilitation, and training. • Collaborative: With tested mediation skills, you guide a vast variety of stakeholders, building and fostering relationships over time, but also not afraid to challenge through healthy discussions.   Extra skills that would be great: • Financial services experience: You have experience working in a regulated environment, and understand how financial compliance (like rigorous background screening or SMCR) impacts the People journey. • Shared service experience: You’ve worked in a shared service model before, and therefore understand the transition from local processes to scalable, centralised solutions.