People Analytics & Insights Leader

Key Skills

Data security, Deep Learning, Effective communication skills, English Proficiency, Machine learning techniques, Natural Language Processing (NLP), People Analytics, PowerBI, Predictive analytics

Job Description

Ciena is committed to our people-first philosophy. Our teams enjoy a culture focused on prioritizing a personalized and flexible work environment that empowers an individual’s passions, growth, wellbeing and belonging. We’re a technology company that leads with our humanity—driving our business priorities alongside meaningful social, community, and societal impact.

Why Ciena:

• We are big proponents of life-work integration and provide the flexibility and tools to make it a reality with remote work and potentially, part-time work.
• We believe an inclusive, diverse, and barrier-free work environment makes for empowered and committed employees.
• We recognize the importance of well-being and offer programs and benefits to support and sustain the mental and physical health of our employees and their families and offer a variety of paid family leave programs.
• We are committed to employee development, offering tuition reimbursement and a variety of in-house learning and mentorship opportunities.
• We know that financial security is important. We offer competitive salaries and incentive programs, RSU’s (job level specific) and an employee share option purchase program.
• We realize time away to recharge is non-negotiable. We offer flexible paid time off!
• Great work deserves recognition. We have a robust recognition program, with ongoing and enhanced awards for exemplary performance.

How You Will Contribute:

Reporting into the VP, Global Total Rewards, Wellbeing and People Connect, we are looking for an experienced and savvy People Analytics Leader to help step change our maturity in People Analytics. This is an exciting opportunity to lead the newly created People Analytics & Insights function which will leverage employee data to provide operational reporting and strategic insights to business leaders and the People & Culture (P&C) team. 

• Help set the strategy and strategy implementation for People Analytics, whilst maintaining strong operational excellence.
• Manage and deliver all aspects of operational and cadence People & Culture reporting, including but not limited to D&I forecasts, executive dashboards and information packs, etc.
• Work with the Talent Acquisition and Workforce Planning leader responsible for Headcount Planning and Recruitment Capacity Planning.
• Own, lead, optimize, scale, and embed our reporting and analytics tools.
• Demonstrate people data, provide input into relevant critical metrics, targets, measures, and key results.

What Does Ciena Expect of You:

• Initiative - Act as a visualization and data storytelling expert, creating well-structured insights, storyboards, and reports to effectively communicate insights to senior leaders, highlighting the implications of the results and decisions that need to be made, influencing decisions and outcomes, and measuring impact. Lead through influence across the P&C function globally to develop capability towards our ambition of being a digital and analytics function. Ensure KPIs and measures to provide insight are in line with our culture and policies for treating employees and customers fairly. Ensure data privacy compliance and ethics standards are adhered to. Manage a small team of analysts focusing on their growth, performance, and wellbeing.
• Analytical ability - You are a proficient data storyteller and critical thinker, quickly able to assess large data sets and identify relevant trends, gaps and inflexion points. Stand-up a process to conduct a take-in session around a business challenge, co-create various hypothesis, test and refine those hypothesis, generate a results improving insight and a plan to communicate (evangelize) the solution and revised narrative throughout the appropriate parts of this business. Ensure that the basics of good people analytics are in place, that data is accurate, relevant, and timely, methods are appropriate to build trust and understanding in what we do, core analytics standard solutions are in place to answer critical business needs, and training is available that help optimize the delivery and impact of people data. Future proof the delivery of data and analytics outcomes by informing and working with the Employee Experience leader and the P&C Transformation programme.
• Customer first mentality – Strategically partner and proactively manage a complex stakeholder group of senior People & Culture leaders, HR Business Partners, change and transformation programs and other stakeholders to understand the insights leaders need to make evidence-based decisions, including people trends, capability needs, employee listening and predictive analytics. Proactively approach those teams with opportunities, maturing stakeholder’s capabilities to use data to drive better decisions and improved outcomes for the business.
• Agility – Develop an effective and insight driven approach to strategic workforce planning, modelling and forecasting, evolving it over time to ensure it consistently delivers as the organisation grows, partnering with key internal stakeholders, providing an action framework and supporting P&C and business leaders to execute their plans and close capability gaps.
• Relationship builder - Leverage external networks and connections to continuously seek best practices and learning from outside of P&C that can benefit the organization moving forward. Serve as a subject matter expert, provide thought leadership and lead on how we embed advanced techniques to shape how the business makes decisions about our employees through qualitative and quantitative insights.

The Must Haves:

The ideal candidate has a relevant educational background and strong experience leading and maturing HR data analytics teams, which enables you to understand the changing people analytics space, new technologies and latest trends. As a person and people leader you are kind, curious, caring, trustful and you build, develop, and sustains effective working relationships at all levels.

In addition, we are looking for a person who:

• A degree/masters in Organisation Psychology, Organisational Behaviour, or technical domain such as Maths, Statistics, Econometrics is preferred.
• Brings excellent communication, facilitation and influencing skills.
• Easily translates data insights into business language to create a compelling story and drive better business decisions.
• Knows how to leverage machine learning, predictive analytics, deep learning, NLP, etc.
• Very familiar with the data security and data protection global landscape. If you have experience in Workday, PowerBI, and other related technologies it will be an advantage.
• Strong previous experience at this level. Significant experience in people analytics, strategic workforce planning, HR strategy & transformation, senior HR, or business role at innovative companies.
• Experience using quantitative and qualitative analytical strategies, including employee listening and data science techniques, to identify workforce insight and measure the effectiveness of programs, interventions, and efforts for a large organisation.
• Broad and deep technical understanding of different analytics, visualisation tools and metrics and experience in communicating them to a wide audience, interpreting results and influencing how to apply them.
• Project management - has demonstrable experience of successfully delivering data and digital change initiatives.
• Strong interpersonal skills, with the ability to influence and communicate at all levels of the organisation.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills in English, with ability to adapt communication styles to suit the audience and messaging.
• Demonstrated leadership presence, highly results focused and target driven with a proven ability to inspire and influence across all levels.
• Experience of promoting and developing a high-performance culture, recruiting, and leading high performing teams.
• Entrepreneurial, able to challenge and provoke to build and transform.
• Experience collaborating across multiple partner groups, communicating with diverse audiences, and balancing dynamic priorities.
• Holistic and structured thinking and ability to deal with ambiguity.

At Ciena, we are committed to building and fostering an environment in which our employees feel respected, valued, and heard. Ciena values the diversity of its workforce and respects its employees as individuals. We do not tolerate any form of discrimination.

If contacted in relation to a job opportunity, please advise Ciena of any accommodation measures you may require.