Role Title: Head of Employee Benefits, Europe
About the Role
Contribute to the development of the Global and Europe Regional Employee Benefits Strategy of Howden and lead the execution of our Employee Benefits (EB) strategy within the region, driving business growth, consistency of operational excellence, client and talent acquisition development.
Serve as a trusted advisor to senior internal stakeholders, ensuring the region’s EB proposition is market‑leading, competitive, future‑focused and aligned with global proposition and objectives. Success in this role requires strong collaboration across global, regional, and country teams to deliver consistent and impactful outcomes.
Employee Benefits includes related People Advisory services including Retirement and People Risk or whatever is designated as EB.
This is an executive role overseeing and supporting all our EB activities across Europe. We are looking for a game changer to help us take EB to the next level of growth.
Key Accountabilities
* Strategic Leadership: Together with Europe country EB leads build and articulate a compelling vision for EB growth and innovation across Europe that meets the global and regional vision and strategy for EB. Develop and communicate a clear EB strategy for the region, aligned with global and local market needs.
* Revenue Growth: Create a regional sales strategy in partnership with the country EB leads, country CEOs and CCOs, as well as the Regional CCO. Together with country EB leads drive proposition development, client acquisition, and retention. Identify and pursue new business opportunities, including cross‑selling and upselling, leveraging insights, benchmarking and innovation. Support sales teams and participate in market expansion activities. Sponsor new growth focused EB initiatives including technology.
* Operational Excellence: Set the regional strategy for client facing technology, a strategy that ensures alignment to Howden group but also enables regional and local customisation to best affect. Work with subject matter experts to embed this technology locally and regionally to enhance client outcomes and efficiency. Promote operational innovation and adoption of new technologies.
* Stakeholder Engagement: Develop robust and effective relationships with country CEOs, CCOs, and country EB leads, working together to create a growth focused strategy. Champion interests of clients with the ability to lead complex client engagements and resolve escalated issues. Act as a trusted advisor for significant clients, ensuring retention and satisfaction. Deliver consulting advice and ensure exceptional client outcomes by ensuring stakeholder buy‑in.
* Talent Growth: Support country EB leads in attracting and hiring top class colleagues in EB. Help leverage our Global EB academy to best effect for the region. Foster a culture of continuous learning, diversity, and inclusion across the EB community and beyond. Mentor and coach team members and drive a high‑performance culture.
* Cross Functional Collaboration: partner with global and regional teams to share insights and best practices, ensuring seamless integration of EB programmes and consistency of proposition and brand.
Knowledge, Skills & Experience
* Drives regional commercial growth across domestic and multinational clients by scaling Howden’s Employee Benefits, Retirement, People Risk & Advisory solutions throughout Europe, leveraging strong insurer/carrier relationships and a proven track record in business origination.
* Strategic leader with execution credibility, able to shape multi‑market strategy while working seamlessly with local teams to deliver results, build operational capability, and mature EB propositions, processes and technologies across the region.
* Influential cross‑functional operator with deep EB market knowledge, experience leading complex regional teams, and the ability to align product, consulting, distribution and operational stakeholders to execute at pace.
* Internationally mobile and culturally fluent, with professional English and a desirable additional European language, comfortable with frequent regional travel, client events and conferences to support growth and market presence.
The successful candidate can be based out of one of our offices across Europe.
Our culture: People First
Our core values dictate how we live and work. We are a group with independence and people at its heart and we are a home for talent with a unique culture: the biggest small company in the world!
The focus on being a People First business has always been at our very heart; Our vision was to create an independent business with a unique culture and one that would survive and thrive as a business controlled by the people working for it. And finding the most talented and entrepreneurial people to join us has been and will continue to be key.
Diversity & Inclusion
We consider our people our chief competitive advantage and as such we treat colleagues, candidates, clients, and business partners with equality, fairness and respect, regardless of their age, disability, race, religion or belief, gender, sexual orientation, marital status or family circumstances.
What do we offer in return?
A career that you define. At Howden, we value diversity – there is no one Howden type. Instead, we’re looking for individuals who share the same values as us:
* Our successes have all come from someone brave enough to try something new
* We support each other in the small everyday moments and the bigger challenges
* We are determined to make a positive difference at work and beyond
Reasonable adjustments
We're committed to providing reasonable accommodations at Howden to ensure that our positions align well with your needs. Besides the usual adjustments such as software, IT, and office setups, we can also accommodate other changes such as flexible hours* or hybrid working*.
If you're excited by this role but have some doubts about whether it’s the right fit for you, send us your application – if your profile fits the role’s criteria, we will be in touch to assist in helping to get you set up with any reasonable adjustments you may require.
*Not all positions can accommodate changes to working hours or locations. Reach out to your Recruitment Partner if you want to know more.
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