Hr Business Partner - Commercial Function

Who we are

On July 1, 2025, IPL Plastics merged with Schoeller Allibert to form IPL Schoeller (the ‘company’). Its operations are split across North America (11 manufacturing plants), The UK and Lommel (6 manufacturing plants) and Europe (9 manufacturing plants). The company is headquartered in Dublin, Ireland. IPL Schoeller is a leading manufacturer of sustainable rigid packaging solutions across a range of end market segments including returnable transit packaging, consumer and industrial packaging, environmental containers and agricultural packaging. The company employs c.4,100 employees across North America (1,600 employees) and Europe (2,500 employees).

The role

The HR Business Partner - Commercial will act as the strategic HR partner to the global Commercial function across IPL Schoeller, supporting the organisation through a critical period of commercial transformation, performance improvement, and organisational evolution. The business is operating in a challenging market environment with pressure on sales growth, requirement for margin performance, customer retention, and commercial effectiveness. This role will partner closely with Commercial leadership to ensure the organisation has the structure, capability, leadership, accountability, and performance culture required to stabilise and improve commercial results. This is not a traditional generalist HRBP role. The position requires a commercially credible, data-driven, and execution-focused HR leader who can operate effectively in a fast-paced PE-backed manufacturing environment undergoing significant transformation.

The role will support:

• Commercial organisational redesign

• Capability and talent assessment

• Performance and accountability improvement

• Sales leadership effectiveness

• Workforce productivity and cost optimisation

• Incentive and reward alignment

• Change management and organisational effectiveness

• Workforce planning and succession pipelines

The successful candidate must be comfortable operating in environments with ambiguity, pace, restructuring activity, and high-performance expectations.

Key Responsibilities

Strategic Commercial Partnership

• Act as trusted advisor to the VP Commercial and Commercial leadership teams globally

• Translate commercial strategy and business priorities into actionable people plans

• Support the business in improving commercial performance, productivity, and organisational effectiveness

• Challenge and influence leaders constructively using data, insight, and commercial understanding

Commercial Transformation & Organisation Design

• Support redesign of the commercial operating model where required
• Assess organisational effectiveness, role clarity, spans and layers, and decision-making effectiveness
• Drive simplification, accountability, and alignment across commercial teams
• Partner with leadership during restructuring, integration, and change initiatives
• Support implementation of globally consistent job architecture and organisational design principles

Performance & Accountability

• Drive a high-performance culture with clear accountability and measurable outcomes
• Support leaders in managing performance effectively and consistently
• Embed robust performance management practices linked to commercial outcomes
• Use workforce and performance data to identify capability gaps and improvement opportunities

Talent, Capability & Succession

• Identify critical commercial capability gaps impacting business performance
• Partner with leaders to strengthen succession pipelines and internal mobility
• Support development of sales leadership capability and management effectiveness
• Build practical development approaches focused on business outcomes and commercial impact

Reward & Workforce Planning

• Partner with Reward to ensure incentive structures support desired commercial behaviours and business objectives
• Support workforce planning aligned to revenue, margin, and growth priorities
• Contribute to implementation of pay transparency and reward governance requirements
• Ensure organisational decisions balance performance needs with cost discipline

Change Leadership & Employee Relations

• Support delivery of complex transformation and change activity across the Commercial organisation
• Lead organisational change activity in partnership with Legal and local HR teams where required
• Ensure employee relations approaches are pragmatic, commercially balanced, and legally compliant
• Support leaders through ambiguity, organisational redesign, and workforce changes

Data, Metrics & Business Insight

• Use HR and commercial data to drive decision-making and prioritisation
• Support development of business-relevant people metrics linked to commercial outcomes
• Monitor trends relating to turnover, capability, productivity, engagement, and organisational effectiveness

Drive evidence-based decision making rather than activity-based HR

Qualifications and Experience

• Minimum of five years’ experience in HR Business Partnering, organisational effectiveness, or transformation roles

• Strong track record supporting commercial, sales, or customer-facing functions

• Demonstrated experience operating within complex, fast-paced, multi-site, or international organisations

• Proven ability to support transformation initiatives, restructuring, and performance improvement programmes

• Exposure to private equity–backed, manufacturing, industrial, or matrixed environments is advantageous

• Well-developed understanding of organisational design, workforce planning, and performance management

• Proven capability to influence and engage senior stakeholders and leadership teams

• Applies a constructive and appropriately challenging perspective, not solely a support role

• Outcome-focused with a commercially pragmatic and results-driven approach

If you have the above experience and are looking for a role where you can make a real difference, apply today to find out more!