Principal External Affairs Operations (Corporate Affairs, Comms, Sustainability & Climate)

About BHP 

At BHP we support our people to grow, learn, develop their skills and reach their potential. With a global portfolio of operations, we offer a diverse and inclusive environment with extraordinary career opportunities. Our strategy is to focus on creating a safe work environment where our employees feel strongly connected to our values and objectives, and where the capability of our people is key to our success.

Come and be a part of this success.

About the role

• The role can be based in Australia (Perth, Adelaide or Brisbane), or Santiago (Chile) or Singapore.
• This vacancy will accept applications until 11:59pm AEST on 1st January 2024. 

The purpose of the External Affairs (EA) Operations team is to enable and amplify the impact of our EA team. A critical trusted partner of EA sub-functions, sought after for your strategic insight and support, in this role you will lead the identification and deliver of transformation and improvement opportunities and initiatives (including technology initiatives) that leave a positive impact on the culture, capabilities, and performance of the EA team.   

Your responsibilities:

• Develops sub-functional subject matter expertise – understanding of sub-functional work, strategy, needs and challenges – to foster a strong partnership with the sub-function. 
• Contributes to the management of EA’s improvement & innovation vision and roadmap.
• Identify, co-design and deliver process improvement initiatives in partnership with sub-functions to remove hurdles to allow our teams to focus on their core mandate. This includes identifying root causes for pain points within existing processes and designing and implementing solutions. Collaborating with business stakeholders where relevant (e.g. Finance, Procurement) and working with these stakeholders to embed solutions.
• Navigate company wide processes and systems and working with other business stakeholders (eg. Finance, Procurement, Cyber, Technology) to manage processes and systems as they affect EA and empowering and enabling EA to navigate these processes and systems in an easy and efficient way.
• Enable teams to improve their ways of working through issue spotting, theming, workshop facilitation, storytelling and best practice recommendations. 
• Contribute to the assessment of technology opportunities and threats. Identify and conceptualise sub-functional needs. Support EA with their use of technology, supporting the build of solutions, explaining what technology is available, and relevant use cases.
• Support large scale-systems, processes, tools and technology solution implementations and changes. 
• Support development and coordination of sub-function input into corporate planning and processes (CAP, budget, appraisal, cash prioritisation, benchmarking). Support sub-functional budget owners to navigate corporate planning and budgeting processes, and build and manage budget with operating discipline. Manage sub-function data and analytics.
• Support routine Functional benchmarking, external market analysis and horizon scanning.

About you  

• Bachelor’s degree in business, science, technology, or EA-related field.
• 5-10+ years experience within or adjacent to the External Affairs space, preferably in a large multi-national corporate environment, or in a top-tier law firm, big 4 firm, or consulting firm.   
• Experience and /or formal project management qualifications in Lean, Agile, design thinking and/or similar continuous improvement and project management methodologies preferred.
• Advanced proficiency in Microsoft Office 365 including Excel, Power BI, PowerApps and SharePoint capabilities preferred. Other programming language experience, and experience with RPA, AI and Machine Learning, particularly as they relate to EA are desirable.
• A proven innovation mindset, and taking responsibility for solving a problem and delivering an outcome, Experience in leading innovation, improvement and change – opportunity framing, process design and documentation, and organisational change management. 
• Commercial, business, and strategic acumen, the ability to wrangle complex data and transform it into business-critical insights.
• Proven ability to communicate with, and build trust and rapport with senior stakeholders. 
• Experience conducting presentations and facilitating workshops.
• Experience in a similar improvement or innovation team and/or marketing, legal or other operations. 

About Our Process 

At BHP, we are committed to employing individuals who align with the BHP Charter Values and meet the requirements of the role. As part of the recruitment process, there are a number of checks which may be conducted to demonstrate applicants suitability for a role including police / criminal background checks, medical, drug and alcohol testing, due diligence checks, right to work checks, and/or reference checks. 

If you are already employed directly by BHP, please log in using your BHP email address or apply via our internal jobs portal. 

Supporting a Diverse Workforce    

The size, stability and magnitude of our business not only provides significant opportunity for professional development, but also attractive salary packages with performance-based bonuses and a best-in-class employee share program. We know there are many aspects of our employees' lives that are important, and work is only one of these, so we offer benefits to enable your work to fit with your life. These benefits include flexible working options, a generous paid parental leave policy, other extended leave entitlements and parent rooms.  

At BHP, we know that we are strengthened by diversity. We are an Equal Opportunity employer that is committed to making BHP a safe and inclusive workplace where everyone can thrive and be at their best every day. We are focused on creating a workforce that’s more diverse and represents the communities where we work and live. providing a work environment in which everyone is included, treated fairly and with respect. We are an Equal Opportunity employer and recognise that true diversity includes gender, age, race, disability status, sexual orientation, religion, neurodiversity, education levels, and many more aspects of your identity.

BHP is committed to providing a recruitment process that is fair, equitable and accessible for all. If you have a disability, we know that it may be helpful for us to adjust our process to make it equitable for your individual situation. If you would like to reach out to someone about your situation and our recruitment process, please email us at [email protected].