Principal External Affairs Operations (Legal, Group Governance, Compliance, Investigations)

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. 

External Affairs (EA) Operations brings together the right skills and experience to enable EA to be the best it can be and deliver the best service to BHP by:

• Keeping EA future focused: Build and measure performance against a future-focused EA wide strategy that aligns to the company strategy.
• Partnering with EA to enable world class culture and performance: Partnering with our EA sub-functions to spot, design and implement quality improvements and reducing burdens – foundational work done in the most efficient way.
• Helping EA to use tools, systems and technology to their advantage: Implementing large-scale systems and managing tools and technology to ensure processes work for the people that use them most. Bring new and innovative systems and tools to External Affairs.

Reporting to the Head of EA Operations, the team supports the following EA sub-functions: Legal, Compliance, Group Governance, and Ethics & Investigations. The role reports to the Manager, EA Operations who sits in Singapore.

The Principal EA Operations will drive and deliver business operations, innovation and transformation initiatives across global EA teams, with a focus on Legal, Group Governance, Compliance, and Ethics & Investigations.

Key responsibilities include:

• Being a critical trusted partner, advisor and enabler of Legal, Group Governance, Compliance, and Ethics & Investigations. A sub-functional subject matter expert, who deeply understands how these teams work work, their strategy, needs and challenges, and is sought out for advice, strategic insight, and support. Fosters a strong partnership with these teams.
• Identifying, designing and implementing process improvement initiatives and collaborating with business stakeholders where relevant (eg. Finance, Procurement) and working with these stakeholders to embed solutions.
• Navigating company wide processes and systems (including Finance and Budget development management and Appraisal processes) and working with other business units (eg. Finance, Procurement, Cyber, Technology), empowering and enabling these EA sub-functions to navigate these processes and systems in an easy and efficient way.
• Contributing to the design and delivery of innovation & improvement engagements plan which includes capability uplift, technology skills enhancement, awareness sessions and opportunity identification.
• Contributing to managing external vendors including spend management and relationship governance and collaborating with Procurement. 
• Supporting routine Functional benchmarking, external market analysis and horizon scanning.

About You  

• Experience working in or advising on Legal Operations or business operations or strategy and planning in similar or related areas.
• Strong strategic communication and experience in influencing senior and executive level stakeholders supported by excellent written and oral communication skills.
• Strong interpersonal skills including ability to build rapport and trust with senior and executive level stakeholders.
• Excellent problem solving skills, systems thinking and innovation mindset essential. 
• Ability to deliver and embed improvements and transition to BAU.
• Ability to work independently and be a dependable team player who brings energy and enthusiasm to the team and interactions with internal customers, and contributes to the development of other team members. Ability to work in a geographically spread team and contribute to team culture. 
• Adaptable mindset and ability to rapidly pick up new systems / technology. 
• Ability to wrangle complex data and transform it into business-critical insights and visualisation. 
• Ability to think creatively to solve problems and implement solutions. 
• Advanced Microsoft 365 including Power tools and SharePoint proficiency. Programming, 1SAP, iManage and Legal Tracker experience desirable but not necessary. 
• Desirable capabilities and experience include: financial management, data analytics, workshop design and facilitation skills, communications, project management, change management, creative problem solving, design thinking, storytelling, process optimisation, strategic thinking and planning and technology expertise. 

Formal requirements include:

• Tertiary qualification (Bachelor’s degree) in Law, Business or Technology related field is required.
• 5 – 10 years’ experience working in a large multi-national organisation, top-tier law firm, alternative legal provider, management consulting firm, big 4 firm, or top-tier professional services firm.   

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].