Human Resources Business Partner

About ESR

ESR is a leading Asia-Pacific real asset owner and manager focused on logistics real estate, data centres, and energy infrastructure that power the digital economy and supply chain for investors, customers, and communities. Through our fully integrated real asset fund management and development platform, we strive to create value and growth opportunities for our global portfolio of investors. We offer our customers modern space solutions to realise their ambitions across Australia and New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, Greater China, Southeast Asia, and India, including a presence in Europe.

Role Overview

As ESR continues its transformation following privatisation, Group HR is building a business partnering model that scales with a more integrated, matrixed organisation. This role is the day-to-day HR partner to a broad portfolio of ESR’s Singapore-based corporate functions, business units and platforms — a deliberately varied brief that suits someone who enjoys moving between different leadership teams, operating rhythms and people agendas rather than specialising in one.

Reporting to the Director, Human Resources Business Partner, this is a hands-on partnering role with real ownership of your client groups. You will translate business priorities into practical people actions, coach managers through performance, organisation and employee relations matters, and work alongside our Centres of Expertise, People Services and Talent Acquisition to deliver a consistent employee experience. Based at our global headquarters in Singapore, you will sit close to Group HR and business leadership — giving you enterprise-wide visibility and a direct hand in shaping how ESR’s HR Business Partner model matures.

Key Responsibilities

Stakeholder Management & Business Partnering

• Act as the primary HR partner to the assigned Group corporate functions and Singapore-based business units, building trusted relationships with function heads and their leadership teams.
• Translate function and business plans into practical people priorities across structure, capability, resourcing, performance and retention.
• Provide pragmatic, commercially grounded advice that balances business need, employee experience and Group governance.
• Pick up the operating context of each client group quickly and adapt your approach to different leadership styles, team maturity and business rhythms.

Strategic Planning & Organisational Effectiveness

• Support organisation design, workforce planning and headcount governance for the portfolio, working with the Director, HRBP and Finance on establishment, cost and approval discipline.
• Analyse spans, layers, role duplication and people cost to identify opportunities to simplify structures and improve effectiveness.
• Support change, integration and restructuring activity, helping leaders communicate clearly and land organisational change with their teams.
• Maintain accurate organisation and position data so that headcount, cost and people reporting can be relied on for decisions.

Talent Management & Development

• Partner Talent Acquisition on hiring for the portfolio — provide role clarity, outcome-based role profiles, market context and interview panel discipline using the STAR framework.
• Run the performance management cycle for the portfolio: goal setting, mid-year and year-end reviews, calibration and consistent differentiation of performance.
• Identify critical roles, successors and high-potential talent, and work with the Talent Centre of Expertise to deploy the right development solutions.
• Coach managers on giving feedback, addressing underperformance early, and developing their teams.

Business Performance, Rewards & People Data

• Partner the Total Rewards Centre of Expertise to deliver the annual salary review, promotion and incentive cycles for the portfolio, ensuring consistent and defensible application of ESR’s frameworks.
• Provide benchmarking and internal equity analysis to support offer, promotion and retention decisions.
• Use people data — headcount, cost, attrition, engagement and performance distribution — to inform recommendations, and to challenge decisions where the evidence does not support them.
• Educate managers on ESR’s performance philosophy and reward principles so they are understood and applied consistently.

Governance, Risk & Compliance

• Manage employee relations matters across the portfolio with sound judgement and discretion — grievances, conduct, performance management, investigations and exits.
• Ensure compliance with the Singapore Employment Act, MOM requirements and ESR policy; escalate emerging risk early and document decisions properly.
• Coach managers to handle employee relations situations themselves where appropriate, building capability in the business rather than absorbing the work into HR.
• Conduct exit interviews, analyse attrition trends and recommend practical retention actions.

Operational Excellence & HR Transformation

• Work with People Services and the Centres of Expertise to deliver HR processes, systems and cycles cleanly for the portfolio, avoiding duplication between local and Group activity.
• Drive adoption of new HR programmes, policies and ways of working within your client groups.
• Feed business insight back to the Centres of Expertise to improve HR services, processes and the employee experience.
• Contribute to the continued build-out of ESR’s HR Business Partner model, standards and toolkits as the organisation matures.

Requirements

Academic and/or Professional Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Human Resources, Business Administration, Psychology or a related discipline.
• Professional HR certification — for example IHRP-CP / IHRP-SP, CIPD or SHRM — is advantageous.

Experience & Skills

• 7–10 years of progressive HR experience, including at least four years in a dedicated HR Business Partner or senior generalist partnering capacity.
• Proven experience partnering corporate and enablement functions alongside commercial or operational teams. Versatility across different client groups matters more to us than depth in any single domain.
• Working knowledge of the Singapore Employment Act, MOM regulations and local employment practice; exposure to other APAC jurisdictions is an advantage.
• Sound employee relations judgement, with hands-on experience of grievances, investigations, performance management and exits.
• Comfortable with data — able to work with headcount, cost, attrition and performance data and build a clear, evidence-based case for a recommendation.
• Experience operating within a matrix organisation alongside Centres of Expertise and shared services, rather than owning every activity locally.
• Able to influence senior stakeholders without positional authority, and to challenge constructively while maintaining the relationship.
• Strong written and verbal communication in English, with the judgement to handle confidential matters with discretion and professionalism.
• Proficient with HRIS and applicant tracking systems; ESR uses Workable as the single source of truth for recruitment.
• Must demonstrate an understanding of data privacy and security best practices when interacting with external AI platforms
• Experience integrating AI tools into daily workflows to improve output quality and operational speed
• Skill in auditing AI-generated data to ensure high standards of accuracy and professional integrity

Optional Competencies

• Exposure to real estate, fund management, infrastructure, private equity or professional services environments — useful for picking up ESR’s commercial model quickly, but not a requirement.
• Experience supporting organisational change, restructuring, integration or divestment activity.
• Experience contributing to HR transformation, shared services transitions or the rollout of new HR technology.
• Working proficiency in an additional Asian language.
• Demonstrates proficiency in leveraging Generative AI tools (e.g., ChatGPT, Claude, or specialized financial AI) to streamline routine workflows, enhance data synthesis, and accelerate the drafting of reports or documentation
• Proactive in utilizing AI-assisted tools to identify trends within large datasets, automate repetitive analytical tasks, and augment decision-making processes through advanced prompt engineering and iterative testing.