People Risk Senior Manager

Equinix•Toronto, ON

3d•CA$131,000 - CA$181,000•Onsite

About The Position

The People Risk Senior Manager (Individual Contributor) is responsible for designing, implementing, and governing the HR risk framework to proactively identify, assess, and mitigate internal and external risks affecting people, processes, technology, and compliance. The role provides data-driven visibility to the CPO and HR leadership through a robust risk register, dashboards, and audit checks. Leads incident readiness and response (e.g., employee crises due to war, natural disasters) while ensuring HR operates with resilience, equity, and compliance globally. Translate risk insights into actionable recommendations to inform HR strategy and enterprise decision-making and embed a proactive risk-aware, ethical, and compliance-focused culture across HR globally.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in HR, Business, Risk, or related field (Master’s preferred)
10+ years in risk management, internal audit, and HR operations with global scope
Experience designing risk frameworks, managing risk registers/dashboards, and leading audits
Familiarity with data privacy, regulatory compliance, vendor risk, and incident response
Experience translating risk insights into strategic recommendations and fostering risk awareness
Risk management expertise (frameworks, KRIs, heatmaps, RCSA, controls testing)
Strong understanding of HR operations, data privacy, labor/ER policy, and third-party risk
Analytical storytelling: translating risk data into insights and actionable recommendations for executives
Stakeholder influence across HR, Legal, IT Security, Finance, Audit, and Business Continuity
Crisis leadership: structured thinking under pressure, clear communication
High integrity, discretion, and sound judgment

Responsibilities

Maintain and update the HR Risk Framework, including methodology, taxonomy, scoring, controls, and Key Risk Indicators (KRIs).
Own and manage the People Risk Register, ensuring alignment with enterprise standards and capturing risks, root causes, impact, controls, and remediation status.
Develop dashboards and heatmaps to monitor top risks, trends, and emerging issues; provide executive briefings with actionable insights.
Establish governance cadence for risk reviews and escalation thresholds.
Continuously scan internal and external environments for emerging risks such as process gaps, HRIS changes, regulatory shifts, labor trends, vendor risks, and cyber/privacy concerns.
Define required controls to identify and track People related risks.
Responsible for execution of mapping risks to determine company obligations to mitigate or reduce.
Develop documentation for control standards.
Conduct first-line control testing and targeted audit checks; partner with process owners to remediate gaps.
Ensure risk controls align with ER/disciplinary, RIF/involuntary separation, data privacy, records retention, and labor relations policies.
Develop and define mitigation plans, contingency strategies, and tracking of remediation execution to closure.
Monitor escalations and exceptions processes to identify trends and risks.
Conduct post – incident reviews to evaluate and coach on problem resolution to ensure adequate containment and solutions which address root cause.
Utilize Key Risk Indicators and dashboards to detect early warning signs to determine mitigation steps.
Responsible for governance reporting of people risks.
Develop playbooks related to people related responses during crisis (war, natural disasters, pandemics, civil unrest) and serve as POC to the Crisis management Team.
Train and direct HR teams on leading incident response coordination, employee safety protocols, and HR business continuity as outlined through People Risk Crisis Preparedness through crisis simulations & scenario planning.
Collaborate with HR, Security, Legal, Communications, and Business Continuity teams to ensure incident classifications and escalation paths are defined and understood and roles and responsibilities are clearly defined to facilitate decision making protocols.
Build HR risk literacy via training, playbooks, and control ownership.
Coach HR leaders/advisors on risk-informed decision-making and behavioral/cultural risk mitigation.
Monitor global regulatory compliance (employment law, union obligations, data protection).
Oversee third-party/vendor risk, including due diligence, SLAs, and partner with IT on HRIS/security risks.
Recommend interventions (training, policy changes, coaching) to reduce behavioral and cultural risks.

Benefits

Employee Assistance Program
Healthcare coverage that is designed to complement the provincial healthcare system
Life insurance
Disability insurance
Optional benefit plans
Defined Contribution Pension Plan (DCPP)
Group Retirement Savings Plan (RRSP)
Tax-Free Savings Plan (TSFA)
Vacation time
Personal time
Various paid holidays