Head of Business Continuity

Major international, multi-channel consumer business | Executive-level enterprise resilience mandate

We are partnering with a large international consumer organisation to appoint its most senior Business Continuity leader. This is a newly elevated, highly visible role with responsibility for building a mature, practical and enterprise-wide resilience capability across a complex operating model.

The mandate

• Define and own the enterprise Business Continuity strategy, framework, policy, governance and assurance model.
• Move Business Continuity to a strategic operational capability.
• Lead Business Impact Analysis, risk assessment and continuity planning across a geographically dispersed estate, logistics network, digital operation and central functions.
• Identify critical services, dependencies and recovery objectives, linking them to a clearly defined minimum viable business.
• Design and lead realistic exercising and testing so that response becomes repeatable organisational muscle memory.
• Own the crisis-management framework, executive procedures, simulations, post-incident reviews and continuous improvement.
• Align Business Continuity with technology disaster recovery, cyber response, enterprise risk and physical security while preserving clear business ownership.
• Build meaningful resilience metrics and provide credible reporting to Executive and Board-level forums.
• Lead and develop a small internal team and manage relationships with specialist external advisers and assurance partners.
• Embed resilience in transformation, new locations, partnerships and international growth.

The environment

The organisation operates at substantial scale across multiple countries, with a large customer-facing estate, distribution and logistics infrastructure, international supply arrangements and a growing eCommerce channel. Its culture is fast-moving, pragmatic and relationship-led. This is not an environment in which policy or regulation alone will create change.

The successful candidate must be able to make resilience real: moving conversations beyond maturity scores and technical terminology to practical questions about how the business continues if a site, workforce, supplier, operational capability or technology service becomes unavailable.

The person

• Significant experience leading enterprise Business Continuity in a complex international organisation.
• A track record of designing and implementing a BCM framework, rather than only maintaining an established programme.
• Credibility across operational resilience, crisis management, exercising, governance and third-party continuity.
• Executive and Board-level communication skills, coupled with the ability to work directly with operational leaders.
• Experience in retail, consumer goods, logistics, distribution, manufacturing networks or another fast-moving, operationally complex sector is advantageous; exact sector experience is not essential.
• Strong knowledge of ISO 22301 and relevant professional practice, ideally supported by CBCI, MBCI or an equivalent qualification.
• Sufficient understanding of technology disaster recovery and cyber response to create effective alignment across disciplines.
• A practical, low-ego leadership style: able to add structure without bureaucracy and bring stakeholders with them rather than impose a programme upon them.