Senior Director, HR Business Partner, Wholesale North America

About Sonova

At Sonova, we envision a world where everyone can enjoy the delight of hearing. This vision inspires us and fuels our commitment to developing innovative solutions that improve hearing health and human connection – from personal audio devices and wireless communication systems to hearing aids and cochlear implants. We're dedicated to providing outstanding customer experiences through our global audiological care services, ensuring that everyone has the opportunity to engage fully with the world around them.

Aurora (IL), United States

The Senior Director Human Resources is a newly created senior leadership role accountable for end‑to‑end HR business partnership with Sonova's Regional Wholesale leadership team. The role enables scale, consistency, and functional excellence by shaping a future‑ready, data‑driven commercial organization capable of accelerating growth through a clear operating model, fit‑for‑purpose organization design, and the capabilities, skills, and culture required for the function to enable Sonova growth and innovation.

This role serves as a trusted advisor to the Wholesale Managing Director and channel leadership, ensuring HR solutions drive productivity, engagement, capability development, and sustainable performance.

The Sr Director HR supports leaders in workforce and organizational decisions, drives adoption of enterprise HR products, and identifies risks early while ensuring compliance with local labor law and enterprise governance.

The role is Aurora, Chicago‑based, with a hybrid structure, including 20‑30% travel requirements to visit sites regionally.

• Enable the teams and operating model by driving organizational effectiveness and functional readiness across the wholesale organization – both local and regional organizations.
• Lead org design and organization effectiveness and efficiency: shape scalable structures, roles, and governance/ways of working that improve simplicity and speed of decision‑making.
• Use insight and evidence (people analytics, engagement signals, performance data, feedback loops) to identify bottlenecks and design targeted interventions that improve agility, collaboration, and accountability.
• Coach and challenge the regional business leaders on operating model evolution, Sonova behaviors, talent decisions, and change leadership—balancing short‑term needs to deliver functional outcomes with long‑term capability.
• Embed a performance‑oriented environment that is fair, transparent, and standards‑driven, with clear expectations and disciplined follow‑through.
• Lead integration of acquired businesses, aligning structures, ways of working, and culture, while standardizing core HR practices, balancing global frameworks with local needs.
• Build a unified culture across Wholesale—connecting diverse brands, silo team structures, and leadership approaches into one Wholesale with shared purpose and ways of working.
• Shift from siloed to collaborative delivery by strengthening cross‑functional teaming, role clarity, and shared outcomes (customer impact, growth, and brand/channels strength).
• Embed modern ways of working (agile collaboration, experimentation and learning, continuous improvement) to increase speed‑to‑market and customer‑centric execution.
• Design and execute a change approach covering narrative, communications, stakeholder engagement, change impact, and resistance management.
• Build change capacity within people leaders and teams by implementing practical interventions, enabling toolkits that make the new Wholesale operating model stick.
• Own talent and workforce strategy for the assigned segment in partnership with the HR Centers of Expertise: strategic workforce planning, critical roles, succession pipelines, and build/buy/borrow decisions.
• Define and build future commercial capabilities (data‑driven decision‑making, customer insights, martech and digital fluency, content and brand excellence, commercialization, experimentation).
• Strengthen leadership capability at all levels—combining future sales/commercial expertise with high‑quality people leadership and team…