VP, People Experience
John Hancock
People & HR
Boston, MA, USA
Overview
Manulife is evolving from a culture led approach to a more deliberate focus on People Experience—owning how work is experienced in daily work so it aligns with our values and enables performance in an AI‑powered organization.
As work evolves, expectations, decision making, and how work gets done are changing more rapidly. What employees see, feel, and do every day now determines whether they understand what matters, how to succeed, and how to navigate their work and growth with clarity and confidence.
People Experience plays a critical role in this shift—shaping how these changes show up in practice so that new ways of working are clear, usable, and consistently experienced. This includes embedding how we support strong, sustainable performance by shaping a way of working where people take care of themselves and each other and ensuring new ways of working are not only designed, but adopted and reinforced in everyday behaviour.
The VP, People Experience is accountable for shaping the colleague experience—ensuring that as work evolves, the way it is experienced day to day is aligned, intuitive, and enables people to perform and thrive.
What You Will Lead
Enterprise employee experience strategy and design aligned to workforce and talent system evolution.
Experience Design: standards and patterns that translate system and work changes into real experiences.
Recognition: enterprise recognition approaches aligned to performance, contribution, and impact.
Organizational Sensing & Insights: turning experience data into actionable improvement.
Wellbeing for Sustainable Performance: Ensures employees can perform at their best over time by creating the conditions that support wellbeing, balance, and resilience in everyday work.
Integration across all Talent pillars - Human Performance Architecture, Inclusion, Learning & Workforce Capability, Leadership & Talent Stewardship, Future Workforce, Talent Marketplace Advisory & Intelligence.
Responsibilities
Own the enterprise Employee Experience strategy and roadmap.
Design experience standards and patterns that make Talent systems feel seamless, usable, and relevant in the moments that matter most to employees.
Lead enterprise recognition strategy and governance.
Translate sensing and insights into actionable improvements.
Embed wellbeing and sustainable performance into experience design.
Define and activate the human experience layer of workforce transformation.
Lead a high-performing team across Experience Design, Recognition, Sensing, and Wellbeing.
Create clear, practical guidance for leaders to reinforce new ways of working.
What Success Looks Like
Employees experience performance and change as clear and human.
New ways of working are adopted through behaviour and habit—not just communication.
Recognition reinforces the right behaviours consistently.
Sensing leads to visible, continuous improvement.
Wellbeing is embedded in how work is experienced.
Leaders experience the Talent COE as usable and connected.
Qualifications
10+ years in employee experience, organizational effectiveness, or transformation roles.
Proven history of designing experiences that drive adoption and behaviour change.
Experience leveraging AI and data models to drive behaviour change.
Strong systems thinking and ability to simplify complexity.
Data fluency and ability to use insights to drive decisions.
Credibility influencing senior leaders across HR, business, and technology.
Strong communication and storytelling capability.
Why This Role Matters
As Manulife redesigns work and performance, Employee Experience ensures people can succeed within the system. This role ensures transformation is adopted in practice by designing experiences that drive understanding, trust, and sustained performance.
This posting supports an ongoing hiring initiative for existing and/or future vacancies.
About Manulife and John Hancock
Manulife Financial Corporation is a leading international financial services provider, helping people make their decisions easier and lives better. To learn more about us, visit https://www.manulife.com/en/about/our-story.html.
Manulife is an Equal Opportunity Employer
At Manulife/John Hancock, we embrace our diversity. We strive to attract, develop and retain a workforce that is as diverse as the customers we serve and to foster an inclusive work environment that embraces the strength of cultures and individuals. We are committed to fair recruitment, retention, advancement and compensation, and we administer all of our practices and programs without discrimination on the basis of race, ancestry, place of origin, colour, ethnic origin, citizenship, religion or religious beliefs, creed, sex (including pregnancy and pregnancy-related conditions), sexual orientation, genetic characteristics, veteran status, gender identity, gender expression, age, marital status, family status, disability, or any other ground protected by applicable law.
It is our priority to remove barriers to provide equal access to employment. A Human Resources representative will work with applicants who request a reasonable accommodation during the application process. All information shared during the accommodation request process will be stored and used in a manner that is consistent with applicable laws and Manulife/John Hancock policies. To request a reasonable accommodation in the application process, contact hr@manulife.com.
Working Arrangement
Salary & Benefits
Employees also have the opportunity to participate in incentive programs and earn incentive compensation tied to business and individual performance. The actual salary will vary depending on local market conditions, geography and relevant job-related factors such as knowledge, skills, qualifications, experience, and education/training. If you are applying for this role outside of the primary location, please contact hr@manulife.com for the salary range for your location.
Manulife offers eligible employees a wide array of customizable benefits, including health, dental, mental health, vision, short- and long-term disability, life and AD&D insurance coverage, adoption/surrogacy and wellness benefits, and employee/family assistance plans. We also offer eligible employees various retirement savings plans (including pension and a global share ownership plan with employer matching contributions) and financial education and counseling resources. Our generous paid time off program in Canada includes holidays, vacation, personal, and sick days, and we offer the full range of statutory leaves of absence. If you are applying for this role in the U.S., please contact hr@manulife.com for more information about U.S.-specific paid time off provisions.
We use data and analytics technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI), and automated processing tools, to analyze and process the information you provide to us or third parties in the application process. For more information, please refer to our personal information collection statement.