The Opportunity: The Director of Human Resources, Compliance and Employee Relations supports a legally compliant, positive, and respectful workplace. The Director partners with HR leaders, business leaders, and legal counsel to ensure compliance with federal, state and local employment requirements, audit execution, and interpreting company policies.
The position requires compliance and legal experience (JD preferred), California compliance experience, strong judgment, confidentiality, organization, and the ability to communicate effectively with employees and leaders at all levels of the organization.
Essential Duties and Responsibilities:- Lead programs that support compliance with federal, state, and local employment requirements.
- Monitor changes in employment law and evaluate their potential effect on company policies and business practices.
- Partner with legal counsel to update policies when laws or regulatory expectations change.
- Provide guidance regarding wage-and-hour, background-check, recordkeeping, equal-employment opportunity, anti-discrimination, anti-harassment, retaliation, disability accommodation, protected leave, and other employment-related compliance.
- Conduct or oversee internal compliance reviews and risk assessments.
- Develop corrective-action plans to address audit findings, policy gaps, or inconsistent practices.
- Ensure employment-related records are accurate, confidential, appropriately retained, and accessible only to authorized individuals.
- Ensure policies are practical, legally compliant, and aligned with company culture and operating needs.
- Establish policy-governance standards, including ownership, approval, communication, training, version control, and periodic review.
- Translate complex regulatory requirements into clear instructions for associates and leaders.
- Develop manager resources, investigation protocols, decision guides, escalation procedures, and compliance checklists.
- Coordinate responses to government-agency requests, subpoenas, personnel-file requests, legal holds, and employment-related documentation requests.
- Use data to identify locations, departments, or practices requiring intervention.
- Measure the effectiveness of preventive programs and recommend continuous improvements.
- Support consistent implementation of the Team Member Handbook.
- Develop and deliver training on employment compliance, and safety.
- Educate leaders on recognizing and escalating potential associate-relations or safety concerns.
- Evaluate training effectiveness using completion data, case trends, audit findings, safety incidents, and leader feedback.
- Support compliant background-check and pre-employment notification processes.
- Identify recurring employee-relations trends and recommend policy, training, or process improvements.
- Partner with HR business partners, finance, payroll, and legal counsel on sensitive, complex, or high-risk employee matters.
- Conduct or support workplace investigations, document findings, and recommend appropriate resolutions.
Qualifications: - Bachelor's degree required; Juris Doctor, preferred.
- At least 5 years of progressive experience in human resources compliance and employment law, or a related field.
- Experience supporting a large, geographically distributed, non-exempt, field-based workforce.
- Significant experience managing employee relations and compliance matters in California.
- Demonstrated knowledge of federal and state employment laws and workplace-safety requirements.
- Experience advising leaders on high-risk employee relations and compliance matters.
- Experience managing programs across a multi-location organization.
- Experience working with employment counsel, insurance providers, claims administrators, or government agencies.
- Strong analytical, strategic-planning, project-management, and change-management capabilities.
- Excellent written, verbal, presentation, interviewing, and documentation skills.
- Ability to handle highly confidential and sensitive matters with discretion.
- Ability to manage several complex priorities and respond effectively to urgent situations.
- Proficiency with HR information systems, case-management platforms, reporting tools, and standard office applications.
Classification: Full-Time Salaried, Exempt
