Jack Morton Worldwide

Senior People Business Partner

Jack Morton Worldwide • $100K — $130K *
Chicago, IL 60629In-Person
Business Services
8 - 10 years of experience
Today
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Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • 8+ years of progressive HR / People experience, including 3+ years as a business partner to senior leaders.
  • Preferred experience in agency, creative, professional services, or fast-paced project environments.
  • Proven ability to build or rebuild HR processes and programs from the ground up.
  • Strong understanding of employee relations, performance, compensation basics, employment law, and organizational design.
  • Comfortable navigating ambiguity and change; M&A or post-merger experience is a plus.
  • Hands-on experience with AI tools and integrating them into HR workflows.
  • Exceptional communication skills, capable of delivering direct feedback constructively.

Responsibilities

  • Partner with leaders on organizational design, workforce planning, and talent strategy.
  • Own the entire employee lifecycle for client groups including onboarding, development, and offboarding.
  • Coach managers with actionable strategies to enhance leadership effectiveness.
  • Drive talent and succession discussions aligned with future business goals.
  • Lead change management efforts during the integration of Impact XM and Jack Morton.
  • Incorporate AI in People operations to improve efficiency and effectiveness.
  • Collaborate with global People partners to ensure a consistent employee experience.

Benefits

  • Hybrid work opportunity, requiring in-office attendance 3 days a week in Addison, IL.
  • Involvement in building and reshaping the People function during a significant merger.
  • Access to innovative, forward-thinking projects within a creative agency environment.
  • Collaborative work culture that values partnership with leadership and creativity.
Full Job Description
**must be able to work hybrid in Addison, IL 3 days/week**

We're building what's next at Jack Morton.

Experiential marketing is changing fast - how brands show up, how audiences engage, how stories get told live and in the moment. The People team is right in the middle of that change. We're not just supporting the business; we're shaping how it operates, how it scales, and how our people experience working here.

We're looking for a Senior People Business Partner to join us in Addison, IL and support our North America operations as part of a global People team spanning seven countries. This isn't a maintenance role. It's a build role - for someone who sees a People function as a product to design, iterate on, and improve, not a service desk to staff.

If you've been waiting for a chance to actually shape how HR gets delivered - including reimagining what AI can do for our people, our managers, and our work - this is that seat.

What you'll do

You'll be the trusted People partner to a portfolio of NAM business leaders, helping them build healthy, high-performing teams in a creative, project-driven agency environment. Day to day, that looks like:
  • Partnering with leaders on org design, workforce planning, talent strategy, performance, and the harder conversations that come with running creative teams under client pressure.
  • Owning the employee lifecycle for your client groups - onboarding, development, performance management, ER, offboarding - and looking for what's broken, repetitive, or quietly painful, then fixing it.
  • Coaching managers to lead better. Real coaching - direct, specific, useful - not just policy reminders.
  • Driving talent and succession conversations that connect to where the business is going, not just where it's been.
  • Leading and supporting change through one of the most consequential moments in our agency's history. The Impact XM and Jack Morton integration is reshaping how we operate, and your work will help define how that lands for our people.
  • Building AI into how we deliver - from talent reviews to manager enablement to engagement listening - so the People function operates with leverage, not just effort.
  • Collaborating globally with People partners in our other regions so what we build in NAM connects to a coherent global employee experience, not a patchwork of local solutions.

What you bring
  • 8+ years of progressive HR / People experience, with at least 3 years as a true business partner to senior leaders.
  • Experience in agency, creative, professional services, or another fast-moving, project-based environment strongly preferred.
  • A genuine builder mindset - you've built or rebuilt processes, programs, or ways of working, not just executed someone else's playbook.
  • Strong command of the core: employee relations, performance, comp basics, employment law, org design.
  • Comfort with ambiguity and change - bonus points for M&A or post-merger integration experience.
  • Hands-on, regular use of AI tools (Microsoft Copilot, ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or similar) as a real part of your workflow - not passing familiarity - and ideally early experience designing AI into how a team or function operates.
  • Strong written and verbal communication - you can be direct without being harsh, and clear without being clinical.
  • Bachelor's degree or equivalent experience. SHRM-SCP / SPHR a plus, not required.

Why this role, why now

Jack Morton is in the middle of one of the most ambitious chapters in our history. The merger integration with Impact XM is creating something new - bigger, more connected, more globally capable - and the People function is being built alongside it, not bolted on after. That means your fingerprints will be on the employee experience for years to come.

You'll work with smart, creative people who care about the work and about each other. You'll have leaders who want a real partner, not a process owner. And you'll have room to build.

How we work

We're people-first, and we mean it. That shows up in how we coach, how we hire, how we handle hard moments, and how we design the small daily things that add up to "what it feels like to work here." If that resonates, we'd love to talk.

About Jack Morton Worldwide

Jack Morton Worldwide is a global brand experience agency. We believe brands need extraordinary ideas that create emotional connections, fuel conversations and deliver business results. For more than 75 years, we have brought brands to life through event marketing, promotional marketing, sponsorship marketing, digital, social and mobile, content marketing and employee engagement. Jack Morton is part of the Interpublic Group of Companies, Inc. (NYSE: IPG), one of the world's largest advertising and marketing services organizations. With more than 800 employees in offices around the world, we deliver exceptional results for our clients in 70 countries.
Learn more about Jack Morton Worldwide
Size
800 employees
Industry
Media
Founded
1939
* Ladders Estimates

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