Executive Director, Workforce Engineering and Transformation

Job Description:

The Executive Director, Workforce Engineering and Transformation leads the enterprise capability for translating organizational and People Strategy priorities into future workforce requirements, integrated transformation project portfolios, and measurable workforce outcomes. The role brings together workforce strategy and engineering, strategic workforce planning, HR portfolio and program management, change and transition management, people analytics enablement, and People Strategy execution into a coordinated operating model.

For the CHRO and Senior Vice President of HR, the Executive Director works with the HR Leadership Team, operational and clinical leaders, Finance, IT, Data & Insights, the Strategy and Transformation Office, Office of the CEO, and other enterprise partners to determine what work the organization will need, how work and roles should evolve, what mix of talent and technology is required, and how complex workforce transformations should be prioritized and executed. The role is accountable for building the governance, methods, leadership capability, and decision disciplines required to move from strategy through implementation, adoption, and benefits realization.

The Executive Director leads the Director, Workforce Strategy & Engineering, and the Director, HR Strategy Realization, and provides leadership to the People Strategy function. Together, these capabilities create a closed-loop system connecting strategy, workforce design, analytics, execution, change adoption, measurement, and continuous improvement.

Department Description:

The Workforce Strategy and Engineering within Human Resources leads UCSF/UCSF Health’s enterprise approach to workforce strategy and transformation, translating organizational and People Strategy priorities into future workforce requirements, workforce designs, and executable transformation priorities. The team drives strategic workforce planning and the portfolio of major People Strategy initiatives. It provides the governance, program and change leadership, analytics enablement, and execution discipline needed to move priorities from strategy through implementation, adoption, and measurable workforce and organizational outcomes.

% 

of time

Essential Function (Yes/No)

Key Responsibilities

(To be completed by Supervisor)

20%

Integrate Enterprise People Strategy, Workforce Engineering, and Workforce Transformation

• Translate long-term Enterprise and People Strategy priorities into an integrated workforce transformation agenda, portfolio, and multi-year capability roadmap

• Create clear connections across People Strategy execution, analytics enablement, HR strategic initiatives, and enterprise business priorities so work is sequenced and governed as one system rather than as disconnected projects

• Advise the CHRO, HR Leadership Team, and senior operational leaders on workforce implications, strategic tradeoffs, investment priorities, and emerging workforce risks.

20%

Lead Workforce Strategy, Engineering, and Future Workforce Design

• Sponsor and govern the enterprise strategic workforce planning framework, including workforce segmentation, demand and supply analysis, scenario planning, critical-role strategy, skills and capability planning, and integration with financial and operating plans

• Advance workforce engineering approaches that deconstruct roles into tasks, skills, decision rights, and capacity requirements to identify work that can be automated, augmented by AI, simplified, eliminated, consolidated, or redesigned.

• Guide future-of-work strategies involving flexible scheduling, new staffing models, skills-based deployment, contingent and alternative workforce models, digital labor, new management practices, and other workforce innovations

• Ensure workforce design recommendations account for patient care, quality, safety, regulatory requirements, labor relations, equity, employee experience, and operational feasibility

20%

Lead the HR Strategic Portfolio and Workforce Transformation Delivery System

• Establish and maintain a single enterprise portfolio of major HR and People Strategy initiatives with clear strategic alignment, ownership, sequencing, milestones, dependencies, resource requirements, risks, and expected benefits

• Lead portfolio prioritization and resource tradeoff processes that help executives accelerate, defer, combine, redesign, or stop work based on strategic value and organizational capacity

• Set expectations for scalable program and project management practices, executive sponsorship, governance, risk management, decision-making, and benefits realization without creating unnecessary administrative burden

• Provide executive oversight for the highest-risk or highest-value transformation programs and intervene when initiatives face unclear ownership, competing priorities, or cross-functional barriers

15%

Connect People Strategy to Analytics, Measurement, and Decision Support

• Lead the People Strategy Enablement capability that translates strategic business questions into analytics use cases, decision-support requirements, and a prioritized people analytics portfolio in partnership with Data & Insights

• Ensure workforce and People Strategy decisions are supported by trusted data, consistent measures, clearly defined outcomes, and an intentional evolution from descriptive reporting toward diagnostic, predictive, and prescriptive insight

• Establish expectations for People Strategy performance reporting so senior executives and HR leaders can monitor execution, workforce outcomes, risks, and realized impact

• Maintain clear operating boundaries so Data & Insights retains technical ownership for data architecture, analytics development, reporting solutions, and analytical modeling

10%

Govern Strategy Execution, Change Adoption Strategies, and Workforce Transition

• Establish governance structures, decision rights, review cadences, escalation pathways, and accountability mechanisms that keep People Strategy and workforce transformation priorities actively managed

• Ensure complex transformations incorporate change and transition management from the outset, including stakeholder impact, sponsorship, communications, readiness, training, adoption, and manager enablement

• For AI automation, augmentation, role redesign, and workforce restructuring, ensure leaders have clear transition strategies addressing reskilling, redeployment, role changes, capacity shifts, labor implications, and employee experience

• Create a closed-loop process in which execution performance and workforce outcomes inform future strategy, investment, and design decisions

15%

Build Enterprise Capability, Leadership Alignment, and Team Performance

• Build, lead, and develop a high-performing multidisciplinary team spanning workforce strategy, workforce design, portfolio/program management, change management, analytics enablement, and strategy execution

• Establish common methods, playbooks, standards, and decision frameworks that build workforce planning, workforce transformation, and people strategy execution capability across HRBPs, COEs, and business leaders

• Facilitate complex leadership discussions where strategic priorities, workforce capacity, cost, technology, organizational design, and employee impacts require explicit tradeoffs

• Continuously evaluate the effectiveness of the Workforce Engineering & Transformation operating model and evolve the function as organizational needs, technology, and workforce conditions change

100%

Minimum Requirements:

• Bachelor's degree in Business, Human Resources, Organizational Development, Industrial/Organizational Psychology, Healthcare Administration, Information Systems, Analytics, Public Health, or a related field
• 15+ years of progressive experience across workforce strategy, HR strategy, strategic workforce planning, organization/work design, workforce transformation, portfolio/program leadership, management consulting, or related disciplines
• 7+ years leading complex, cross-functional enterprise initiatives, portfolios, or transformation programs in a large, matrixed organization
• Demonstrated experience translating business strategy into workforce implications and actionable transformation priorities, including difficult tradeoffs involving capacity, skills, cost, technology, and organizational design
• Strong understanding of strategic workforce planning, role and task redesign, AI automation and augmentation, skills-based workforce practices, total workforce models, and emerging ways of working
• Experience building or maturing enterprise capabilities, governance models, portfolio processes, or operating models rather than only managing individual projects
• Demonstrated success advising and influencing senior executives, building alignment across functions, and driving outcomes without relying solely on formal authority
• Frames ambiguous issues, diagnoses root causes, challenges assumptions constructively, facilitates difficult tradeoffs, and provides clear recommendations to senior leaders
• Anticipates the human, organizational, and labor implications of transformation and ensures implementation addresses readiness, adoption, reskilling, redeployment, role change, and manager capability
• Ability to connect business strategy, People Strategy, workforce capacity, organization design, technology, financial constraints, and talent implications into an integrated enterprise view
• Ability to operate effectively in ambiguity, balances rigor with speed, learns emerging technologies and 

Preferred Qualifications:

• Master's degree in Business Administration, Human Resources, Industrial/Organizational Psychology, Organizational Development, Healthcare Administration, Analytics, or a related discipline 
• PMP, PgMP, PfMP, or comparable project or portfolio management credential
• Prosci, Lean, Six Sigma, or comparable transformation/change credential
• Experience in a large academic healthcare system, health system, public-sector organization, or similarly complex and highly regulated environment    
• Experience with strategic workforce planning, AI-enabled work redesign, workforce analytics, job/role architecture, strategic position control, or skills-based workforce practices      
• Experience leading workforce transformation in a highly unionized or multi-bargaining-unit environment, including partnership with Labor Relations on workforce change