Head of Employee Relations
We are building our People team at Gusto and are looking for an experienced leader to build and scale our Employee Relations practice and team.
At Gusto, we’ve been intentional about setting strong company values and ensuring every Gustie lives into those values and fosters a safe, inclusive and ethical culture at Gusto. From the moment a prospective Gustie begins our Invite process until the day a Gustie leaves Gusto, we take very seriously our values, our People policies, and the way we interact with each other. Our strong and ethical culture is at the heart of everything we do at Gusto. As we continue to scale and grow, it’s important that our policies are strong, our processes are clear, and our training and education programs help Gusties have positive interactions and experiences with their co-workers and customers.
As the Employee Relations lead for Gusto, you will be responsible for ensuring that we maintain a safe, respectful and inclusive workplace culture through strong People policies, a scalable employee relations framework, and transparent and respectful investigations processes and procedures (including those for investigations, disciplinary actions and performance management). In addition, you’ll play a key role in ensuring that we are able to clearly and concisely communicate those processes and procedures to Gusties at all levels of the organization.
You’ll work with Gusto leaders, People Empowerers, and individual contributors to consult on and solve employee relations issues. You will partner closely with Employment Legal and the People Partner team on the creation and communication of processes and procedures, and also on handling sensitive employment matters and the resolution of employee concerns.
The ideal candidate has a demonstrated track record of leading through influence, establishing positive employee relations practices, and is able to see around corners to help us continue scaling successfully. You will serve as a trusted adviser to our senior leaders and report to Gusto’s Head of Employee Engagement. The Employee Engagement organization leads our work on Diversity & Belonging, Employee Relations, and Integrity/Governance and compliance.
This work requires a high degree of empathy and understanding; exquisite in-person, verbal and written communication skills; experience handling confidential and sensitive issues with care, deep acumen in employee relations, and a business-focused style that resonates with a data-informed team.
Here’s what you’ll do day-to-day:
- Work across the business to help Gusties practices our values and follow our People Policies
- Partner with Employment Legal and our People Partner team to design, create, implement and manage on our employee relations processes and programs
- Handle investigations and other sensitive employee relations issues, working across all levels of the company
- Over time, build and empower a team of employee relations professionals
- Identify opportunities to build skill and capability in employee relations, culture and workplace compliance issues, for leaders, managers and individual contributors
- Ensure we have clear, transparent processes and reporting mechanisms to help inform our work in this space
Here’s what we’re looking for:
- 7+ years of combined employee relations experience – ideally focused on ER, employment legal, or HRBP/People Partner experiences
- High emotional intelligence, matched with the ability to execute
- An innovative approach to developing a positive, transparent and accountable employee relations model and framework
- Ability to build collaborative working relationships with staff at all levels of the organization and develop strong professional relationships and networks externally
- Exceptional written and oral communication and presentation skills
- Experience working with and counseling senior leaders
ABOUT GUSTO
Gusto is a modern, online people platform that helps small businesses take care of their teams. On top of full-service payroll, Gusto offers health insurance, 401(k)s, expert HR, and team management tools. Today, Gusto offices in Denver, San Francisco, and New York serve more than 100,000 businesses nationwide.
