Associate Director, Human Resources
Stanford University · Redwood City, California, United States · hybrid
The Human Resources team for Business Affairs is responsible for providing strategic HR guidance and consulting for the staff, management and leadership within the Business Affairs organization. Financial Management Services (FMS) is a part of the Stanford University Business Affairs organization, whose vision is “to work together to make administration seamless and efficient to enable and support teaching, learning, and research.” The Business Affairs HR team seeks an experienced Associate Director, Human Resources who is both a trusted advisor and a hands-on program leader, partnering with the FMS senior leadership team, including the Senior Associate Vice President (SAVP) of Finance and the SAVP’s direct reports, to turn workforce strategy into HR programs that work. Working side by side with FMS leaders, the Associate Director advises on people matters, ensures compliance with university HR policies, refines processes, and leads programs and HR initiatives across organizational design, career architecture, talent development, and compensation. FMS is navigating significant workforce transformation, driven by evolving work processes, including AI adoption. The ideal candidate brings depth across the HR disciplines, strong talent management experience (recruiting, performance management, talent development, workforce and succession planning), experience designing and launching people programs such as career frameworks, organizational design and workforce plans, and the credibility to influence senior stakeholders. This role operates with a high degree of independence and supervises an HR Business Partner who manages day-to-day operations for FMS.
Preferred Qualifications:
- Demonstrated interpersonal skills, emotional intelligence, and understanding of group dynamics. Successful track record of establishing credibility and trust with a diverse client group, including senior leaders.
- Demonstrated experience designing career architecture, organizational design, or workforce planning programs.
- Experience leading people programs through technology-driven change, such as AI adoption.
- Experience supervising HR staff.
- Strong analytical, critical thinking, problem-solving, judgment, negotiating, influencing, and decision-making skills. Ability to maintain confidentiality, tact, and diplomacy.
- Excellent facilitation and oral and written communication skills; ability to prepare clear and concise reports and deliver formal presentations or training to senior management and other audiences.
- Experience operating in complex, decentralized, or higher education environments is strongly preferred.
- Proven ability to lead cross-functional HR initiatives (such as system implementations or annual performance and salary planning cycles) from conception to successful completion.
- Experience translating quantitative and qualitative data (for example, HR metrics and engagement survey results) into actionable insights and recommendations for senior leaders.
- Experience designing and delivering training, tools, and coaching that enable managers and staff.
- Experience partnering with finance or other administrative and professional services organizations is valued.
Core duties:
Strategic partnership and program leadership
- Serve as the trusted HR advisor and thought partner to the FMS SAVP and leadership team, building a deep understanding of the organization’s objectives, issues, needs, and key success factors.
- Partner with FMS leadership to translate the workforce plan into HR frameworks and programs, and track its success.
- Serve as subject matter expert and project/team lead for strategic HR initiatives, programs, processes, and policies.
- Lead implementation of HR programs and processes in FMS.
- Provide expert specialized HR knowledge to managers and senior leadership, and provide specialized knowledge, research, data analytics, and reporting to support and inform decision-making.
- Partner with UHR functions and Centers of Excellence on initiatives and services, or to solve problems. Suggest efficiencies and process improvement opportunities.
- Provide guidance and mentorship to junior HR team members as needed.
- Maintain consistency with, support, and promote Stanford HR policies, procedures, and requirements, and applicable laws.
HR functional areas
- Change Management: Support senior leadership with local and university-wide change management efforts (stakeholder analysis, measures of success, risk assessment, implementation, monitoring), serving as a lead on local workstreams. Collaborate with subject matter experts on highly complex or specialized matters as needed. Participate in developing, drafting, and implementing a communications strategy.
- Compensation and Incentive Strategy: Consult with managers and senior leaders on highly complex or specialized compensation matters (salary actions, bonuses and supplemental pay, job title assignment) and advise on job classification as FMS roles evolve. Consult with UHR Compensation on highly complex or specialized matters, including the development of incentive and bonus programs. Will oversee the area’s salary planning program, partnering with managers to meet university guidelines.
- Disability and Leaves / Worker’s Comp: Consult with managers on highly complex or specialized disability/leave and workers’ compensation matters (eligibility, process, accommodations), liaising with subject matter experts as needed. Partner with senior leaders in the development of staffing plans resulting from absences of critical managers and staff, ensuring alignment with organizational goals.
- Employee and Labor Relations: Provide expert guidance to managers and senior leaders on employee relations matters, with a focus on the most complex and/or specialized investigations, corrective actions, and workplace accommodations. Partner closely with UHR-ELR. Educate and train managers and senior leaders to meet university guidelines.
- Employee Engagement: In partnership with FMS Organizational Programs, , develop surveys and initiatives to assess and support a positive work environment for the organization. Analyze resulting survey data and partner with leadership on the development of programming and action plans.
- Workforce and Talent Analytics: Analyze, interpret, and present data (turnover, movement, accrual usage, talent and engagement metrics, etc.) to senior leaders regarding their teams and the broader organization, providing analysis and recommendations. Develop custom reports upon request, consult with subject matter experts as needed, and educate managers on people analytics.
- Succession and Workforce Planning: Generate, analyze, and apply talent metrics to support the development and implementation of succession and workforce plans. Present findings and recommendations to senior leadership, partner on staffing plans for critical roles, and advise on hybrid and remote work arrangements consistent with university policy.
- Organizational Design: Partner with FMS leadership to assess organizational needs and recommend and support design changes (roles, structures, reporting relationships) that improve effectiveness. Lead related local workstreams, including stakeholder analysis, communications and change management.
- Career Architecture: Partner with FMS leaders and UHR Compensation to develop and maintain career paths, role levels, and job classification structures that reflect FMS work and support growth, mobility, and consistent assignment of employees to job titles, including senior levels.
- Performance Management: Consult with managers and senior leaders on highly complex and/or specialized performance management matters (setting expectations and goals, regular check-ins, developing positive performance and behaviors, conducting annual reviews), partnering with subject matter experts as needed. Educate and train managers and senior leaders on best prac