United States of America: Associate Director, International Human Resources

Organizational Background:

Heartland Alliance International (HAI) is the global arm of Heartland Alliance for Human Needs & Human Rights, a family of organizations that has been leading anti-poverty and social justice work in Chicago for more than 125 years. HAI is comprised of offices in nearly a dozen countries that implement programs on a range of global human rights issues, as well as the Chicago-based Marjorie Kovler Center for the Treatment of Survivors of Torture, which serves individuals from more than 50 countries. HAI has significant expertise in the fields of trauma-informed mental health care and access to justice for survivors of rights abuses. It is also an industry leader in access to high-quality and stigma-free health care, including HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment programs. Across all of its programs, HAI promotes progressive, innovative approaches to human rights protections and gender equality that are inclusive of the rights of LGBT persons.

The Opportunity:

HAI’s new Associate Director of International Human Resources would join a team of dedicated, energetic staff committed to making the world a better place. HAI is the fastest growing part of the Heartland family, having tripled in size in the last five years. This is a unique opportunity to work with talented leaders to lead the internal implementation of HAI’s strategic plan goal to be the best place to work in human rights and integrate a progressive approach to gender and human rights into our internal operations. HAI is seeking a flexible, talented leader with experience managing international human resources, someone who is eager to be based in Chicago and is excited to help move our organization’s human resources infrastructure forward at a moment of rapid growth and change.

Summary:

The Associate Director, International Human Resources provides strategic and operational oversight to Heartland Alliance International (HAI), a subsidiary of Heartland Alliance for Human Needs & Human Rights. The Associate Director will lead the quality development and continuous improvement of the international human resources department to deliver the best people and human resource support functions, processes, and systems for the organization. The Associate Director will design and oversee the implementation of international human resource systems and infrastructure that balances organization values, laws and best practices, and funding or other requirements. Individual accountabilities and work volume will be established through the development of annual Success Objectives, within the framework outlined below.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities:

Strategic Leadership:

• Leads in the implementation of HAI’s strategic plan goal to be the best place to work in human rights, including leading the strengthening of the human resources function, supporting and improving organizational culture, and leading staff development strategies for our international work.
• Collaboratively develops, strategically aligns and implements disciplined execution of the valued processes, policies, and systemic solutions required to meet global HR requirements.
• Ensure the right talent at the right time and place, including developing equal opportunity strategy across the organization to recruit and create a safe place for diversity.
• Evaluate and facilitate HR functional capacity and service delivery for all sectors. Implement collaborative actions to evaluate development of HR capacity and infrastructure. Build knowledge, expertise, and capacity leveraging internal and external resources. Ensure effective HR service systems and delivery at multi-levels as confirmed by key stakeholders. Measure and evaluate.
• Identifies, develops and/or adapts HR systems, policies and procedures to meet international context (i.e. compliance with local employment laws, customs, technical capacity, or other relevant factors) in collaboration with staff across the organization.

• Travel at least 25% time to HAI offices and programs including high risk locations to support country strategies, meet organizational needs, and monitor effectiveness of HR practices.

• Provides recommendations to HAI COO and Senior HR Director for annual budgeting and planning.

• Advocate for the adaptability of enterprise wide initiatives to international operations.

• Manages a small team of HR staff dedicated to HAI and provides dotted line supervision of HR focal points in country offices.

  HR Operations and Services:

• Positively leads human resources practices and processes, including but not limited to oversight of staff development and performance management, process workflows, total rewards for non-US based staff (compensation, payroll, benefits, employee resources), and human resources information system implementation.

• In case of emergency, serve on HAI’s crisis management team.

• Works closely with the Executive Director and COO of HAI to develop and prioritize HR operational projects related to the HAI strategic objectives in line with the global operations work plan.

• Ensures that human resources workflows meet end-to-end employee administration across all systems, including batch payroll, benefits, employee change administration pre-offer coordination and pre-hire checks in compliance with all laws.

  Matrix Management:

  Provides leadership and guidance to the benefits, payroll, and human resources information system teams concerning international standards and country specific context for the purpose of improving the quality of services and support to staff globally; clarify processes and procedures for each classification of employee (HQ, Expat/TCN, Key Personnel, Local National); and ensuring global compliance according to USG and other funder regulations, organization strategies and goals.

  Qualifications: To perform this job successfully, an individual must be able to perform each essential duty satisfactorily. The requirements listed below are representative of the knowledge, skill, and/or ability required. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

• Education and/or Experience:Bachelors degree or equivalent and six years of progressive HR experience and/or training. GPHR/SPHR preferred. Experience must include:

  • International HR experience and management experience, including experience with developing and implementing new systems;

  • Preferred experience includes; experience working in countries and regions in which HAI operates; living and working abroad; and exposure to USG regulations for contracts and cooperative agreements.

• Communications and Language Skills: Strong verbal and written English communications skills, with an ability to write policies and communicate with staff in a global organization. Preferred skills include advanced written and verbal professional proficiency in Spanish, French, Arabic, and/or Sorani Kurdish.

• Reasoning Ability:Ability to solve practical problems and deal with a variety of concrete variables in situations where only limited standardization exists.

• Computer Skills:To perform this job successfully, an individual should have knowledge of human resources management systems, including ADP and others. Demonstrated proficiency in Word, Power Point, Outlook and Excel.

Other Competencies:

• Leadership - Leads by example and serves as a model for others. Creates an environment where people feel valued. Sees problems as opportunities and provides solutions through inspiring and empowering others. Understand the strengths and weaknesses of others to improve performance. Takes responsibility for oneself or one’s employee’s performance. Provides constructive feedback and develops team members. Integrity to do the right thing even when it’s difficult or not popular.

• Decision-Making - Models and trains staff in decision making. Even in the most difficult situations, recognizes problems or opportunities and determines whether action is needed, assesses risks, takes charge of and ensures integration of feedback from a group when it is necessary to facilitate a decision, and makes decisions in a timely manner under ambiguous circumstances and when there exists considerable risk.

  Change Management - Initiates the change process and energizes it on an ongoing basis through facilitating groups or teams to problem-solve and think creatively to develop and implement new approaches or systems. Helps employees to develop a clear understanding of what they will need to do differently, as a result of changes in the organization. Implements or supports various change management activities (e.g., communications, education, team development, coaching). Establishes structures and processes to plan and manage the orderly implementation of change. Able to identify when change is needed and focus on why changes are beneficial or necessary to successfully implement change.

• Teamwork/Collaboration – Promotes and generates cooperation among one’s peers in leadership to achieve a collective outcome; fosters the development of a common vision and fully participates in creating a unified leadership team that gets results. Able to leverage relationships across offices or HA partner companies to broaden managers’ knowledge and understanding of internal resources for collaboration and who the members of the team are.

• Adaptability - Adapts to changes in the work environment; Manages competing demands; Changes approach or method to best fit the situation; Able to deal with frequent change, delays, or unexpected events

• Cultural Humility and Interpersonal Awareness – Consistently open and approachable when resolving highly sensitive and complex issues; including with parties holding opposing viewpoints. Treats staff at all levels of the organization in accord with organizational principles of respect and reciprocity. Able to appropriately challenge others who are not demonstrating cultural humility.

• Integrity/Authenticity - Skilled at building trust, sincerely soliciting input with clear understanding of how input will be used, able to create and maintain a culture that enables staff to learn and grow from mistakes, and challenges others who are not acting with integrity. Maintains confidentiality regardless of pressure from others, admits mistakes and takes stands based on principles and values in spite of the potential for negative consequences

• Resilience - Able to not only recognize and mitigate personal stressors, but is skilled at coaching middle managers on how to anticipate increased stress in teams and implement systems to minimize the impact, and able to recognize and respond to changes in individual employee's stress levels.

Physical Demands: The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

• the employee is regularly required to sit and talk or hear.
• the employee is frequently required to use hands to key, handle, or feel.
• The employee is regularly required to stand; walk and reach with hands and arms.
• The employee must occasionally lift and/or move up to 25 pounds.
• Specific vision abilities required by this job include close vision and ability to adjust focus.

Work Environment: The work environment characteristics described here are representative of those an employee encounters while performing the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

• The noise level in the work environment is usually moderate.
• The employee is required to travel periodically to often high risk, insecure, and limited-resource environments.

Heartland Alliance makes all hiring and employment decisions, and operates all programs, services, and functions without regard to race, receipt of an order of protection, creed, color, age, gender, gender identity, marital or parental status, religion, ancestry, national origin, amnesty, physical or mental disability, protected veterans status, genetic information, sexual orientation, immigrant status, political affiliation or belief, use of FMLA, VESSA, military, and family military rights, ex-offender status (depending on the offense and position to be filled), unfavorable military discharge, membership in an organization whose primary purpose is the protection of civil rights or improvement of living conditions and human relations, height, weight, or HIV infection, in accord with the organization's AIDS Policy Statement of September 1987

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