Head of Employee Relations

This transformational leadership role combines deep expertise in Employee Relations (ER) with workplace advisory services in a position that protects the bank, strengthens trust with colleagues, and enables leaders to navigate a rapidly evolving workforce landscape.

You will lead the function as a strategic risk and culture capability addressing a wide range of complex people management issues—integrating employee voice, fair and consistent outcomes, proactive risk identification, and leader enablement-- across a highly regulated financial‑services environment.  This role directs the Employee Relations team, the HR Service Center, and the Leave Program Office as a cohesive enterprise capability—balancing empathy and compliance while keeping a strong employee experience central to all operations.

Key Responsibilities

1. Strategy & Governance

• Define and execute the function’s strategy aligned to organizational values, risk and regulatory expectations, and employee experience goals; focus on providing consultative support and scenario-based advisory guidance in addition to managing investigations.
• Establish clear enterprise standards, decision frameworks, and escalation models for employee relations matters as well as HR Service Center and related operations teams.
• Partner with HR Risk to ensure ER is embedded into risk assessments, controls, and governance routines.
• Develop and maintain a consistent global ER framework based in US employment law but responsive to a global footprint.
• Cultivate strong relationships with business lines, HR business partners and other COEs, Corporate Security, Ethics Office, Incentive Management and HR Legal.  Ensure the equitable application of organization policies and procedures.
• Provide strategy and governance model for leave administration, including statutory, medical and other company-sponsored leave programs
• Design new workforce policies and procedures to support consistent application of workforce programs
• Ensure audit readiness and accountabilities for vendor performance.

2. Proactive Risk Identification & Analytics

• Evolve function from reactive resolution to early intervention and prevention, reducing litigation, regulatory exposure, and employee distrust.
• Build and maintain a workplace health analytics capability that tracks leading indicators of workplace risk; use case data, listening insights, and workforce analytics to identify systemic risks (e.g., repeat issues, leader capability gaps, hotspots).

• Monitor trends related to collective action, workplace activism, DEI‑related concerns, and hybrid work.

   

3. Complex Case & Crisis Leadership

• Oversee ER matters, some of which will be high profile, ensuring consistency, sound judgment, and defensible outcomes. Analyze evidence, apply relevant laws, policies and past practice to reach conclusions. 
• Partner with Legal, Compliance and Risk to manage matters with regulatory implications and banking-specific conduct standards.
• Lead crisis‑oriented employee relations responses (e.g., misconduct, retaliation, high‑profile exits) in close partnership with Legal and Compliance.
• Ensure learnings from cases translate into policy, training, or process improvements.

4. Leader Enablement & Capability Building

• Design and lead the workplace advisory function as a confidential, accessible channel for employees to raise questions and seek guidance.
• Equip people leaders with practical ER guidance, coaching, and tools to prevent escalation.
• Strengthen leader capability in evolving workforce topics such as managing hybrid teams, navigating conflict and performance conversations, and applying policies consistently and empathetically
• Serve as a trusted advisor to senior leaders on sensitive workforce decisions.

5. Employee Voice, Fairness & Trust

• Champion employment practices that reinforce fairness, transparency, and dignity, even in difficult situations.<