Senior Manager, Employee Relations and Mergers & Acquisitions

Make a meaningful difference to patients around the world. Our talented people are central to the future of Edwards Lifesciences, which is why our Human Resources teams help design, guide, and deliver inspiring experiences for our people. With a fundamental understanding of how to build a supportive community and organizational capability, you’ll deliver solutions to attract and retain talent. Your work will enable our teams to thrive as they help patients live healthier and more productive lives.

How you’ll make an impact:

As the Senior Manager, Employee Relations you will have a unique hybrid role that is both Employee Relations and Mergers & Acquisitions. You will provide leadership for Employee Relations case management and global policy strategy and management.  Additionally, you will have the opportunity to lead large portions of merger, acquisition and divestiture activities and exercise your skills in end-to-end project management.

• Own the ER Case Management System (CaseIQ) and determine enhancements and governance. 
• Develop content and recommendations on all interim and ad hoc reporting for investigations, organization culture, metrics, and analytics. Identify broad trends and present findings and recommendations to senior leadership and HRBL.
• Plan and lead the execution of global strategic employee relations policies, practices and related programs and services, which could include enabling technology. 
• Ensure compliance with local legal requirements and drive consistent processes and practices regionally, where appropriate. 
• Review and manage global HR policies to ensure consistency in appearance and voice, while complying to regulatory requirements, in partnership with Country HR and Legal. 
• Facilitate annual policy reviews in compliance with Edwards corporate policy governance, leveraging policy owners to review, revise, or terminate policies.
• Organize communication and rollout of policies.  Ensure strong policy version control. 
• Partner with HRBL, legal and compliance for appropriate application of global policies.

• Develop M&A project plans and project manage due diligence and integration activities for merger, acquisition and divestiture activities.
• Partner across broader HR community, including COE’s, HRBL’s and HR Solutions, as well as key business partners that may include Finance, IT and Legal, to ensure activities related to due diligence, integration planning, and ongoing communications occur before, during, and after each acquisition closes.
• Evaluate HR resourcing for overall M&A portfolio based on deal milestones.  
• Establish timelines, HR milestone development and tracking, identification of resource constraints and risk across HR. 
• Manage and update all M&A templates and tools, including building a repository for access to past communications, project plans, integration strategies etc.
• Lead and conduct complex, highly sensitive internal investigations and review deviations from policies, procedures and regulations. 
• Work directly with internal and external legal counsel providing both subject matter expertise and internal business acumen to ensure high integrity and optimal solutions.
• Evaluate risk to the company, in addition to the facts of the case, and develops and recommends multi-faceted mitigation strategies.
• Other Incidental Duties

What you’ll need (Required):

• Bachelor's Degree in HR, Finance, Business Management or other related fields and 10+ years previous related experience
• Prior experience in policy management
• Prior experience in mergers, acquisitions, and divestitures

What else we look for (Preferred):

• Expert knowledge in employee relations, local, regional and global employment law, as well as EW coaching and counseling resources .
• Expert understanding of related aspects of employee relations processes and/or systems
• Excellent project management and organization skills, including a demonstrated ability to manage large, complex projects with multiple work streams and milestones from start to finish.
• Experience with Case Management Systems or related HR Technology platforms preferred, including the creation of dashboards and reporting.
• Ability to review and manage policies and documents through both a global and regional lens.
• Strict attention to detail
• Experience working on merger and acquisition transactions
• Experience working across multiple geographies and functional groups to achieve objectives.
• Ability to interact professionally with all organizational levels and proactively escalate issues to appropriate levels of management in the organization
• Ability to represent leadership on projects