Hillside Children’s Center was founded in 1837 and is one of the oldest family and youth non-profit human services organizations in the United States. Hillside believes that healthy children and strong families with opportunities to succeed are the foundation of any thriving community. Guided by this belief, Hillside’s 1800 employees work closely with children, adults, and families whose challenges threaten their ability to realize their full potential. Its programs serve nearly 10,000 youth, adults, and families each year by providing A) Family Driven, B) Youth Guided, C) Culturally Competent; and D) Trauma-Informed Care through a variety of services: Adoption; Education and Day Treatment; Developmental Disabilities (Services for Youth); Foster Family Care; Home and Community-Based Services; and Residential Treatment Services.

Hillside has operated successfully due to high quality services, stable finances, generous financial support, and employees dedicated to its mission to help vulnerable youth. The organization operates in multiple locations in central and western New York and Prince George’s County, MD with 1800 employees and an annual budget of $130M. Hillside receives 95% of its funding through government sources and 5% from private sources.

Hillside is highly respected in the communities they serve and among peer organizations providing social services. To enhance its capabilities and strengthen the organization, Hillside seeks to build a leading-edge HR function and a future oriented human capital strategy through the leadership of its next Chief Human Resources Officer. This is a rare opportunity to join an innovative, influential human services agency and play a lead role in its ongoing success.

The Position

The challenge for Hillside’s next CHRO is to transform the HR function into a high-performing team delivering HR services that elevates the overall effectiveness and efficiency of the Hillside organization. A few of the tasks and initiatives needed to achieve such a transformation include:

• Assessing the HR organization and current team members, restructuring roles and responsibilities where needed, and aligning new structure with available or new team members.
• Developing a human capital management strategy as a framework to guide retention, development, training, and recruitment at all levels of the organization and particularly at the front-line supervisory level.
• Delving deeply into the operations of Hillside’s recruiting and talent acquisition processes to guide substantial improvements that will lead to reductions in turnover.
• Driving improvement in all HR functional business processes and improving data analytics to guide more strategic business and HR strategies.
• Bringing a business leader’s perspective to developing HR strategy that strengthens Hillsides’ delivery of services and the organization’s productivity.
• Elevating the HR leader’s role to one of trusted advisor to all members of the senior leadership team.

Responsibilities and areas of focus are detailed in the three categories below.

     Strategic

• Develop and implement a human resource plan that aligns with and supports the agency’s mission and strategic priorities, and creates a high-performing culture of success, accountability, transparency, and collaboration.
• Gain an understanding of the organization and participate fully in all relevant strategic and business decisions.
• Partner with CEO and leadership team in guiding the development and evolution of a strategy that supports Diversity, Equity & Inclusion.
• Be a strategic partner to all members of the executive team, especially to the CEO and COO, and provide insightful, innovative thinking and problem solving on critical HR issues.
• Optimize and modernize the human resources function, and refine key processes and activities to achieve strategic objectives.
• Provide leadership and guidance on special projects, human resources analytics and reporting, talent gap reviews, training, change management and organizational design.
• Be a role model in living Hillside’s values every day, and integrating strategies that focus on evolving human resources needs.
  

       Operational

• Proactively manage resource allocation and maintain a competitive approach to recruiting and assimilating high-potential talent throughout the agency with an emphasis on direct care positions.
• Provide recruiting leadership, ensuring a strong recruiting culture focused on candidate experience, diversity, timeliness, and quality while meeting demanding hiring volumes.
• Promote best practices in automation and other efficiencies to ensure seamless, effective processes in talent acquisition, retention, development, and succession. Develop comprehensive approaches to identifying skills gap, employee development, retention, and on-boarding by refining or creating compensation and benefits, career paths and employee development, succession planning, and learning opportunities as appropriate to the needs of the company.
• Oversee compensation practices and philosophy to ensure salary benchmarking and surveys are handled on a semi-annual basis.
• Guide the HR team in supporting Performance Management, Talent Acquisition, Learning & Development, Employee Engagement, Total Rewards, Policy, and Compliance.

     Culture and Development

• Develop relationships with employees to become a trusted advisor on HR, cultural, and organizational issues.
• Counsel, coach, and guide managers and staff in addressing concerns to assure fair and equitable treatment while ensuring compliance with labor regulations.
• Mediate employee relations and performance issues and provide counsel to fellow managers on appropriate methods of performance management.