Chief People and Culture Officer

ABOUT THE ORGANIZATION

HR&A Advisors, Inc. (HR&A) is an employee-owned company advising public, private, non-profit, and philanthropic clients on how to increase opportunity and advance quality of life in cities. For almost 50 years, we have been turning vision into action.

 

Our clients include real estate owners and investors, governments, hospitals and universities, cultural institutions and philanthropies, and community development organizations.

 

HR&A is structured into Studios, which are diverse teams of Partners, Senior Advisors, consulting employees, and administrative employees who work across a variety of projects together. Each of these communities supports project staffing, mentorship, and business planning, and creates clear accountability for the quality of an employee’s experience.

 

HR&A has offices in Atlanta, Dallas, Los Angeles, New York, Raleigh, and Washington D.C. Our New York office serves as our headquarters. We come from diverse backgrounds, have a breadth of lived experience, and share a passion for cities. We are former city officials, executive directors, planners, lawyers, architects, and economists.

 

HR&A Mission

Our mission is to ensure implementation of our clients’ aspirations: to create vital places, build more equitable and resilient communities, and improve people’s lives. We accomplish our mission by deploying the extraordinary analytic and creative talent of our employee-owners, who come from a diversity of backgrounds, have a breadth of lived experience, and share a passion for cities. We are motivated by complex challenges, dedicated to our clients, and fulfilled by making lasting impact.

 

Value to Our Clients

We provide clients with strategic guidance, economic analysis, and implementation planning to attract private and public investment, grow economies, and make communities more just, resilient, equitable, and joyous. We achieve results. We do so by helping build collaborations among public, private, non-profit, and civic actors; working at the intersection of economics, policy, and design; harnessing market forces to achieve civic objectives; and establishing financial and organizational feasibility.

 

Analytic rigor, creative energy, and focus on impact fuel all our efforts. We help our clients define their goals and solve their problems by drawing on our almost half a century’s history of success working across a broad range of projects, client types, places, and issues.

 

We believe that growth – of economic resources, educational opportunity, technological advancement, and public dialogue – is essential to our clients’ success. Growth enables market capacity to create opportunities and government capacity to deliver services, which are prerequisites for more equitable outcomes.

 

What Drives Us and Defines Us

We are committed to helping our clients and ourselves to do better. We not only help clients identify solutions but also to ask better questions, enabling them to make transformational impact. We set them on a path to creating better job opportunities, building stronger communities, attracting more investment, achieving more equitable outcomes across race, class, and gender, and realizing a more sustainable and resilient future.

 

Our breadth of practice fuels our curiosity and ingenuity, makes us better practitioners, and strengthens our engagement with the complexities that are central to much of our work. We serve clients in the public, private and non-profit sectors, across a broad and expanding range of issues. Our clients’ goals are diverse and sometimes contradictory. For almost 50 years we have excelled at navigating the complexities of serving this diversity of interests and perspectives, which has increased our ability to advance our clients’ objectives.

 

We are committed to developing and rewarding our people. We are employee-owned. This fact alone requires us to demand excellence of ourselves. Every employee who works on a project is invested in its success. In return for this commitment to excellence, we provide the opportunity to build wealth based on employee performance and the firm’s long-term success. Our commitment to anti-racism, diversity, equity, and inclusion (ADEI) is essential to who we choose to be. We continuously reflect on our role and that of our field in perpetuating inequities, refine our understanding of these conditions, and address their impact on our workplace and our work.

 

ABOUT THE POSITION

The Chief People and Culture Officer (CPCO) will lead the people and culture function, building strategies, systems, and processes that drive growth and center ADEI. Providing strategic leadership and human resources expertise, the CPCO will ensure that HR&A Advisors has the right people to meet its goals and drive impact. The Chief People and Culture Officer will also create and execute strategies for the full suite of people and culture programs such as deploying people to client projects, recruitment, retention, performance management, professional development, benefits, ADEI, and employee engagement.

 

The Chief People and Culture Officer will manage a team of six HR and talent professionals, and build the team for future growth.

 

Responsibilities include, but are not limited to:

 

Organizational Culture

  • Serve on HR&A’s executive leadership team to set organization-wide strategy and develop operating plans
  • Lead and promote an organizational culture that embraces HR&A’s mission and values; maintain a workplace reflective of those values with an emphasis on HR&A’s commitment to ADEI
  • Engage and facilitate People and Culture related decision-making processes (e.g.: hiring, promotions, and resource allocation) with five Studio Leaders
  • Drive HR&A’s Anti-racism, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (ADEI) initiatives across the organization, building a culture that fosters high performance, respect, and belonging
  • Communicate effectively with HR&A’s People Committee and Board of Directors, ensuring all Board members clearly understand the organization’s talent and recruitment strategy

 

Team Management

  • Lead, manage, and develop a high-performing and diverse team of subject-matter experts
  • Mentor and lead the People and Culture team, by developing a strategy and holding everyone accountable for meeting objectives with an eye towards both developing the team as professionals and holding them accountable for meeting goals
  • Create a customer-oriented team culture, focused on providing robust strategic and tactical support
  • Serve as an exemplar for inclusive and equitable team management, modeling HR&A’s ADEI values in managerial practices

 

Talent Acquisition

  • Oversee organization-wide staffing strategy, ensuring the recruitment function has clear hiring goals, robust plans for building diverse slates; and equitable selection processes
  • Lead evaluation of recruitment processes on an ongoing basis, report findings, and make recommendations for future processes based on insights and lessons learned
  • Identify and track key performance indicators to assess current processes, create dashboards that enable real-time tracking and continuous improvement
  • Serve as a trusted advisor to hiring managers to support them in their recruiting decisions

 

HR Administration and Employee Relations

  • Provide proactive leadership and professional expertise in all areas of human resources management, including benefits, payroll, employee relations, compliance, and performance across full-time employees and contractors
  • Work with leaders to share best practices, provide counsel, and support the human resources needs of the studios
  • Create systems and processes to track employee engagement across the Studios to better understand performance, opportunities, and challenges
  • Advise leaders in troubleshooting staff-related matters such as performance issues and conflict resolution
  • Work with HR&A’s professional employer organization, Insperity, to support the creation of best-in-class benefits and HR supports

 

Professional Development and Performance Management

  • Evolve the current performance review process to further enable managers to provide meaningful and actionable reviews
  • Work with managers throughout the organization to help define, establish, and communicate annual goals for team members, and ensure that managers are tracking progress against goals
  • Develop systems and strategies that drive continuous learning; create opportunities for training, coaching, advising, and mentoring to drive performance
  • Identify training opportunities, as appropriate, to extend HR&A’s capabilities, ensuring that team members have the opportunity to address development needs, attend conferences, and participate in other courses and convenings
  • Identify key leaders across the studios; ensuring that those leaders have the resources they need and are given appropriate mentoring

 

CANDIDATE REQUIREMENTS:

The ideal candidate will possess the following qualifications:

  • At least 15+ years of professional experience, with 5+ years leading an HR strategy, organizational development, culture development, employee relations, and/or talent management function, in a large professional services context strongly preferred
  • Demonstrated commitment to racial equity and inclusion, with the ability to serve as an exemplar for HR&A’s Anti-Racism, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion values and a history of success in leading organizational initiatives around the recruitment and retention of diverse talent and stewarding a culture with strong racial ADEI practices
  • Strong business acumen and strategic thinking, with the ability to position the organization toward the future, looking beyond the present situation to conceptualize key trends and identify changing market demands. Ability to translate these insights into objectives and break them down into meaningful action steps
  • Exceptional relationship building and influencing skills, with the ability to develop trusting relationships at all levels and across identities
  • Extensive experience overseeing the full suite of people and culture programs, including talent acquisition, employee relations, human resources administration, professional development, and performance management
  • Track record of building, leading, and coaching effective, diverse high performing teams; skilled at managing/working across lines of difference
  • Collaborative approach to executive leadership, and the ability to work effectively with cross-functional teams to meet goals and improve organizational performance

 

COMPENSATION AND BENEFITS:

The base salary range for this position is $220,000-$260,000. Where an offer falls inside the pay range is dependent on experience. HR&A offers competitive compensation packages, based on qualifications and experience.

 

HR&A is an employee-owned company, meaning you will have the opportunity to benefit from the firm’s growth over time through participation in an Employee Stock Ownership Plan. Each year, the firm will contribute funds to this long-term wealth-building account and may make contributions to other retirement accounts. HR&A also provides a comprehensive benefits package that goes well beyond coverage of 90-95% of healthcare premiums, dental and vision coverage. For more information about HR&A benefits, please visit: www.hraadvisors.com/careers.

 

HOW TO APPLY

HR&A is working with On-Ramps to support the search for our next Chief People and Culture Officer. To apply for this role, please submit your application via On-Ramp’s application portal.

 

Additional Applicant Information

HR&A is committed to attracting and retaining a talented, diverse, competitive team of professionals dedicated to solving the challenges of urban life. Women, people of color, members of the LGBTQ community, individuals with disabilities, and veterans are strongly encouraged to apply.

 

Like HR&A, On-Ramps is deeply committed to equity. We believe social change happens when people with a wide range of backgrounds, experiences, and identities come together with common purpose.On-Ramps is committed to the inclusion of all qualified individuals in the hiring process, including but not limited to those with disabilities. If you require reasonable accommodation(s) to participate in the application or interview process, please contact info@on-ramps.com.

 

We ask that you submit a version of your resume that has your school information removed. There is no need to reformat your resume, and you should leave your degree (e.g., “B.A. Communications”). But please remove all undergraduate and graduate school name references. This request is part of our ongoing work to build a hiring system that is free from bias and based on candidate merit and performance in the hiring process.

 

All qualified candidates will receive consideration for employment without regard to their race, religion, ancestry, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, disability, marital status, medical condition, veteran status, or any other basis as protected by federal, state, or local law.