Director of People Operations (Global Shared Services & Employee Relations) - Remote

GiveDirectly is scaling rapidly and building a robust People function to support growth. This is a new, dual-focused role:

Core Responsibilities:

You will serve as the dedicated People partner for our ~200-employee Global Shared Services (GSS) teams, focusing on:

• Structuring teams, workforce planning, talent management, and growth-related people decisions.
• Partnering with senior leaders (up to VP level) on coaching, performance, and compensation decisions.
• Building and implementing standards for handling behavior and performance concerns across the organization, including:

• Defining clear categories for concerns and ensuring consistent communication.
• Creating global standards for intake, escalation, and documentation.
• Designing an employment decision framework with Legal, including delegated authority matrices.
• Enabling managers, HR Managers, and staff through training and resources.
• Establishing a single record of outcomes to track patterns and inconsistencies.

In the first year, the focus will be on building the employee relations model, with a shift toward deeper partnering in subsequent years. This role requires a 7+ years of HR business partner experience with executive leaders, particularly in scale-ups or major transformations.

Key Responsibilities:

1. Partner with Global Teams:
   • Act as a trusted advisor to GSS leaders on team structure, workforce planning, talent, and performance.
   • Lead org design and workforce planning for global functions.
   • Own talent and succession planning, including identifying risks and single points of failure.
   • Partner on performance and compensation decisions, including calibration and promotions.
   • Coach senior leaders on their leadership and team management.
   • Lead people-side changes like restructures and leadership transitions.
   • Represent People for global staff, ensuring decisions align with organizational frameworks.
   • Coach managers on behavior and performance conversations.
2. Build Employee Relations Standards:
   • Define and communicate standards for behavior and underperformance categories.
   • Audit country-level handling of cases and create global standards.
   • Develop an employment decision framework with Legal, including escalation routes.
   • Design and deliver enablement for managers, HR Managers, and staff.
   • Establish a single record of outcomes to identify patterns and inconsistencies.
   • Recommend support structures for behavior and underperformance cases in each country within 90 days.
3. Hold Consistency Across the Organization:
   • Coach HR Managers through cases and act as a technical escalation point.
   • Provide People input on categorizing concerns.
   • Monitor outcomes and raise inconsistencies or patterns.

What This Role Is NOT:

• Not an investigations role.
• Not a caseload role.
• Not the owner of performance management or manager development.

Requirements:

• 7+ years of HR business partner experience with executive and senior leaders, including coaching leaders who needed growth in people management.
• Experience in a scale-up or major transformation, building systems from scratch.
• Demonstrated experience building employee relations standards, policy, or frameworks from scratch.
• Experience holding or advising on disciplinary and capability decisions in multiple jurisdictions.
• A track record of influencing without formal authority in a matrixed organization.
• Judgment and steadiness in holding positions with senior leaders.

Preferred:

• Experience operating in sub-Saharan Africa.
• Experience building a people function from the ground up.
• Formal training or experience in workplace investigations.
• Experience designing manager enablement content.