ThoughtWorks is not your average global IT consulting company; so don’t expect to find average people working here. As a Senior Talent Partner, you are going to help us stay this way. As a software service and consulting firm, people really are our business. Your job will be to create innovative talent management solutions and execute those solutions for the business. 

The Senior HR Business Partner is responsible for assessing and anticipating people-related needs and driving strategic and scalable solutions to support Portfolios & Leaders. The position serves as a consultant to leadership on Employee development, engagement opportunities, and challenges. A successful Senior HR Business Partner acts as a coach, manager, connector and change agent. In order to be successful in this role, you must be able to create order out of chaos, be flexible and adaptable in your approach, ok with imperfection, and able to balance the need for structure and guidelines with the need to be creative and progressive.

We are looking for the Senior HR Business Partner to be based in either Chicago or Dallas; it requires 30% travel.

RESPONSIBILITIES

Reporting into the North America Talent Development Lead, the primary responsibilities for this position will include:

1. Partner with Portfolio & Account Leadership to drive impactful engagement solutions: 

• Act as a partner to Portfolio & Account Leaders and teams across North America to shape talent strategies that cultivate high performing teams and leaders
• Design, execute and evolve talent management best practices that enable leaders to amplify employee performance & development (e.g., effectively assess individual & collective performance & impact, capability leadership and succession planning that ensures we are able to staff the work we sell and exceed our clients’ expectations)
• Conduct virtual and onsite engagement health checks for assigned teams.
• Keep a pulse on morale, engagement, growth, feedback, performance and projected impact. 
• Build and cultivate trusted relationships with Leaders and Employees that allow for open and transparent dialogue.
• Handle difficult conversations with skill and sensitivity.
• Support a feedback culture through training, coaching and accountability partnership.

• Ensure that knowledge related to employee performance is transferred effectively to your national people partners using designated tools and communication practices
• Bring talent management best practices and forward-thinking ideas to the team
• Synthesize and communicate in a balanced way the insights gathered through an enormous amount of distributed touch points. Rely on data whenever possible
• Support diversity and inclusion through introspection, being mindful about diversity on teams and in leadership, and help identify ways to continuously improve employees ability to support a diverse workforce

• Act as an escalation point for HR related matters. 
• Triage workplace concerns effectively by following the proper steps. Collaborate with appropriate thought partners; ensure adequate documentation and well thought out communication plans regarding the concern
• Handle sensitive people situations in a respectful and caring way while also maintaining the highest level of confidentiality
• Collaborate on employment decisions such as but not limited to compensation, performance improvement, performance assessment, and exits

• Seek ways to evolve recruiting activities to continually enhance our recruiting processes
• Actively recruit qualified future employees

A successful candidate demonstrates the following attributes:

• Adaptable & Flexible

• Ability to positively adjust to new and changing conditions
• Ability to multi-task
• Extremely comfortable working in environments that are culturally diverse, fast-paced, always changing, and light on structure/process.
• Collaborative
• Ability to solve complex, often ambiguous issues. In our experience, this is because you’re intuitively collaborative.
• Communicative & Influential
• Stakeholder management experience and confidence to challenge, influence, and persuade after gathering an appropriate level of context and data to support.
• Ability to coach a diverse population of leaders using various coaching techniques.
• Ability to influence through a suite of knock-your-socks off communication vehicles (written, verbal, presentations, facilitation, etc) You build rapport with all sorts of people.
• Change agent
• Enable and promote change to happen
• Positive attitude
• Sense of urgency, thrive in ambiguity, resourceful, resilient
• Can accept feedback and admit when you’ve made a mistake
• Ability to make tough and sometimes unpopular decisions
• Results-oriented
• Incredibly strong organization, follow-through, time and knowledge management skills. 
• Driven to create outcomes
• Problem solver
• Ability to solve complex, often ambiguous issues, in creative ways. In our experience, this is because you’re knowledgeable of key business drivers, an expert in your craft, and intuitively collaborative. 
• Driver/Initiator
• Takes initiative to get things done, doesn't need to be told what to do
• Strong business acumen
• Keen and quick to understand and deal with business situations in a manner that will lead to a good outcome, able to balance people and business needs appropriately

BACKGROUND

• Knowledgeable of US employment law and expert in employee relations best practices. Can handle risky situations well.
• A knack for talent management and loads of experience:
• - Leading employees through performance management issues
• - Coaching Leaders and Executives
• - Creating strategic Succession Plans and Leadership Pipelines
• - Using data analytics to present trends and patterns in the business
• - Design and execute change programs
• Experience working on and supporting distributed teams and individuals
• Bachelor’s degree in a people or organization design-related field; or a foreign equivalent with 8-10 years of talent management experience, preferably in a people-centric, professional services environment.

A few important things to know:Projects are almost exclusively on customer site, so candidates should be flexible and open to extensive travel.

Candidates must possess work authorization that does not require H-1B visa sponsorship by ThoughtWorks or dependent EAD.