Job Type
Full-time
Description
Location: Indianapolis, Indiana - Headquarters Office
Work Arrangement: On-site
Travel: Regular periodic travel to company centers and business locations
Reports To: Vice President of Human Resources
Direct Reports: HR Coordinator
Position Summary:
The HR Manager is a hands-on operational HR leader responsible for ensuring consistent, compliant, and effective execution of people practices across a growing, multi-state healthcare organization. This role is designed for an experienced HR professional who understands the complexity of supporting both a geographically dispersed field workforce and a corporate headquarters environment.
Reporting to the Vice President of Human Resources, the HR Manager serves as the primary operational implementer of HR strategy. The role owns and advances day-to-day HR execution across employee relations, employment compliance, HR operations, investigations, leave and accommodation processes, HRIS administration, workforce compliance, policy implementation, and employee documentation.
Success in this position requires the ability to operate credibly across very different employee populations. The ability to adjust communication style without compromising consistency, compliance, or sound judgment is essential.
This role is based on-site at the Indianapolis headquarters office and serves as a visible day-to-day HR and workplace leadership presence for approximately 25 headquarters-based employees across multiple functions. The HR Manager also directly supervises an HR Coordinator who supports Human Resources, Talent Acquisition, and Learning & Development.
Key Responsibilities:
1. Employee Relations, Investigations & Leader Support
- Serve as a primary operational resource for employee relations matters across centers and corporate functions.
- Advise managers on performance concerns, attendance, conduct, workplace conflict, policy interpretation, corrective action, and separation processes.
- Conduct fair, timely, well-documented workplace investigations involving employee complaints, misconduct allegations, policy concerns, interpersonal conflict, and other sensitive matters.
- Assess facts, identify risk, distinguish between performance, conduct, compliance, and legal issues, and determine when escalation is required.
- Prepare clear and defensible investigation documentation, findings summaries, employee communications, corrective actions, and related records.
- Partner with the Vice President of Human Resources and employment counsel on high-risk, complex, or legally sensitive matters.
- Maintain consistency across locations while recognizing differences in state law, local requirements, workforce dynamics, and operational context.
- Identify trends across employee relations matters and recommend operational interventions when recurring issues emerge.
2. Multi-State Employment Compliance
- Support compliant HR operations across multiple states, jurisdictions, and time zones.
- Apply working knowledge of federal employment requirements, including:
- Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA)
- Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA)
- Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)
- Equal Employment Opportunity and EEOC requirements
- Wage-and-hour principles
- Anti-discrimination and anti-retaliation requirements
- Develop and maintain familiarity with applicable state and local leave laws, paid sick leave requirements, wage-and-hour rules, final pay requirements, and other jurisdiction-specific employment obligations.
- Partner with legal counsel when matters require specialized legal interpretation or heightened risk assessment.
- Support employment-related audits, agency inquiries, claims, and documentation requests.
- Maintain reliable compliance calendars, workflows, documentation standards, and escalation protocols.
- Help ensure changes in employment requirements are translated into updated policies, systems, manager guidance, and operational practices.
3. Leave, Accommodation & Complex Case Administration
- Oversee and coordinate day-to-day administration of employee leave and accommodation processes.
- Navigate FMLA, ADA, state and local leave requirements, workers' compensation-related work restrictions, and other overlapping employee circumstances.
- Ensure required notices, certifications, interactive-process documentation, follow-up, and case records are timely and complete.
- Work effectively with employees, managers, benefits resources, healthcare documentation, and legal counsel when cases are complex.
- Recognize situations involving overlapping legal or operational considerations and escalate appropriately.
- Maintain a consistent, well-documented, employee-centered, and compliance-focused approach to case administration.
4. HR Operations & Scalable Execution
- Lead reliable execution of day-to-day HR operations across the employee lifecycle.
- Translate HR strategy established by the Vice President of Human Resources into practical workflows, tools, processes, communications, and accountability.
- Oversee employee records, employment changes, HR documentation, personnel actions, and related workflows.
- Serve as a key point of contact for benefits and compensation administration, coordinating with internal stakeholders and external partners as needed.
- Oversee operational processes related to workers' compensation, unemployment claims, leave documentation, employment verifications, and other core HR administration.
- Conduct recurring audits of HR processes and documentation to identify compliance gaps, inconsistent practices, process failures, or opportunities for improvement.
- Build and maintain SOPs, templates, checklists, manager tools, and repeatable workflows.
- Ensure HR operations remain effective as the organization grows, opens new locations, enters new states, and increases workforce complexity.
5. HRIS, Data Quality & Process Discipline
- Support day-to-day administration, integrity, and effective use of the HRIS and related HR technology.
- Maintain strong standards for employee data accuracy, documentation completeness, workflow execution, and system controls.
- Conduct routine audits to identify data discrepancies, incomplete records, workflow failures, and process gaps.
- Partner cross-functionally to resolve system and process issues affecting HR, Payroll, Talent Acquisition, Learning & Development, Finance, IT, or operational teams.
- Identify opportunities to simplify processes, improve automation, strengthen controls, and reduce manual or inconsistent work.
- Use HR data and operational metrics to identify trends, monitor execution, and support decision-making.
6. Healthcare Workforce Compliance
- Support the additional workforce compliance requirements associated with operating a multi-state healthcare organization.
- Partner with internal stakeholders to maintain consistent processes related to:
- Healthcare sanctions and exclusion screenings
- Fingerprint clearance requirements
- Criminal background checks
- Abuse and neglect registry checks
- State-specific workforce eligibility requirements
- Role-specific credential or clearance documentation
- Ongoing employee eligibility monitoring
- Ensure exceptions, adverse findings, missing documentation, and eligibility concerns are escalated and addressed appropriately.
- Work across HR, Operations, Clinical Leadership, Compliance, and legal resources when workforce eligibility issues arise.
- Understand that healthcare employment decisions may involve requirements beyond general employment law and standard HR practice.
7. Field and Corporate Workforce Partnership
- Support a workforce spanning center-based frontline employees, early-career professionals, paraprofessional team members, licensed clinicians, multidisciplinary professionals, operational leaders, corporate functions, and executives.
- Build credibility with employees and leaders across different levels of professional experience, education, licensure, and organizational responsibility.
- Understand the practical differences between supporting:
- High-volume frontline workforces
- Early-career and developing professionals
- Behavior Technicians and other paraprofessional roles
- Licensed clinicians
- Multidisciplinary clinical professionals
- Center and regional leaders
- Corporate professionals
- Senior executives
- Adjust communication style, coaching, documentation, and problem-solving approach to the audience and situation.
- Maintain consistent organizational standards while recognizing the operational realities of center-based healthcare delivery.
- Spend time in company centers to maintain field connectivity and firsthand understanding of employee and leader needs.
8. Indianapolis Headquarters Leadership
- Serve as a visible, accessible, and accountable day-to-day leadership presence in the Indianapolis headquarters office.
- Support a professional and effective workplace for approximately 25 employees across functions that may include Human Resources, Information Technology, Revenue Cycle Management and other corporate functions.
- Act as a point of coordination for day-to-day workplace matters and shared office needs.
- Help reinforce workplace expectations, professional standards, communication, and accountability.
- Coordinate with appropriate internal teams on facilities, safety, office operations, employee experience, visitors, and other shared workplace matters.
- Address issues that do not sit neatly within one function and ensure they reach the appropriate owner.
- Exercise practical judgment regarding when to resolve matters directly, when to coordinate cross-functionally, and when to escalate.
9. Team Leadership & Cross-Functional Coordination
- Directly manage and develop the HR Coordinator.
- Establish clear priorities and service expectations for HR Coordinator support across Human Resources, Talent Acquisition, and Learning & Development.
- Ensure work is accurate, timely, confidential, and responsive to organizational needs.
- Build efficient intake, prioritization, and workflow practices so shared support resources are deployed effectively.
- Coach the HR Coordinator in judgment, communication, organization, and HR capability.
- Partner closely with Talent Acquisition, Learning & Development, Payroll, Benefits, Finance, IT, Revenue Cycle Management, Operations, Clinical Leadership, and other functions.
10. Policy, Handbook & Written Communication
- Contribute to the development, review, implementation, and ongoing maintenance of the employee handbook and HR policies.
- Draft clear, accurate, professional employee and manager communications.
- Translate legal, regulatory, and policy requirements into practical language that employees and leaders can understand and apply.
- Develop and maintain SOPs, process guides, templates, forms, manager resources, and other written materials.
- Maintain high standards for written documentation in employee relations, investigations, leave matters, compliance processes, and formal correspondence.
- Partner with legal counsel on policy language and complex written materials when appropriate.
Success Profile: The strongest candidate for this role will be:
- An implementer: Able to take HR strategy and convert it into disciplined, consistent execution.
- Operationally grounded: Understands that HR practices must work in real operating environments, not only on paper.
- Multi-audience: Equally capable of communicating with a frontline Behavior Technician, a licensed clinician, a center leader, and an executive.
- Compliance-minded: Understands the importance of federal, state, local, and healthcare-specific workforce requirements.
- A strong writer: Produces clear, accurate, objective, and professional documentation.
- A sound risk assessor: Recognizes when an issue is routine, when it is complex, and when legal counsel or executive escalation is appropriate.
- Field-connected: Values direct understanding of center operations and does not operate exclusively from a corporate perspective.
- Process-disciplined: Builds repeatable systems, closes loops, audits execution, and follows through.
- Comfortable with growth: Can operate effectively as locations, states, employee populations, and organizational complexity expand.
- Credible and steady: Builds trust through judgment, responsiveness, consistency, discretion, and follow-through.
Requirements
Job Requirements:
- Bachelor's degree in Human Resources, Business Administration, Organizational Leadership, or a related discipline, or equivalent combination of education and relevant professional experience.
- 5+ years of progressive HR experience with substantial hands-on responsibility for HR operations and employee relations.
- Demonstrated experience supporting a multi-site, geographically dispersed organization.
- Demonstrated experience supporting both field-based and corporate workforces.
- Experience operating in a multi-state employment environment.
- Working knowledge of FLSA, FMLA, ADA, EEO/EEOC requirements, wage-and-hour principles, and core federal employment law requirements.
- Experience navigating state-specific employment requirements and reco