HR Business Partner, Lake Zurich

About Kerry

A career with Kerry Taste & Nutrition offers you an opportunity to shape how people across the globe view food and beverage while providing you opportunities to explore and grow as your interests do. With our commitment to a sustainable future, a career with Kerry is something you can feel good about.

About the role

This position will serve as a strategic business partner to the Directors and/or Site Operations Leaders.  The HR Business Partner will lead all HR initiatives with a focus on staffing strategy, retention, employee relations, recruitment, onboarding, performance, and talent management, coaching and counseling, partnering on training strategies.  This position will develop & execute the people strategy and demonstrate strong change agent abilities. The HR Business Partner will have direct influence in the sites they support.

 

Key responsibilities

Strategy Development

• Partner with peers in Human Resources and Operations Leadership to drive consistent application of Kerry’s policies and practices across all locations.
• Identify potential gaps and develop recommendations and strategies to minimize risks across assigned business areas.
• Partner with Business, Operations and HR leadership to drive standard practices and programs across the organization.
• Participate in large scale projects across responsible business units and functions.
• Use high level of accountability and initiative to address complex business challenges

Influencing and Coaching

• Form solid working relationships, based on thorough knowledge of the assigned business and sites to enable sound judgement and development of the people plan related to business decisions.
• Partner with Client Leaders to assess and implement an optimal organizational design to support business growth.
• Coach leaders on appropriate and proactive management techniques and make timely and informed decisions on when to escalate issues.
• Champion the development of the Strategic Site plan and the people aspects of this plan ensuring year on year step change activities.
• Act as a senior leader of the site teams to drive group cohesiveness, project deliverables and HR KPI’s
• Lead and Develop HR Resources within the plants to enable growth and career opportunities.

Recruiting

• Partner with Site/Client Leader to develop workforce plan and recruitment strategies to include proactive recruitment on hard to fill or known upcoming vacancies.
• Identify and apply multiple recruiting strategies to ensure a timely and appropriate response to fill open positions. Minimize time to fill open requisitions while improving the fit of new hires.
• Develop retention strategies to ensure a positive team member experience.

HR Programs

• Analyze, interpret, develop, and implement HR policies, programs, and procedures as appropriate
• Provides objective and timely feedback when new programs/changes to existing programs are introduced.
• Participate in and/or lead projects as assigned.
• Champion the Talent Management process at the site and partner with managers to develop and update development plans for employees
• Ensure compliance with regulatory requirements: EEOC/AA, ADAA, FMLA and other leaves in addition to any state specific requirements

  Leadership

• Coach and develop team members and ensure strong development plans are in place to enable movement to future/larger roles within the company.
• Leads the development of a culture of accountability, collaboration, and excellence.
• Takes ownership for related actions that will lead to improvements in the results.
• Easy to approach with the ability to engage employees and be a strong employee advocate whilst maintaining company values.

Qualifications and skills

• Bachelor’s degree from an accredited institution in Human Resources, Business or related field. 
• 7+ years’ experience in a combination of or solely generalist human resource’s function, center of expertise, preferably in a manufacturing environment.
• Ability to communicate across all levels of the site
• Ability to handle confidential information with sensitivity and respect.
• Ability to travel up to 25%, as needed.  Advance notice to travel is usually possible.
• Exceptional skill set handling employee relations cases
• Proven ability in business acumen and to develop effective business partnerships at multiple levels.
• Confident presentation and public speaking capabilities.
• Familiarity with Microsoft Office Suite of products.
• Ability to learn multiple systems independently.
• Able to work and communicate effectively with a diverse team and employee population.
• Easy to approach with the ability to engage employees and be a strong employee advocate whilst maintaining company values

Professional, trustworthy, and hardworking ethic. Ability to handle confidential information with sensitivity and respect.