Director of Employee Relations & Workforce Insights

Selective Insurance Company of America; Short Hills (NJ); On-site; USD 172,000 - 220,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health care plans

Retirement savings plan with company 


Tuition assistance

20 days paid time off

Job summary

Selective Insurance Company of America is seeking a dynamic Director of Employee Relations & Workforce Practices to lead a data-informed HR function focused on complaints, investigations, and workplace policy across the enterprise. You will shape standards, governance, and risk management while partnering with HR business partners and senior leaders to drive organizational resilience.

The role emphasizes strategy development, process optimization, and collaboration with Legal and Compliance to

Qualifications

• Advanced expertise in employee relations, workplace investigations, employment law, and HR policy, including intake and risk assessment, investigative interviewing, evidence evaluation, credibility analysis, findings, and documentation.
• Demonstrated ability to manage complex, sensitive, and high-risk employee matters with sound judgment, discretion, objectivity, and appropriate escalation.
• Strong knowledge of corrective-action and case-management practices, including consistent application of policies, investigation standards, documentation requirements, and governance protocols.
• Strong analytical and operational capabilities, with experience leveraging employee-relations data and case trends to identify emerging risks, root causes, and opportunities to strengthen workplace practices; experience overseeing external investigators, counsel, or other vendors as appropriate.
• Exceptional consulting, communication, and influencing skills, with demonstrated ability to advise and influence senior and executive leaders on complex employee-relations matters and workplace risk.

Responsibilities

• Leads the enterprise Employee Relations & Workforce Practices function and is accountable for employee-relations strategy, complaint intake and triage, investigation governance, case management, employment-action standards, policy interpretation, organizational-risk insights, and external-provider oversight.
• Establishes a consistent, defensible, and risk-tiered approach to workplace concerns and investigations and partners closely with Human Resources Business Partners, Legal, Compliance, and external providers.
• Develops and implements enterprise Employee Relations & Workforce Practices strategy, establishing decision rights, case standards, escalation protocols, quality expectations, governance, and reporting.
• Oversees complaint intake and triage, including immediate-risk assessment, issue classification, conflict screening, evidence-preservation decisions, and appropriate routing to management, internal Employee Relations, independent investigators, or outside counsel. Manages vendor relationships, service level expectations, and quality.
• Leads complex and sensitive workplace investigations and oversees assigned investigators, establishing and approving scope, methodology, escalation criteria, and work-product expectations in coordination with Legal as appropriate.
• Ensures technology solutions deliver consistent case assignment and management practices, including documentation, timeliness, milestones, confidentiality and privacy, record integrity, closure, and workload balancing, to ensure matters are handled consistently and are appropriately documented and auditable.
• Establishes standards and governs performance-improvement plans, corrective action, separations, reductions in force, and other formal employment actions, promoting consistency, proportionality, documentation quality, and appropriate review.
• Interprets and administers employment policies, identifies policy and practice gaps, coordinates employment-law and compliance support, and maintains current knowledge of applicable federal, state, and local requirements.
• Established investigation quality standards and reviews investigative scope, evidence, interview quality, credibility analysis, findings, limitations, and unresolved issues to ensure conclusions are objective, well-supported, and appropriately documented.
• Recommends proportionate remedial actions and oversees follow-through, including accountability, completion timelines, retaliation monitoring, and reassessment of matters when facts or risk levels change.
• Analyzes employee relations data and trends, including case volume, severity, aging, repeat respondents, organizational hotspots, retaliation concerns, external-provider utilization, and remediation closure. Translate findings into predictive and actionable insights for Human Resource Business Partners and senior leaders to inform workforce strategy, leadership actions, and risk mitigation.
• Leads, develops, and manages Employee Relations team members and manages external-provider performance, including quality, capacity, cost, conflicts, security, service levels, and calibration.
• All job duties and responsibilities must be carried out in compliance with applicable legal and regulatory requirements.

Skills

Employee relations

Workplace investigations

Employment law

HR policy

Analytical capabilities

Education

Bachelor’s degree in HR, Labor Relations, Business, Legal Studies, or related field

Advanced degree or specialized workplace-investigation training preferred

Job description

Selective Insurance Company of America is seeking a dynamic Director of Employee Relations & Workforce Practices to lead a data-informed HR function focused on complaints, investigations, and workplace policy across the enterprise. You will shape standards, governance, and risk management while partnering with HR business partners and senior leaders to drive organizational resilience.

The role emphasizes strategy development, process optimization, and collaboration with Legal and Compliance to