Associate Director, People Operations (Employee Experience + Benefits Administration)

Job Description

Who are we?

Sidewalk Labs is an urban innovation company that tackles cities' greatest challenges. We create products and solutions, invest in new companies, and help developers build more sustainable, innovative, and equitable places around the world. Our ambitious vision requires us to push ourselves beyond conventional thinking, and we work hard in pursuit of our mission. Our cross-disciplinary team consists of experts from real estate, urban planning, government, finance, technology, and engineering, among other backgrounds.

Our urban innovations include Delve (a generative design product that empowers real estate teams to design better, faster, with less risk), Mesa (an easy-install kit for commercial buildings that cuts energy costs, improves tenant comfort, and simplifies building operations), Pebble (a low-cost vehicle sensor to help manage parking and curb space), and Affordable Electrification (a new way to manage home energy use to meet a customer’s monthly budget). We're also developing an offsite construction company that can deliver high-quality mass timber buildings for more sustainable living and working.

With the potential to radically improve quality of life in cities for all, our work is both exciting and complex. We are working to achieve something unprecedented — help us build it!

What is the role?

We are looking for an Associate Director, People Operations to join our team, reporting to our Head of People. The People Operations team is a small and highly collaborative team of five. We are seeking someone who can be a utility player across the different HR functions. This will be a great experience for a mid-level People Operations professional who is interested in interacting with the various parts of a fast-moving, high-profile company.

The focus of this role is leading employee experience for Sidewalk Labs. This includes overseeing employee engagement, benefits, onboarding & offboarding experiences, policy review and creation, and our performance management cycle/process. This role will also be a people manager to two members of the People Operations team.

While most of the foundations of People Operations are in place (performance reviews, compensation, benefits, etc), we are operating a complex company that continues to grow and evolve significantly, which means building out our employee experience function and iterating on key processes is critical to our success.

This is a real growth opportunity to make an impact in a unique organization, dense with diverse talent.

What are the deliverables?

Within your first 3 months you will:

• Become intimately familiar with our benefit plan details, our People Ops platforms (Ultipro, Culture Amp, benefits enrollment), and the company’s HR policies.
• Have led the open enrollment process and sessions for 2022.
• Build relationships with your team members and direct reports to understand their responsibilities and how your role contributes to and impacts their work. This includes team members on Talent, People Operations, and Payroll.
• Build relationships with your People Partner clients - get weekly 1:1s in place with your leaders and schedule time to get to know the team members and the product.

Within your first 6 months you will:

• Support the analysis and rollout of annual employee engagement survey results.
• Have implemented pre-boarding and onboarding process improvements to ensure new hires have excellent experiences that support them getting fully performing as smoothly & quickly as possible.
• Launch and oversee the 360 process via Culture Amp for TopCo and OpCos.

After 12 months you will:

• Be seen as a thought leader for the organization who improves processes and builds new programming to meet the needs of best in class employee experience.
• Review current benefits programs to assess if we should be cutting or adding any perks based on the market and employee usage.
• Be seen as a trusted partner for your People Partner clients and have supported the leaders on any engagement / retention strategies and any performance improvement efforts.
• Provide leadership to your direct reports. Support them in achieving their OKRs, invest in their success by providing feedback and coaching, and be a role model for our culture.

What We Expect

We’re looking for a People Operations professional with 5+ years of relevant work experience. Experience working in startups is a plus. To thrive on this journey with us, you will need to bring interest in People Operations processes and have examples for the following:

• You are passionate about people & process; you like getting things done.
• You must be highly organized, detail oriented and able to multitask. You recognize that errors in this work can have big implications for our employees.
• You have full-time experience with driving processes, managing stakeholders, setting expectations (especially upwards) and executing reliably.
• You have experience creating written and visual materials that are appropriate for company-wide consumption (slides, docs, emails) and also understand how to align messaging to the appropriate audience (leadership teams, managers, etc).
• You love taking initiative and proactively provide suggestions on how to streamline and improve processes.
• You are familiar with different HRIS systems (i.e. Ultipro, Workday, ADP) and ideally have worked on an implementation or set-up of one key system.
• You value the importance of professionalism when handling sensitive employee data.
• You are curious about how benefit programs and employee policies drive our culture and help us retain top talent.
• You are empathetic, resourceful, and comfortable navigating through ambiguity in a fast-paced, dynamic environment. You create excellent partnerships, and are seen as a strong team player. You will build and maintain strong relationships with the other Operations teams (i.e. Talent, Legal, and Finance) and stakeholders across the company.
• You mentor and coach People Operations peers who are earlier in their careers.
• You will offer light touch business support to a range of teams within the organization.

We are very excited to hear from you.

Sidewalk Labs is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We actively seek applicants from underrepresented communities. Even if you are not 100% sure you are right for the role, please apply and we will be happy to consider your application. All employment is based on merit and business need, and we respond to each application we receive.