Employee Relations Manager

Microsoft is continuing to evolve and grow the Global Employee Relations Team! The Global ER team leads the process, principles, and practices to navigate complex and sensitive matters, conduct investigations and manage workplace conflict. This team works in close partnership with the Legal, Outside Counsel and Human Resources (HR) teams to manage cases involving inquiry into behavior concerns, manager conflict, consulting, investigations and employee grievances related to lived experiences not aligned to aspired culture, and legal risks. 

We are looking for a Senior Employee Relations (ER) Manager with deep experience influencing and impacting high growth and dynamic businesses through effective management (both proactive and reactive) of a wide range of employee relations issues. This person will be accountable for working with employees across organizations, building trusted relationships quickly, and leading with warmth, empathy, compassion, and creativity to think inside of and outside of the box to drive the right solutions.

Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. As employees we come together with a growth mindset, innovate to empower others, and collaborate to realize our shared goals. Each day we build on our values of respect, integrity, and accountability to create a culture of inclusion where everyone can thrive at work and beyond.

Required/Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree in Management, Business Administration, Organizational Behavior, HR, Industrial Relations, Psychology, or related field AND 5+ years experience in experience in HR, mediation, investigation, or ER-related roles

  o OR Juris Doctorate or Master's Degree in Industrial-Organizational Psychology, Human Resources (HR), Business Administration, Organizational Leadership, Industrial Relations, Law, or related field AND 3+ years experience in HR, mediation, investigation, or employee relations (ER)-related roles

  o OR equivalent experience.

  3+ years Employee Relations experience.
• Employment legal and/or ER expertise across a range of Asia countries, with a particular focus on Japan.

Preffered Qualifications

• Proficiency in Japanese language skills highly preferred as these covers Japan market.

Investigation and management of employee concerns:

• Conducts the analysis and resolution of issues with increasing complexity, visibility and risk related to policy, values or, cultural concerns/violations and incident or threat response, independently or by collaborating with managers, peers in HR and Legal as appropriate; recommends solutions to address issues from a systematic perspective.
• Determines appropriate approach, interviews appropriate parties in an investigation in review of concerns on matters related to policy or culture concerns/violations and workplace behaviors. Documents findings, maintains appropriate levels of confidentiality and demonstrates leadership to influence direction of initiatives and investigations. 
• Concludes investigations, using findings, relevant partnership with team, and knowledge of the relevant legislation / regulations, and Microsoft business context and organizational policies to determine a resolution to investigation of policy or culture concerns/violations and incident or threat response, and recommends corrective/disciplinary actions or processes, as deemed appropriate.
• Collaborates with partners across stakeholders to seek counsel from senior peers or managers as needed on proposed strategy weighing complexity, sensitivity, and parties involved.
• Models best practices in interviewing techniques and mastery of empathy, confidentiality, and connecting themes.
• Utilizes tools and resources to track, document work product and makes recommendations for refining, streamlining, and improving tools and their usage to improve future documentation needs.
• Assists/Partners with internal investigative entities at Microsoft (e.g., Workplace Investigations Team [WIT], Business and Regulatory Investigations [BRI], Global Security Investigations [GSI]) in investigations of serious cases and implements appropriate remediation in conjunction with a business, region, or geography; may lead the investigations for a business, region, or geography where resources are limited; ensures appropriate documentation of issues is in place.
• Seeks input from peers, managers, and appropriate stakeholders to ensure compliance with applicable laws and regulations and Microsoft policies.
• Identifies, raises, or escalates issues for trends in ER; partners with team and relevant HR partners to reduce ER issues for a business, region, or geography.

Capability Building

• Coaches employees and managers on navigation of ER processes, provides guidance, coaching or training through the ER experience, and acts as a sounding board for employees and managers on how to navigate work and handle themselves post-investigation.
• Manages through conflict listening for what is said verbally and nonverbally, identifies potential solutions, provides tools and resources for facilitating resolution.
• Consults with partners and stakeholders as subject matter expert on situations or issues providing best practices, influencing policy and observed trends. Use expertise to make recommendations for next steps, determine what would need to occur next for the situation to need to be transferred to WIT, and what best practices other teams should use to navigate the situation/concern.
• Provide one-on-one consulting/coaching with senior/executive business leaders, or by engaging relevant stakeholders and HR partners in capability building conversations.
• Identifies opportunities through insights to build organizational capability to proactively manage the creation of ER matters.
• Partners with other internal teams to influence policy and decision making based upon preexisting ER best practices and observed trends. Recognizes when standard HR policies and process should be followed and where exceptions should and can be made.
• Initiates conversations with individual parties at Microsoft in conflict, listening for what is said both verbally and nonverbally in order to understand the nature of the conflict, what parties' contributions are to the conflict, their respective willingness to resolve it, and what may be potential solutions for conflict resolution while maintaining appropriate levels of confidentiality.
• Coaches and guides parties to leverage best resources and/or approach for the conflict after sharing their findings, or provides the tools that would allow for facilitating conflict resolution to occur as appropriate.

HR Project and Programs

• Guides and oversees the identification of needs to design and implement ER projects or programs (e.g., policy evolution, process, tools and partnerships with business and HR leaders; oversees project planning and execution).
• Gathers and interprets industry trends about Employee Relations programs and processes and identifies execution or communication gaps within a business, region, or geography; develops and proposes action plans to address the gaps in collaboration with peer disciplines (e.g., Human Resources Consulting and Business Partnership) and business leaders.

Operational Compliance

• Interprets and advocates Microsoft values and compliance with Human Resources policies for a business, region, or geography; identifies/raises needs to mitigate potential risks by collaborating with the Legal profession; leads their team in the collaboration with peers in other businesses, regions, or geographies; provides guidance to create standardized/scalable approach for enhancing compliance.
• Identifies the strategy for the localization/update of policies and procedures related to managed projects and programs; gains approval from business leadership in partnerships with Human Resources policy owners and Human Resources Business Partnership (HRBP).