Associate Vice President of HR Operations

The New School • Lowell, MA

29d • Onsite

About The Position

Join The New School At The New School, we redefine the boundaries of education, creativity, and innovation. Founded in 1919 and located in the heart of New York City, we are home to over 9,000 students from over 100 countries, offering more than 135 degree and diploma programs across our renowned colleges, including Parsons School of Design, The New School for Social Research, Eugene Lang college of Liberal Arts, Parsons Paris, and the College of Performing Arts. Our progressive, interdisciplinary approach has earned us recognition as one of the most forward-thinking institutions in the world. Reporting to the Vice President of Human Resources, this role serves as a member of the Human Resources leadership team responsible for the strategic direction, operational efficiency, and integrity of HR processes and workflows, technologies, and data-driven processes. This role requires a blend of financial acumen, advanced analytical ability, and systems engineering expertise. This role oversees the entire employee life-cycle infrastructure from faculty and student employment processing to staff transitions, ensuring that HR operations are optimized, compliant, and supportive of the university’s institutional imperatives. A key priority for this role is the modernization of HR service delivery through the build-out of a dedicated Workday Specialist function, designed to move the department from reactive system maintenance to proactive strategic enablement. The Assoc.VP ensures that HR systems, processes, and services are scalable, compliant, data-driven, and aligned with the university’s academic, research, and financial objectives. This role acts as a principal advisor to executive leadership and partners closely with Finance, Information Technology, Institutional Research, and academic and administrative units to enable sound workforce planning, fiscal responsibility, and organizational effectiveness.

Requirements

• Education: Master’s degree in Human Resources, Business Administration, or a related field (or equivalent senior-level experience).
• Experience: 12+ years of progressive HR experience in a large, complex, unionized organization. At least 7 years of senior management experience overseeing HR systems and operations is required.
• Systems Expertise: Demonstrated experience leading Workday implementations, post-go-live enhancements, or building internal Workday support teams.
• Executive Leadership: Demonstrated ability to lead complex, cross-functional teams and mentor staff in a fast-paced, fixed-deadline environment.
• Strategic Data Fluency: Exceptional analytical skills with the ability to "tell the story" behind the data, identifying variances and trends that impact institutional strategy.
• Technical Stewardship: Advanced proficiency in HRIS platforms—specifically Workday—with an understanding of business process frameworks, security roles, and EIBs.
• Collaboration & Influence: Ability to serve as a principal advisor to senior management and build effective relationships with units such as IT, IRDS, and Finance.
• Financial Oversight: Direct experience managing departmental budgets and performing complex financial analysis related to human capital.

Nice To Haves

• Prior administrative leadership in a higher education environment with collective bargaining units and student employment is highly preferred.

Responsibilities

• Scalable Systems & Process Design Infrastructure Design: Architect and implement HR processes and systems that are designed to scale with the university’s growth and evolving complexity.
• Workday Optimization: Design and launch a new Workday Specialist function. This includes defining the role's parameters, recruiting the talent, and ensuring the function bridges the gap between technical configuration and functional HR needs.
• Process Engineering: Lead the "Continuous Improvement" roadmap, identifying manual bottlenecks and replacing them with automated, scalable Workday workflows.
• Provide executive leadership for HR operations infrastructure, ensuring consistency, efficiency, and high-quality service delivery for faculty, staff, and student employees.
• Budgetary Stewardship: Provide executive oversight of the HR operations budget and partners with the CFO to ensure HR initiatives (such as the Involuntary Program and VSP) meet university-wide fiscal targets.
• Cost-Benefit Analysis: Evaluates the financial impact of HR system investments and process changes, ensuring maximum ROI on the university’s Workday investment.
• Partner with Finance to support annual and multi-year workforce planning and zero-based budgeting processes, ensuring personnel costs align with institutional fiscal targets.
• Advanced People Analytics: Oversee the development of sophisticated reporting, dashboards, and metrics to inform senior leadership decisions regarding workforce trends, retention, and departmental performance.
• Data-Driven Budgeting: Partner with the CFO and Finance to provide data-rich support for annual zero-based budgeting processes, ensuring that personnel costs and unit budget targets are managed with precision.
• Partner with Finance, Institutional Research, and academic leadership to integrate workforce data into institutional planning and budget decisions.
• Integrity & Auditing: Establish rigorous audit protocols to ensure the quality and integrity of all HR transactions and foundational data, particularly during large-scale initiatives like VSP/VERP or organizational restructuring.
• Oversee the development of advanced dashboards, reports, and metrics related to workforce trends, retention, productivity, compensation, and organizational performance.
• Employee Life-Cycle Management: Manage the administrative systems governing the processing of events for faculty, staff, and student workers, ensuring seamless transitions and data integrity from onboarding to off boarding.
• Process Engineering: Develop and maintain standardized SOPs and training materials to ensure consistent HR service delivery across diverse academic and administrative colleges.
• Project Leadership: Co-Lead large-scale HR projects and university initiatives, such as operationalizing collective bargaining changes, annual workforce planning and merit planning, Federal and State regulatory changes, ERP/Workday module go-lives, and major organizational restructuring support.
• Executive Leadership & People Management Directly oversee senior managers, and specialized staff, fostering a culture of accountability, continuous improvement, and service excellence. Including HR Operations functions and staff with responsibility for payroll, HR data management and analytics, HR operational service delivery, and Workday system optimization and governance.
• Build organizational capacity through leadership development, succession planning, and strategic workforce design.
• Represent HR Operations & Systems on executive committees, cross-functional leadership teams, and institutional task forces as assigned.

Benefits

• Health & Wellness Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage Employee Assistance Program (EAP)
• Financial Wellness Retirement plan administered by TIAA Qualified Transportation Expense Plan
• Work-Life Balance Paid vacation and sick leave, with accruals starting on your first day Paid holidays and floating holidays Workmode & Telework Policy (if applicable)
• Professional Growth Career advancement and professional development opportunities Access to university programs, lectures, and events featuring world-renowned speakers and organizations Tuition waiver benefit for eligible employees and dependents
• Additional Perks Employee discounts with local vendors and service providers

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Executive