Director, HR Business Partner

Ford Motor • Dearborn, MI

6d • Hybrid

About The Position

The Director, HR Business Partner sets the people strategy for Ford’s Go to Market Enterprise Technology portfolio, a salaried professional organization of 3,200 people globally. The role partners with portfolio leaders on organization, talent, culture, workforce planning, investment, and headcount decisions, aligning people strategy with business plans, growth assumptions, and cost structures. Leaders own their people plans; the Director develops the strategy, coaches execution, and establishes standards and resources for delivery.

Reporting to the Executive HR Director, the role runs the portfolio’s operating rhythm and maintains analytical rigor across the HR Business Partners who support it, including partners outside the Director’s reporting line. The position advises and coaches senior leaders, drives organization effectiveness and talent outcomes, develops HR professionals, and promotes evidence-based continuous improvement. The role requires onsite presence at the primary location and travel to other facilities. Candidates within commuting distance of a Ford hub may be required to work onsite up to three days per week.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Human Resources, Organizational Development, Business, or a related discipline, or commensurate work experience.
• 10–12 years of progressive Human Resources experience.
• 3–5 years in a leadership or portfolio-level role.
• Demonstrated organization design, change leadership, and senior-leader coaching experience.
• Breadth across HR disciplines, business units, and client environments, such as professional, technical, commercial, manufacturing, or represented populations.
• Depth in a structured problem-solving or business system methodology such as A3, PDCA, Hoshin, lean, or equivalent, including coaching others in its use.
• Demonstrated record of improving senior business decisions and owning the results.
• Experience developing HR professionals.
• Must be legally authorized to work in the United States; employment eligibility verification is required at hire.

Nice To Haves

• Multi-client, multi-site, or global experience.
• Master’s degree in Human Resources, Organizational Development, another related discipline, or commensurate work experience.
• SPHR or SHRM-SCP certification.

Responsibilities

• Set an annual people operating plan and multi-year capability roadmap aligned with the business plan, growth assumptions, and cost structure.
• Serve as a full member of client leadership teams and contribute to business strategy, investment, and headcount decisions.
• Translate business strategy into workforce plans, including capability gaps, build/buy/borrow choices, location and cost strategy, span and layer targets, and sequencing.
• Partner with Finance on workforce cost and productivity, position control, and the people case behind productivity commitments.
• Support organizational optimization and efficiency targets and eliminate non-value-add work.
• Coach senior leaders and teams on effectiveness, decision quality, and their impact on culture; address feedback they may not receive from peers.
• Improve business decisions and own the results, revisit decisions, address gaps between leader preferences and business needs, and escalate enterprise-level risks.
• Establish a culture where constructive challenge is expected, and protect long-term organizational health.
• Set culture and employee experience standards, decision rights, and leader capability; drive psychological safety, employee voice, People Action Plans, and active management of say-do ratios.
• Maintain consistency across client groups, deliberately establish precedent, and build leaders’ accountability for performance conversations and policy application.
• Use metric trends and root cause analysis to diagnose leadership issues and sponsor prevention; partner with the People Matters COE and Legal on designated and high-risk matters.
• Frame people problems as measurable current-versus-target conditions, prioritize those that matter, and stop work that does not advance the business.
• Run the portfolio operating rhythm and management system, visually review bowlers, escalate abnormalities, and ensure countermeasures are closed.
• Maintain analytical standards; build A3, PDCA, and bowler fluency across the HRBP community and require their use.
• Sponsor improvements to people processes with process owners and COEs, removing waste and defects at the source.
• Diagnose organizational effectiveness and lead redesign, verifying that intended outcomes are achieved.
• Lead organization design and restructuring end to end, including option design, cost and risk modeling, leader alignment, sequencing, communications, and stabilization.
• Engage HRBPs in effectiveness analysis before structures are decided and create repeatable standards and playbooks.
• Use span, layer, redundancy, and system-alignment analysis to shape structures aligned with strategy.
• Lead work redesign for automation and AI, including assessment of capabilities displaced or created and reskilling and redeployment paths.
• Drive succession depth and readiness for critical roles and maintain calibration integrity across client groups.
• Lead senior selection, including role definition, success profiles, assessment, and slate decisions; support always-on recruiting for critical roles.
• Sponsor development of critical and high-potential talent, measuring movement executed rather than plans documented.
• Drive performance rigor by accelerating top talent, addressing inconsistent performance, and mitigating single points of failure.
• Lead, develop, and maintain standards for HR Business Partners across the portfolio and community, regardless of reporting line.
• Assess HRBP team members against the competency model and identify what they must demonstrate to operate at the next level of ambiguity and scope.
• Coach problem solving, challenge root cause logic, require verification, and ensure countermeasures include checks.
• Build HRBPs’ business and financial acumen through exposure to operating reviews, financial cycles, and business decisions.
• Maintain role boundaries in the HR operating model and escalate COE or Shared Services breakdowns rather than absorbing them.

Benefits

• Immediate medical, dental, vision, and prescription drug coverage.
• Flexible family care days, paid parental leave, new parent ramp-up programs, subsidized back-up childcare, and other family care support.
• Adoption and surrogacy expense reimbursement, fertility treatments, and other family-building benefits.
• Vehicle discount program for employees and family members, and management leases.
• Tuition assistance.
• Employee resource groups.
• Paid time off for individual and team community service.
• Paid holidays, including the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day.
• Paid time off and the option to purchase additional vacation time.

What This Job Offers

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