Director, HR Business Partner

Ford Motor Company • Dearborn, MI

4d • $141,700 - $268,300 • Hybrid

About The Position

The Director, HR Business Partner sets the people strategy for the Go to Market Enterprise Technology portfolio, a salaried professional organization of 3,200 people across the globe. The role partners with portfolio leaders to ensure the organization, talent, and culture support business plans and high performance. Leaders own their people plans; this role builds the strategy, coaches execution, and establishes standards and resources for delivery. Reporting to the Executive HR Director, the Director runs the portfolio’s operating rhythm and holds analytical standards across the HR Business Partners they work with, including those outside their reporting line.

The role serves as a full member of client leadership teams, translating business plans into workforce and organization decisions, coaching senior leaders, and protecting long-term organizational health. It leads organizational effectiveness and restructuring, talent and succession processes, employee experience and culture standards, and continuous improvement of people processes. It also develops HR Business Partners and strengthens their business, financial, and problem-solving capabilities.

The position requires onsite presence at the primary location and travel to other facilities. Work is primarily seated, with occasional lifting of no more than 10 pounds. The setting has low to moderate noise associated with standard office equipment. Onsite work of up to three days per week may be required for candidates within commuting distance of a Ford hub location. Visa sponsorship is not available; candidates must be legally authorized to work in the United States.

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, including 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, including 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.
• 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 the portfolio people strategy, including an annual people operating plan and multi-year capability roadmap tied to business plans, 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 implications, 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 for productivity commitments.
• Support organizational optimization and efficiency targets, eliminating non-value-add work.
• Coach senior leaders and teams on effectiveness, decision quality, culture, and personal impact; address feedback leaders may not otherwise receive.
• Improve business decisions and own outcomes, revisit decisions shaped by the role, and address misalignment between leader preferences and business needs.
• Protect long-term organizational health, escalate enterprise-level risks, and foster an environment where constructive challenge is expected.
• Set culture and employee experience standards, decision rights, and leader capabilities to prevent issues from escalating into cases.
• Drive psychological safety and employee voice through team People Action Plans, understanding employee concerns, and actively managing say-do ratios.
• Promote consistent outcomes across client groups and deliberately establish precedents.
• Build leader capability for performance conversations and consistent policy application.
• Use metrics and root-cause analysis to diagnose leadership issues and sponsor prevention rather than repeat case handling.
• Partner with the People Matters COE and Legal on designated and high-risk matters to ensure fair, timely, and defensible outcomes.
• Frame ambiguous people problems as measurable current-versus-target conditions, prioritize material issues, and stop work that does not advance the business.
• Run the portfolio operating rhythm and management system, including visual review of bowlers, escalation of abnormalities, and closure of countermeasures.
• Maintain analytical rigor by requiring evidence-based root-cause analysis and countermeasures.
• 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 source.
• Diagnose organizational effectiveness and lead redesign, verifying that intended outcomes are achieved.
• Lead organization design and restructuring end to end, including options, cost and risk modeling, leader alignment, sequencing, communications, and stabilization.
• Engage HRBPs in effectiveness analysis before structure decisions and develop repeatable standard work and playbooks.
• Use span, layer, redundancy, and system-alignment analysis to align structure with strategy.
• Lead work redesign for automation and AI, including displaced or newly created capabilities and reskilling and redeployment paths.
• Drive succession depth and readiness for every critical role in the portfolio.
• Maintain calibration integrity across client groups, including differentiation, scrutiny of potential assessments, and defensible decisions.
• Lead senior selection through role definition, success profiles, assessment, and slate decisions; drive recruiting to fill critical roles to plan.
• Sponsor development for critical and high-potential talent, measuring executed movement rather than documented plans.
• Drive performance rigor by accelerating top talent, addressing inconsistent performance, and mitigating single points of failure.
• Lead, develop, and set standards for HR Business Partners in the portfolio, building capability across the community regardless of reporting line.
• Assess 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 a check.
• Build business and financial acumen through exposure to operating reviews, financial cycles, and business decisions beyond the people agenda.
• Maintain role boundaries in the HR operating model and escalate COE or Shared Services breakdowns.

Benefits

• Immediate medical, dental, vision, and prescription drug coverage.
• Flexible family care days, paid parental leave, new parent ramp-up programs, and subsidized backup childcare.
• 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