Director, HR Consultant Lead, Corp Functions and JLLT

JLL•Chicago, CO

2d•Onsite

About The Position

The HR Consultant Lead is the people manager and leader of the HR Consultant execution pool. This role is the liaison between the HR Consultants and the HRBPs — owning the day-to-day functioning of the pool, the development and performance of its people, and the continuous improvement of how the team operates. The Team Lead is a player-coach people manager: coaching and developing consultants, managing performance, and creating an environment where the team can do its best work, besides delivering on their individual scope of work across the HR Consultant scope. Beyond people management, they act as the operational hub of the pool — triaging and assigning incoming work, handling escalations, and ensuring the team is always focused on the right priorities. They identify friction points and drive improvements that make the pool faster, more consistent, and more effective at scale.

Requirements

10+ years of progressive relative HR experience, with at least 4 years in a senior HR Consultant, HRBP, or team lead capacity
Demonstrated people management experience — has directly managed, coached, and developed HR professionals
Strong operational HR background — deep familiarity with the full annual rhythm of business programs (performance, compensation, talent review, ER)
Experience in a shared services, high-volume, or agile team environment preferred
Track record of improving processes and ways of working, not just executing them
Experience of managing a global team and familiarity with labor landscape across major global locations including US, UK, India
Experience in leading critical programs aligned with the employee lifecycle.
Expertise in leading large scale global projects.
Exceptional people manager — genuinely invested in the growth and performance of their team
Operationally excellent — brings structure, clarity, and discipline to how work gets planned, assigned, and tracked
Sound HR judgment — experienced enough to guide consultants through complex situations and handle escalations with confidence
Clear communicator — translates HRBP priorities into actionable direction for the team; surfaces execution intelligence back up
Continuous improvement mindset — not satisfied with good enough; always looking to make the model work better
Calm under pressure — manages competing priorities, surge demand, and team challenges without losing composure
Collaborative — works as a peer to Strategic HRBPs; the relationship is complementary, not hierarchical
Technology savvy professional who champions change and adoption of latest smart tools and technologies
Bachelor's degree in Human Resources, Business Administration, or related field
Candidates must be authorized to work in the United States without sponsorship.

Nice To Haves

SHRM-CP/SCP, PHR/SPHR, or equivalent professional certification preferred
Familiarity with HRIS platforms (e.g., Workday) and project management or workflow tools
Masters degree a plus but not required

Responsibilities

Directly manages all HR Consultants in the pool — responsible for their performance, development and engagement
Sets clear expectations, provides regular feedback, and conducts performance reviews in line with the annual cycle
Identifies development needs and builds individual growth plans that strengthen capability across the pool over time
Coaches consultants through challenging assignments, stakeholder situations, and complex cases
Creates a psychologically safe, high-performance team culture where consultants are motivated, accountable, and continuously improving
Manages headcount planning, onboarding of new consultants, and any performance management processes
Acts as the first point of intake for work requests coming into the pool from HRBPs and the business
Triages incoming demand — assesses complexity, urgency, and skill requirements to assign the right consultant to each workstream
Maintains visibility of team capacity and workload across the pool at all times, redistributing work as priorities shift
Manages the team sprint cadence — runs planning, check-ins, and retrospectives to keep work on track
Flags capacity constraints or demand surges to HRBP leadership early, with data to support resourcing decisions
Partner with HRBPs and COEs on HR program creation and execution
Key driver of program activation through the Consultant pool for all HR cyclical programs including yearend performance and rewards process, talent review processes, people engagement survey, etc.
Serves as the first escalation point for consultants encountering issues beyond their scope — complex ER cases, ambiguous policy situations, or difficult stakeholder dynamics
Resolves escalations where possible, applying sound judgment and HR expertise to guide the team to the right outcome
Determines when matters require escalation to the HRBP or specialist team, and manages that handoff cleanly
Maintains situational awareness across all active cases and workstreams so escalations do not come as surprises
Support implementation of organization design changes
Guide managers on redundancy conversations and support execution
Administers the annual compensation cycle within established guidelines for defined in scope Manager populations in partnership with the HR Consultants
Manages cyclical promotion cycles and advises on off-cycle compensation adjustments
Supports rollout of engagement survey cycles — communications, logistics, results distribution and action planning
Helps in scope managers interpret team-level results and build action plans using standard toolkits
Coordinates recognition and cultural programs as relevant
Investigates and resolves escalated individual employee and manager issues, including disciplinary and performance management cases
Applies consistent, policy-aligned approaches; escalates complex or sensitive cases to the HR Business Partner
Maintains accurate case documentation and tracks resolution status for escalated cases
Coaches managers on exceptional situations requiring HR support beyond policy interpretation
Escalates strategic, systemic, or executive-level matters to the HR Business Partner
Owns the quality and consistency of how the pool operates — process templates, playbooks, tools, and ways of working
Identifies friction, inconsistency, or inefficiency in how work gets executed and leads improvements
Builds and maintains a library of reusable resources — guidance documents, templates, checklists — that enable consultants to work faster and to a higher standard
Tracks team performance data — delivery metrics, ER case volumes, program completion rates — and uses insights to improve how the pool works
Shares execution intelligence with the broader HR community; feeds ground-level insights back to HRBPs to improve program design
Reviews consultant output on higher-stakes workstreams before delivery to ensure accuracy, quality, and policy alignment
Maintains consistent standards across the team — especially important in a pool model where multiple consultants may work on the same program type
Ensures case documentation, data records, and program administration are accurate and audit-ready at all times