Executive Director, Workforce Engineering and Transformation

UCSF•San Francisco, CA

6d•$176,300 - $375,000

About The Position

The Executive Director, Workforce Engineering and Transformation leads the enterprise capability for translating organizational and People Strategy priorities into future workforce requirements, integrated transformation project portfolios, and measurable workforce outcomes. The role combines workforce strategy and engineering, strategic workforce planning, HR portfolio and program management, change and transition management, people analytics enablement, and People Strategy execution in a coordinated operating model. Working for the CHRO and Senior Vice President of HR, the Executive Director partners with the HR Leadership Team, operational and clinical leaders, Finance, IT, Data & Insights, the Strategy and Transformation Office, the Office of the CEO, and other enterprise partners. The role determines future work requirements, how work and roles should evolve, the appropriate mix of talent and technology, and how complex workforce transformations should be prioritized and executed. It is accountable for establishing the governance, methods, leadership capability, and decision disciplines needed to move from strategy through implementation, adoption, and benefits realization. The Executive Director leads the Director, Workforce Strategy & Engineering, and the Director, HR Strategy Realization, and provides leadership to the People Strategy function. Together, these capabilities connect strategy, workforce design, analytics, execution, change adoption, measurement, and continuous improvement. Within Human Resources, Workforce Strategy and Engineering leads UCSF/UCSF Health’s enterprise approach to workforce strategy and transformation. It translates organizational and People Strategy priorities into future workforce requirements, workforce designs, and executable transformation priorities, and drives strategic workforce planning and the portfolio of major People Strategy initiatives. The team provides governance, program and change leadership, analytics enablement, and execution discipline to deliver measurable workforce and organizational outcomes.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree in Business, Human Resources, Organizational Development, Industrial/Organizational Psychology, Healthcare Administration, Information Systems, Analytics, Public Health, or a related field.
15+ years of progressive experience across workforce strategy, HR strategy, strategic workforce planning, organization/work design, workforce transformation, portfolio/program leadership, management consulting, or related disciplines.
7+ years leading complex, cross-functional enterprise initiatives, portfolios, or transformation programs in a large, matrixed organization.
Demonstrated experience translating business strategy into workforce implications and actionable transformation priorities, including difficult tradeoffs involving capacity, skills, cost, technology, and organizational design.
Strong understanding of strategic workforce planning, role and task redesign, AI automation and augmentation, skills-based workforce practices, total workforce models, and emerging ways of working.
Experience building or maturing enterprise capabilities, governance models, portfolio processes, or operating models rather than only managing individual projects.
Demonstrated success advising and influencing senior executives, building alignment across functions, and driving outcomes without relying solely on formal authority.
Ability to frame ambiguous issues, diagnose root causes, challenge assumptions constructively, facilitate difficult tradeoffs, and provide clear recommendations to senior leaders.
Ability to anticipate the human, organizational, and labor implications of transformation and ensure implementation addresses readiness, adoption, reskilling, redeployment, role change, and manager capability.
Ability to connect business strategy, People Strategy, workforce capacity, organization design, technology, financial constraints, and talent implications into an integrated enterprise view.
Ability to operate effectively in ambiguity, balance rigor with speed, and learn emerging technologies.

Nice To Haves

Master's degree in Business Administration, Human Resources, Industrial/Organizational Psychology, Organizational Development, Healthcare Administration, Analytics, or a related discipline.
PMP, PgMP, PfMP, or comparable project or portfolio management credential.
Prosci, Lean, Six Sigma, or comparable transformation/change credential.
Experience in a large academic healthcare system, health system, public-sector organization, or similarly complex and highly regulated environment.
Experience with strategic workforce planning, AI-enabled work redesign, workforce analytics, job/role architecture, strategic position control, or skills-based workforce practices.
Experience leading workforce transformation in a highly unionized or multi-bargaining-unit environment, including partnership with Labor Relations on workforce change.

Responsibilities

Translate long-term Enterprise and People Strategy priorities into an integrated workforce transformation agenda, portfolio, and multi-year capability roadmap.
Connect People Strategy execution, analytics enablement, HR strategic initiatives, and enterprise business priorities so work is sequenced and governed as an integrated system.
Advise the CHRO, HR Leadership Team, and senior operational leaders on workforce implications, strategic tradeoffs, investment priorities, and emerging workforce risks.
Sponsor and govern the enterprise strategic workforce planning framework, including workforce segmentation, demand and supply analysis, scenario planning, critical-role strategy, skills and capability planning, and integration with financial and operating plans.
Advance workforce engineering approaches that deconstruct roles into tasks, skills, decision rights, and capacity requirements to identify work that can be automated, augmented by AI, simplified, eliminated, consolidated, or redesigned.
Guide future-of-work strategies involving flexible scheduling, new staffing models, skills-based deployment, contingent and alternative workforce models, digital labor, new management practices, and other workforce innovations.
Ensure workforce design recommendations account for patient care, quality, safety, regulatory requirements, labor relations, equity, employee experience, and operational feasibility.
Establish and maintain a single enterprise portfolio of major HR and People Strategy initiatives, with strategic alignment, ownership, sequencing, milestones, dependencies, resource requirements, risks, and expected benefits.
Lead portfolio prioritization and resource tradeoff processes so executives can accelerate, defer, combine, redesign, or stop work based on strategic value and organizational capacity.
Set expectations for scalable program and project management practices, executive sponsorship, governance, risk management, decision-making, and benefits realization without unnecessary administrative burden.
Provide executive oversight for the highest-risk or highest-value transformation programs and intervene when initiatives face unclear ownership, competing priorities, or cross-functional barriers.
Lead the People Strategy Enablement capability, translating strategic business questions into analytics use cases, decision-support requirements, and a prioritized people analytics portfolio in partnership with Data & Insights.
Ensure workforce and People Strategy decisions are supported by trusted data, consistent measures, clearly defined outcomes, and an intentional evolution from descriptive reporting toward diagnostic, predictive, and prescriptive insight.
Establish People Strategy performance reporting expectations so senior executives and HR leaders can monitor execution, workforce outcomes, risks, and realized impact.
Maintain operating boundaries so Data & Insights retains technical ownership for data architecture, analytics development, reporting solutions, and analytical modeling.
Establish governance structures, decision rights, review cadences, escalation pathways, and accountability mechanisms to actively manage People Strategy and workforce transformation priorities.
Ensure complex transformations incorporate change and transition management from the outset, including stakeholder impact, sponsorship, communications, readiness, training, adoption, and manager enablement.
For AI automation, augmentation, role redesign, and workforce restructuring, ensure leaders have transition strategies addressing reskilling, redeployment, role changes, capacity shifts, labor implications, and employee experience.
Create a closed-loop process in which execution performance and workforce outcomes inform future strategy, investment, and design decisions.
Build, lead, and develop a multidisciplinary team spanning workforce strategy, workforce design, portfolio/program management, change management, analytics enablement, and strategy execution.
Establish common methods, playbooks, standards, and decision frameworks that build workforce planning, workforce transformation, and People Strategy execution capability across HRBPs, COEs, and business leaders.
Facilitate complex leadership discussions involving tradeoffs among strategic priorities, workforce capacity, cost, technology, organizational design, and employee impacts.
Continuously evaluate and evolve the Workforce Engineering & Transformation operating model as organizational needs, technology, and workforce conditions change.