Senior Employee Relations Manager

Labcorp•Durham, NC

3d•Hybrid

About The Position

The Senior Manager, Employee Relations serves as a trusted ER leader, owning and stewarding strong relationships with leaders and HR Business Partners (HRBPs) to strengthen leader capability and address emerging issues early. Sitting at the intersection of enterprise ER strategy and disciplined execution, this role provides consistent, practical, and legally sound guidance across the full lifecycle of employee concerns, while bringing deep operational rigor through oversight, escalation support, and quality assurance for complex or high‑risk matters to ensure alignment with ER standards. The Senior Manager leads and develops ER team members, contributes and partners closely with ER leadership to drive insights, mitigate risk, and continuously improve ER effectiveness across the organization.

Requirements

Bachelor's Degree in business, law, human resources, or related subject
8 or more years' experience with Employee Relations or Human Resource Business Partnering role
1 or more years' experience leading a team
3 or more years' experience handling Employee Relations cases
Sound, expert knowledge of relevant employment and labor laws; ideally in more than one country
Familiarity with Labcorp policies and ability to refer managers and employees to relevant policies, tools, documents, etc.
Ability to maintain confidentiality with sensitive issues
Ability to investigate and to train their team to investigate
Ability to summarize cases succinctly and give regular case reviews (to peers/legal/ER leaders)
Ability to prioritize time-sensitive issues
Awareness of multiple HR disciplines and processes (i.e., compensation, benefits, talent acquisition).
Familiarity with case management tools and Microsoft Office
Proven customer service focus and organizational skills
Ability to problem solve, especially in regard to commercial decisions
Flexibility and willingness to deal with competing priorities and assist others as needed in a team environment
Excellent interpersonal skills with demonstrated patience, tact, and respect; great line manager track record
Demonstrated exceptional verbal and written communication skills
Ability to adopt a systems thinking approach; looking beyond the immediate issue for the root cause

Nice To Haves

Appropriate HR Certification (PHR, SPHR, GPHR, CIPD, etc.)
1 or more years of experience using spreadsheets to analyze reporting data and developing PowerPoint presentations to effectively communicate insights and tell a compelling story.
Current or prior Labcorp employee

Responsibilities

Works with business managers on particularly complex ER cases that may require commercially acceptable solutions
Advises on formal processes in accordance with Labcorp policies and appropriate regulatory guidelines. (i.e., attendance issues, failure to follow SOPs, quality issues, investigations, and performance matters)
Acts as a second review/escalation for their team cases; ensuring the ER Labcorp consistency is attained at all times
Approves all terminations within own business area
Leads employee relations projects and activities
Coordinates information with more senior ER team members to ensure compliance with federal state and local requirements
Ensures their team delivers quality upskilling and publishes an annual development program or upskilling offering for Labcorp leaders globally; may also deliver upskilling themselves
Works with the metrics team to supply additional intelligence around case numbers for their BU; looking at trends and making business focused recommendations
Whilst they will be attached to a particular business unit, at busy times they are expected to work across the global team, if required