Vice President Employee Relations

Solairus Aviation•Petaluma, CA

4d•$200,000 - $220,000•Onsite

About The Position

Solairus Aviation is seeking a results-driven Vice President of Employee Relations to lead employee relations for all employees. This role serves as a business partner to senior leaders, supporting clients, crew, and corporate staff. The VP Employee Relations is responsible for supporting the recruiting process, performance management, HR investigations, supervisory training, and compliance for all crew and corporate staff members. The individual will collaborate with the executive leadership team to maintain Solairus's unique culture and high morale while meeting financial and operational demands, ensuring the attraction and retention of top talent to provide best-in-class service.

Requirements

10+ years of progressive HR or employee relations experience, with a minimum of 5 years in a dedicated Employee Relations role carrying independent investigation and compliance responsibility.
Bachelor's degree in Human Resources, Business Administration, Employment Law, Organizational Psychology, or a related field.
Demonstrated success leading organizations through growth, restructuring, or significant capability-building.
Proven track record managing the full ER lifecycle: intake through investigation, findings, disciplinary action, and post-matter follow-through.
Proven ability to operate as a true business partner, contributing to business strategy.
Strong data literacy with the ability to work with HRIS systems, define meaningful people KPIs, and use workforce data to inform decisions.
Multi-state HR experience, with significant expertise in California employment law as well as familiarity with multiple other complex employment law jurisdictions.
Experience advising and influencing senior leaders, including delivering unwelcome or politically difficult findings or recommendations.
Deep, current command of federal and multi-state employment law across CA, NV, and FL — with California (PAGA, CFRA, FEHA) known cold.
Designs and executes legally defensible investigations end-to-end, from witness sequencing to written findings, with the independence to hold conclusions under pressure.
Establishes and enforces documentation standards across the organization that protect the company in litigation.
Builds and governs a multi-state policy infrastructure that is legally current, practically enforceable, and consistently applied — including writing CA supplements and owning the compliance calendar proactively.
Delivers objective findings and unwelcome conclusions to any level of leadership without softening the result, and resists pressure to protect high performers from accountability.
Builds manager capability through coaching rather than taking over, earning credibility with operations leaders as a problem-solver who reduces their risk.
Thinks and operates at the intersection of business and people strategy, fluent in P&L, operational metrics, and workforce economics, translating business goals into Human Resources priorities.
Learns the key elements of the private aviation business and Solairus’ unique operating model, as well as the Solairus culture, to understand the priorities and the behaviors that are reinforced throughout the organization.
Applies organizational design and development methodology to diagnose organizational health, design effective structures, and lead change with strong systems thinking and minimal disruption.
Commands credibility at the executive level, communicates legal complexity in plain business language, and partners effectively with Operations, Payroll, and Legal.
Brings deep working knowledge of employment law and employee relations across multiple states, managing risk proactively and building cultures that prevent issues before they escalate.
Uses people analytics and data literacy to diagnose problems, measure program impact, and inform strategic decisions, translating insights clearly for non-HR audiences.

Nice To Haves

SHRM-SCP, SPHR, or an equivalent senior HR certification
Experience in industries with mixed hourly/salaried workforce populations
Familiarity with Paycom or equivalent enterprise HRIS platforms
Experience or familiarity with aviation operators or the private aviation industry
Background working in organizations with mixed workforce populations (exempt/non-exempt, salaried/hourly, or admin/operational, contingent and temporary) at scale
Prior experience building or substantially redesigning ER infrastructure — policies, handbooks, investigation frameworks, and compliance calendars — from scratch or near-scratch.

Responsibilities

Enforce a rigorous, fair, and legally defensible employee relations framework.
Partner with General Counsel and outside legal counsel on employment litigation, agency charges, regulatory investigations, and other legal employment activities.
Ensure HR policies are current, enforceable, and consistently applied across all states and employee segments.
Receive, triage, and manage all ER cases, including harassment, discrimination, retaliation, misconduct, policy violations, and interpersonal conflict.
Conduct or oversee all formal workplace investigations, including fact-finding interviews, document review, timeline construction, and written findings.
Maintain investigation independence from the business and report findings directly to the EVPHR.
Manage the ER case tracking system to ensure all cases are logged, assigned, progressing, and closed with documented outcomes.
Identify patterns across investigations, such as recurring issues, problem leaders, or structural vulnerabilities, and surface them to the EVPHR.
Train managers and HR generalists on their role in ER matters, including documentation, escalation triggers, and informal handling.
Own the multi-state employment law compliance calendar, including CFRA, PAGA, Cal-WARN, CCPA, mandatory training deadlines, posting obligations, and regulatory filings.
Monitor federal and state legislative changes and translate new requirements into policy updates, manager communications, and process changes.
Manage PAGA exposure proactively through periodic self-audits of wage/hour practices, meal/rest breaks, and classification decisions.
Own EEOC charge response, unemployment appeals, and agency complaint management in partnership with employment counsel.
Maintain and enforce WARN Act readiness, ensuring ER review prior to any restructuring or RIF.
Steward the organizational culture, reinforcing company values and behaviors.
Build a recognition ecosystem that reinforces values and makes high performance visible.
Create feedback loops between employee experience and leadership decisions using tools like Officevibe, stay interviews, exit data, and listening sessions.
Advise managers on progressive discipline, including verbal coaching, written warnings, PIPs, final warnings, and terminations.
Review and approve all terminations prior to execution, with particular scrutiny on California cases.
Design and maintain performance improvement plan (PIP) frameworks.
Coach managers through difficult performance conversations.
Ensure documentation standards are met across all employee segments.
Track and analyze termination reasons, PIP completion rates, and manager-level disciplinary patterns.
Design and deliver ER-focused manager training on documentation, early intervention, harassment recognition, accommodation triggers, and HR escalation.
Build a manager early-warning system to identify at-risk leaders.
Partner with the OD & Training Manager to embed ER fundamentals into onboarding and development programs.
Own California mandatory harassment prevention training.
Develop a library of manager toolkits, including conversation guides, documentation templates, and PIP frameworks.
Define and maintain the ER metrics dashboard.
Produce monthly ER summaries for the EVPHR, including active cases, risks, trends, and recommended actions.
Conduct quarterly ER risk reviews with the EVPHR and legal counsel.
Track EEOC charges, unemployment decisions, arbitration outcomes, and settlement history.
Analyze ER data by manager, department, location, and workforce segment to inform talent decisions and training priorities.
Ensure ER records are maintained with attorney-client privilege where applicable and are audit-ready.