Director, HR Business Partnerships & Employee Relations

About Us

Headquartered in Portland, Oregon, TEC has 30+ locations from Seattle to San Diego to the Midwest, serving thousands of customers across Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada, Arizona, Nebraska, Iowa and South Dakota. TEC Equipment features Mack and Volvo heavy-duty trucks, Hino and Isuzu medium duty trucks, Stoughton trailers and Cottrell auto transport trailers. We offer a large and desirable inventory of new Mack and Volvo heavy-duty trucks and all makes of used trucks. Our full-service line-up also features quality parts, state-of-the-art service, collision centers and fuel, leasing/rental, financing, and insurance. Our locations are authorized service centers for Mack, Volvo, Cummins, Meritor, Eaton and Fuller warranties. TEC truly offers the convenience of one-stop shopping for all trucking-related needs.

Overview

The Director of HR Business Partnership & Employee Relations owns the strategic and human-judgment side of TEC's people function — partnering with senior leaders to shape the organization, and handling the sensitive, risk-laden situations that protect both employees and the company. Reporting to the EVP of Corporate Services, this role serves as the strategic HR business partner to leaders across the enterprise: advising on organization design, applying compensation plans and structures with managers, and bringing workforce data to bear on people decisions. It also leads employee relations, workplace investigations, and performance management, setting the standard for fair, consistent, and defensible handling of employee matters.

Responsibilities

• Serve as a Strategic HR Business Partner
  • Organization Design: Partner with senior leaders across the enterprise to shape and optimize organizational designs — structures, roles, spans, and reporting relationships — that fit the business model and scale with growth. Advise and recommend; senior leaders decide.
  • Compensation Application: Work with managers to apply compensation plans and structures to real pay decisions — translating the models, ranges, and data that HR Operations develops into fair, consistent, well-reasoned outcomes. Guide leaders through comp conversations.
  • Workforce Strategy: Partner with leaders on applying the workforce planning materials to their markets — anticipating capability needs, succession, and staffing ahead of demand rather than reacting to it.
  • Trusted Advisor: Serve as the strategic people advisor to business-unit leaders, bringing an HR perspective to their planning and helping them make better people decisions. Lead Employee Relations
    • ER Case Management: Own the intake, triage, and resolution of employee relations matters across the enterprise. Bring consistency, fairness, and sound judgment to every case, and maintain defensible documentation throughout.
    • Workplace Investigations: Lead prompt, thorough, and impartial investigations into complaints, misconduct, and policy violations. Reach well-reasoned findings and recommend action that is fair and legally sound.
    • Conflict Resolution: Serve as a neutral resource for resolving workplace conflict before it escalates. Mediate disputes and coach parties toward durable resolution. Own Performance & Disciplinary Management
      • Performance Management: Own the performance-management framework — coaching plans, improvement plans, and the difficult conversations that come with them. Help managers address performance honestly and early.
      • Disciplinary & Termination Process: Guide managers through disciplinary action and terminations, ensuring decisions are consistent, well-documented, and defensible. Serve as the check that protects both the employee and the company.
      • Manager Coaching: Coach leaders across the enterprise on handling people issues — raising the quality and consistency of people decisions rather than owning them outright. Advise on Policy, Risk & Compliance
        • Policy Interpretation & Advising: Serve as the go-to interpreter of HR policy and employment law in live situations. Advise leaders on the right course of action when the answer isn't in the handbook.
        • Situational Compliance & Risk: Own the risk-sensitive side of compliance — investigations, disciplinary defensibility, and matters with legal exposure. Partner with Legal on high-risk situations.
        • Accommodations & Protected Leave (Advisory): Own the judgment calls on contested accommodations and situations that intersect with protected leave, partnering with HR Operations, which administers leave and the interactive process. Bring People Analytics to Decisions
          • Workforce Insight: Translate workforce data — turnover, engagement, movement, cost — into clear, actionable recommendations that senior leaders can act on. Evidence for Strategy: Bring data to org-design, comp-application, and workforce-planning conversations so people decisions rest on evidence, not just instinct. Partner with HR Operations, which owns the underlying systems and data.
          • Strengthen Culture & Engagement
            • Engagement & Culture: Champion a healthy, values-aligned workplace culture. Use engagement data and listening tools to identify issues early and advise leadership on where to act. Employee Voice: Provide a trusted, confidential channel for employees and a fair process for raising concerns. Close the loop so employees see that issues are taken seriously. Build and Optimize a Team That Scales
              • Team Leadership: Hire, develop, and lead a team of HR and ER professionals who embody TEC's values and culture. Coach for judgment, not just task completion.
              • Development Systems: Implement development programs including ramp plans, personal development plans, quarterly feedback, and varied learning methods (on-the-job, shadowing, example-based, direct instruction).
              • Budget Ownership: Own the business-partnership and employee-relations budget. Plan, track, and steward departmental resources; make resource-allocation decisions grounded in return and risk. Serve as a Collaborative HR Leadership Partner
                • Shared HR Leadership: Partner closely with the Director of HR Operations to lead the HR function as an integrated department — business partnership and employee relations on one side, operations and systems on the other — ensuring the whole function is aligned in support of the enterprise.
                • Cohesive Team Support: Collaborate on priorities, communication, workload planning, and issue resolution so that leaders and employees receive consistent, practical, and timely HR support across the organization.