Employee Relations & Development Manager - West Des Moines IA

Reports to: Vice President of Human Resources

About the Role

The Employee Relations & Development Manager builds the capability, confidence, and judgment of leaders across the organization to effectively lead people. Serving as a trusted coach, educator, and strategic partner, this role designs and delivers leadership development programs while equipping supervisors, managers, and leaders with the skills, tools, and support to confidently navigate people leadership challenges and foster a respectful, engaged, and high-performing workplace. Unlike a traditional employee relations role focused primarily on resolving workplace issues, this position emphasizes developing leaders who can effectively prevent, address, and manage employee situations with increasing independence over time.

Through coaching, training, consultation, and practical resources, the Manager strengthens leadership capability while providing guidance on complex or high-risk employee relations matters when needed. As a player-coach, the Manager also leads and develops the Employee Relations team while partnering with more than 200 leaders across 55 counties in Iowa. Success in this role is measured not only by effective employee relations outcomes, but by the growth and confidence of leaders throughout the organization. By empowering leaders to make sound people decisions and resolve challenges independently, this role strengthens leadership effectiveness, enhances organizational culture, and builds a proactive, consistent approach to people leadership across the organization.

Responsibilities

• Build Leader Capability
  • Serve as the organization's primary coach and advisor for people leadership practices.
  • Develop the confidence and capability of more than 200 supervisors, managers, and leaders to effectively manage employee situations.
  • Coach leaders through challenging conversations while teaching them how to independently navigate similar situations in the future.
  • Help leaders strengthen judgment, decision-making, communication, and accountability in managing their teams.
  • Foster a culture where leaders view people management as a core leadership responsibility rather than an HR function.
• Leader Development & Training
  • Facilitate and update HR training days for new leaders with the support of the HR team.
  • Administer and interpret Predictive Index behavioral assessments, facilitating individual and team sessions that help employees and leaders increase self-awareness, strengthen communication, and improve collaboration and team effectiveness.
  • Evaluate and update existing leadership development programs on soft skills and core leadership competencies and facilitate training across the organization.
  • Create, update, and facilitate developmental action plans and follow up for leaders to utilize within their teams.
  • Enhance and facilitate succession planning tools and resources.
  • Manage the performance management platform and routines around annual reviews and routine 1-on-1 feedback and development statuses.
  • Continue to develop existing toolkits, guides, templates, and other resources that enable leaders to confidently apply what they learn.
  • Enhance and facilitate practical, engaging learning opportunities that strengthen day-to-day leadership skills, including:
    • Providing effective coaching, feedback, and recognition
    • Employee engagement and accountability
    • Conducting difficult conversations
    • Providing de-escalation and conflict resolution skills
    • Performance management programs
    • Documentation and HR forms
    • Determining appropriate or progressive disciplinary responses and correction actions
    • Conducting termination meetings professionally and respectfully
    • Situational leadership
    • Communication and relationship-building
  • Identify and implement a Learning Management System to help deploy and follow up on training materials for new hires, leaders, and routine trainings.
  • Continue to develop and facilitate training programs that promote legal compliance, reduce organizational risk, and educate leaders and employees on harassment prevention, retaliation, and other workplace conduct expectations.
• Employee Relations
  • Provide consultation and guidance on complex employee relations matters, including performance concerns, workplace conflict, policy interpretation, disciplinary actions, investigations, and employment decisions.
  • Partner with leaders to resolve workplace issues while balancing employee experience, organizational consistency, and legal compliance.
  • Personally manage complex, sensitive, or high-risk employee relations cases.
  • Identify trends and recommend proactive strategies to reduce recurring employee relations issues.
  • Ensure consistent application of policies, employment laws, and HR best practices.
• HR Team Development
  • Provide functional leadership to HR team members with dotted-line responsibility for employee relations.
  • Mentor, coach, and develop HR staff to expand their employee relations knowledge and consultation skills.
  • Help establish consistent practices, tools, and approaches across the HR team.
  • Balance workload across the employee relations function, personally stepping in to manage cases or projects when needed.
• Organizational Partnership
  • Travel throughout Iowa to provide on-site coaching, training, and support.
  • Collaborate with HR leadership to continuously improve employee relations practices, leadership effectiveness, and organizational culture.
  • Recommend improvements to policies, procedures, training, and leadership resources based on organizational trends and needs.
  • Administer annual company feedback survey and help assist leaders with the follow up and action planning from the results.
  • Provide HR metrics and reporting around engagement, retention, turnover trends, and employee feedback on a routine basis to various audiences.
• Supervisor Responsibilities
  • Provides functional leadership, coaching, and day-to-day direction and resources to 3-4 HR professionals supporting employee relationships and leadership development.
  • Partners with HR Supervisor to provide ongoing coaching, performance feedback, and input on annual performance evaluations.

Leadership Competencies

• Act with integrity, professionalism, and confidentiality; trustworthy when handling sensitive information and communications.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills for clear and timely interaction with employees, managers, supervisors, support departments, and external individuals.
• Strong interpersonal skills and professionalism with the ability to collaborate across all departments and audiences.
• Time management and organizational skills to prioritize tasks, manage multiple deadlines, and maintain structure while remaining flexible in a fast-paced environment.
• Highly organized, proactive, detail-oriented, and committed to accuracy and quality control.
• Customer service-focused with a positive, helpful, and team-oriented attitude.
• Strong personal initiative, accountability, problem-solving skills, creativity, and ability to work independently and as part of a team.
• Adaptable and comfortable with evolving responsibilities and partnerships involving a wide variety of stakeholders.

Company Values and Expectations

We believe in doing the right thing every day, operating with character and integrity, and being stewards of our resources by committing to:

• Our Animals
• Our People
• Our Environment
• Our Community

Core values include:

• Respect: Treat people with respect regardless of personal opinions or differing backgrounds; no one within the organization is more or less important than anyone else.
• Accountability: Hold ourselves accountable for completing job responsibilities and following through on commitments, including recognizing strengths and areas for improvement.
• Good Decision-Making: Continuously improve processes, attain results, and create efficiencies based on factual information, analysis, wisdom, and experience.
• Flexibility: React to changing circumstances, ambiguity, and uncertainty with confidence, openness, positive energy, and optimism.

• Adhere to Iowa Select Farms bio-security policy at all times, reporting any violations or concerns to the management team.
• Adhere to Iowa Select Farms animal wellbeing policy at all times and partner with the Health and Care team in a timely manner if an incident occurs.
• Compliance with Iowa Select Farms safety policies and procedures.
• To maintain biosecurity standards, employees working on a farm are prohibited from cohabitating with employees from other production departments or support teams that access farms other than those assigned to their department.

Work Environment

This position is usually performed indoors in a climate-controlled office with occasional outdoor work for projects, events, or photo capture. The role routinely uses standard office equipment such as computers, phones, photocopiers, filing cabinets, and fax machines. The position also includes time on farms when necessary for in-person interaction, requiring comfort with exposure to all facility environments.

Physical Requirements

• Required to stand, walk, sit, use hands to handle objects/tools, reach with hands and arms, climb stairs, balance, stoop, kneel, crouch, or crawl.
• Ability to sit for long periods and maintain focus on projects such as computer screens or detailed paperwork.
• Ability to lift or move up to 10 pounds regularly and occasionally lift or move up to 75 pounds.
• Ability to continuously repeat movements such as bending, lifting, and hand motions as needed to complete tasks.
• Specific vision abilities required include reading, close vision, distance vision, color vision, peripheral vision, depth perception, and the ability to adjust focus.

Schedule

This is a full-time, on-site position requiring at least 40 hours per week, typically Monday through Friday. Must be available for weekend and evening work when necessary.

Travel

Ability and willingness to travel throughout Iowa to facilitate trainings and meetings for leaders, utilizing a company vehicle when needed.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in Human Resources, Business Administration, Organizational Leadership, or a related field, or equivalent experience.
• Five or more years of progressive Human Resources experience with significant employee relations responsibilities.
• Demonstrated experience in leadership development, coaching, and training.