Position Summary:

United Food Bank is looking for a strategic people leader. Our people believe deeply in this work. Our job now is to keep them and to earn their trust that what they raise will be heard and handled well. That covers a workforce spread across an early-morning dock, office hours, a weekend crew, three sites, and drivers on the road.

This leader runs the full HR function and is measured first on retention, engagement, and the strength of our employee relations practice. The administrative core of payroll, benefits administration, and leave runs through the Payroll & Benefits Manager and/or HR Generalist, so this role can focus where the organization needs it most. This will sit at the Senior Leadership level Table at times

Responsibilities include, but are not limited to, the following:

Retention, Engagement and Culture

• Owns the people measures: Leads organizational turnover and engagement results and the plan to improve them, and reports progress to the Senior Leadership Team.
• Builds the system of record: Establishes UFB’s source of truth for HR metrics, including headcount, turnover by team and reason, time to fill, and employee relations cases, so turnover can be traced and acted on.
• Listens credibly: Runs the engagement survey and pulse checks with real anonymity protections and visible follow-through. Uses exit and stay conversations to feed the retention plan.
• Partners on culture: Works with the Senior Leadership Team, which owns culture, and supports the Round Table as a cross-functional channel and recognition engine. Makes sure recognition reaches frontline and driver staff, not only the office.

Employee Relations and Investigations

• Process: Finalizes and runs UFB’s investigation and corrective action process, and trains every leader to use it consistently.
• Routing standard: Writes and owns the standard for how concerns reach HR and leadership, including concerns involving volunteers, agency personnel, donors, and vendors.
• Investigations: Conducts or oversees timely, impartial, and well-documented workplace investigations. Coordinates with outside counsel on legal matters, charges, and claims.
• Advising leaders: Guides managers on performance improvement, progressive discipline, and the 90-day probationary standard, applied decisively and fairly.
• Trust: Is a person staff can safely tell the truth to, at every site and on every shift.

Compensation and Total Rewards

• Pay structure: Maintains salary bands for every role and UFB’s market positioning policy, using current benchmark studies. Ensures a salary band appears on every posting and anchors to the market range, not prior pay.
• Frontline pay: Maintains driver pay ranges tied to the vehicle driven, not the license held. Keeps merit and market adjustments as separate calculations, made at review time.
• Benefits strategy: Sets health, welfare, and retirement strategy, including the enhanced Safe Harbor 401(k) match, with administration through the Payroll & Benefits Manager.

Talent Acquisition and Onboarding

• Hiring at volume: Leads recruiting across many concurrent searches. Applies the values screen to every hire and makes sure existing staff hear about openings before roles post publicly.
• Programs: Owns the employee referral program, the Background Check Policy tiers, and onboarding from Week 1 through the 30-, 60-, and 90-day check-ins.

Compliance, Policy and Payroll Oversight

• Employment law: Ensures compliance with FLSA, including volunteer-to-paid transitions and half-time hour thresholds, along with FMLA, ADA, leave, workers’ compensation, and posting requirements.
• Policy: Reviews the employee handbook and personnel policies annually, recommends changes to leadership, and communicates them to all staff. Administers training gates such as the AI use policy.
• Scope: Applies UFB employment policies to Waste Not staff under UFB’s managing-entity status.
• Payroll and reporting: Oversees payroll accuracy through the Payroll & Benefits Manager, and owns HR data for Feeding America’s Network Activity Report and 401(k) Form 5500.

Reaching the Whole Workforce

• Designs HR communication and processes for staff without reliable email or app access, including drivers on locked-down devices. Is present on the floor at every site and shift, not only in the office.
• Performs other duties as assigned by the Chief Administrative Officer.

Qualifications (Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities):

• A genuine connection to our mission and values.
• 7+ years of progressive HR experience, including people leadership and hands-on employee relations and investigations.
• Recent HR leadership in an organization of 50+ employees, with a clear command of the legal obligations that come with that size.
• Demonstrated results improving retention or engagement in a frontline or hourly workforce, with numbers you can talk through.
• Experience building or rebuilding HR infrastructure: an investigation process, policies, reporting, and an HRIS.
• Advanced knowledge of federal and Arizona employment law, including FLSA, FMLA, ADA, and workers’ compensation.
• Experience with pay structures and benefits, including health, disability, and 401(k) plans. Self-insured plan experience is a plus.
• Comfortable doing the work as well as leading it, in a small HR team carrying a heavy load.
• Sound judgment and discretion with confidential, sensitive, and complex matters.
• Bachelor’s degree in human resources or business, or equivalent experience. SHRM-CP or SHRM-SCP preferred. Paylocity experience preferred.
• Fluency in Spanish and English Preferred
• Offer contingent on background and credit check

Physical Demands and Work Environment:

The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met to perform the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

• Regularly required to sit, use hands, and talk or hear; required to stand, walk, and reach daily.
• Vision requirements include close, distance, and peripheral vision, depth perception, and the ability to adjust focus.
• Ability to sit at a computer for extended periods and perform repetitive motions.
• Regular presence on warehouse and dock floors across all sites and shifts.

In instances of a federal, state, or locally declared emergency, United Food Bank is typically considered an essential service and emergency responder; all employees may be called in to perform regular or emergent duties.

This job description is not intended to be an all-inclusive list of duties and standards of the position. Incumbents will follow any other instructions and perform any other related duties, as assigned by their supervisor.