Director of People Operations

At the Center for Civic Design we work with elections offices, democracy advocates, and civic engagement organizations to make elections easier to run, support innovation, and invite participation in elections. From our practical experience and applied research, we create and share usable and useful resources (templates, best practices, examples, and more) with the wider elections field.

We are looking for a Director of People Operations to join our team.

The right person for this role has experience leading People Operations, HR, or Culture functions for remote non-profit organizations. They will be a strategic thinker and hands-on operator who is prepared to own all aspects of employee experience, coach and develop managers on the team, prioritize people-centered and effective communication, and navigate complexity and conflict with empathy and groundedness. You will focus on ensuring that CCD remains a great place to work, allowing the team members to focus on their programmatic work making elections work for everyone.

Interested? Submit your application here: https://forms.gle/4McUXgY22qUfMuXy6 (requires a free Google account for file upload)

The role

We are looking for someone who has:

• Strategic thinking and problem solving: as part of organizational leadership, you proactively design policies and systems for the greater good of the organization, develop practical solutions, and move the team forward while navigating complexity and multiple perspectives.
• HR expertise: you own the full employee lifecycle and bring deep, current knowledge of core HR functions, and know how to find answers when you run across new challenges.
• Non-profit compliance expertise: you can own multi-state legal and regulatory compliance for a distributed workforce, including employee and contractor classification.
• Project management skills: you run HR systems, tools, and documentation end-to-end, with the attention to detail to catch mistakes and build in monitoring so they don't happen again.
• Management, coaching, and relationship support: you combine direct people management experience with the ability to coach people managers across the organization.
• Communication skills: you communicate organizational decisions, culture initiatives, and change effectively across a fully remote team.
• Equity-centered leadership: you approach leadership with an equity-centered mindset, actively working to minimize inequities in decisions, policies, and processes.

Qualifications

Your qualifications might include some combinations of:

• At least 5 years of experience managing all aspects of people operations for an organization
• Experience managing all aspects of the employee lifecycle
• Experience managing multi-state compliance for a remote organization
• Familiar with HRIS and payroll systems (we use Gusto, but any software experience applies here)
• Comfortable working in Google Workspace, Slack, and Miro, or similar remote collaboration tools
• Experience running HR systems, tools, and documentation with strong attention to detail, including identifying opportunities to automate manual processes

What to expect in the role

No two weeks look exactly alike, but here's a sense of what you'll be working on. You can expect to:

Management and leadership

• Serve as an organizational leader and strategic partner to the Executive Director
• Design and implement people and culture strategy for ~17 person remote, matrixed organization
• Manage, coach, and support the professional development of at least one direct report, modeling equitable, sustainable, and results-driven management practices
• Partner with people managers to help their direct reports identify and meet professional development goals
• Organize processes so that people managers deliver consistent and ongoing feedback to support employees’ long term growth in their roles
• Monitor compensation and develop compensation philosophy and career ladders in partnership with the Executive Director

HR, compliance, and operations

• Manage all aspects of the employee lifecycle including hiring, onboarding, internal support, performance management, employee relations, and offboarding
• Develop, maintain, and uphold internal policies and best practices, including the employee handbook, and partner with the Executive Director to liaise with Counsel
• Own multi-state compliance, employee payroll, and 1099 contractor/vendor management for a fully remote organization in 6 states, including liaising with CCD’s contract bookkeeper and supporting the Executive Director with financial management
• Own end-to-end benefits administration, including health insurance, 401(k), and work-from-home stipends, and lead annual open enrollment from vendor coordination through employee communication
• Oversee or directly conduct investigations into employee-related issues, incidents, and complaints; resolve disputes through mediation and recommended action
• Own IT oversight by managing the Operations Lead on day-to-day SaaS administration, cybersecurity, and risk management policies

Organizational culture

• Build trust, cohesion, and alignment throughout the organization with the overall direction and goals
• Advocate for staff needs with leadership and communicate organizational decisions with staff
• Work with the Executive Director to set culture goals and lead initiatives that prioritize employee experience and engagement
• Lead planning and execution of staff retreats (with support from the Operations Lead) and other multi-step initiatives from design through execution, documenting processes so they're repeatable year over year

About the Center for Civic Design

Elections should work for everyone. As democracy’s innovation lab, we are here to make that happen.

The Center for Civic Design is a 501(c)(3) nonpartisan, nonprofit organization. To us, democracy is a design problem. The centerpiece of solving that problem is ensuring voter intent through design. We believe that democracy works when everyone is included. So, we strive to make every interaction with the government easy, effective, and pleasant. And we work with elections offices, democracy advocates, and civic engagement organizations to make elections easier to run, support innovation, and invite participation in elections.

Our credibility draws on a decade-plus of practical experience and applied research, during which we develop best practices for civic design using core skills in plain language, accessibility, information design, and civic research. And we share those best practices widely across the elections and democracy field.

You can learn more about our work on our website or in these articles:

• Good design is the secret to better democracy in The New York Times
• How to beat bad ballot design and make sure your vote counts and How North Carolina’s mail-in envelope got a new, easier-to-use look in the Washington Post
• How Smart Design Is Strengthening Our Elections in Architectural Digest

Ready to apply? Submit your application here: https://forms.gle/4McUXgY22qUfMuXy6 (requires a free Google account for file upload)

Must be based in the US and eligible to vote in US elections