HR Business Partner III

Job Description:

Job Purpose:

The Principal Absence Management Consultant will provide hands-on leadership and execution support for the transition of Absence Management services from an external management vendor to an internally managed operating model. The role will focus on transition from vendor-managed data/processes and supporting the internal Absence Management Team during User Acceptance Training (UAT), training, Go-Live, and Hyper Care.

This is a delivery-oriented role requiring someone who can move comfortably between business process design, system testing, data validation, vendor governance, training, cutover planning, issue resolution, and executive-ready status reporting.

The contractor must be willing to work directly in project details while maintaining visibility into cross-functional risks, dependencies, and decisions.

Core Responsibilities:

Supports External Vendor Unwinding and Transition Management:

Develop and maintain a detailed transition plan for moving Absence Management responsibilities from the external management vendor to the internal team.

Define the sequencing and ownership of activities required before vendor services can be reduced or discontinued.

Coordinate the transfer of active leave and absence information, historical records, documentation, reporting requirements, and operational knowledge.

Facilitate process walkthroughs and knowledge-transfer sessions with the external vendor.

Track transition commitments, due dates, decisions, risks, and open questions.

Establish clear escalation paths and decision rights for issues that could affect employee pay, leave administration, compliance, or the Go-Live schedule.

Reconciliation and validation activities to confirm that required information has been received and is usable by the internal team.

Develop a transition closeout checklist to confirm that vendor responsibilities have been fully transferred, formally retained, or otherwise resolved.

Produce a final vendor exit and transition-readiness assessment.

Supports Absence Management Process and Operating Model Readiness:

Future-state Absence Management processes, including the handoffs between employees, leaders, the Absence Management team, HR, Payroll, Operations, and system support teams.

Identify process gaps, duplicative steps, unclear ownership, manual workarounds, and operational risks.

Develop or refine process maps, standard operating procedures, desk guides, role definitions, RACI documentation needs, escalation paths, and decision matrices.

Confirm that the RACI model clearly defines case intake, case maintenance, time and absence entries, approvals, employee communications, documentation, exceptions, reporting, and issue resolution.

Help establish sustainable operating routines for the internal Absence Management team, including case reviews, workload monitoring, issue escalation, quality checks, and cross-functional coordination.

Ensure operational procedures align with the approved Workforce Software ACT configuration and agreed business decisions.

Supports Workforce Software ACT Functional Readiness:

Serve as the Absence Management functional lead for readiness activities involving Workforce Software ACT.Partner with business and technical resources to validate that configured workflows reflect approved Absence Management requirements.

Validate connections of leaves and absence events to applicable timekeeping, payroll, scheduling, accrual, employee visibility, and leader visibility outcomes.

Identify process gaps that could create downstream payroll, compliance, data, or employee-experience issues.

Working sessions with Absence Management subject matter experts.

Support the development of practical workarounds or interim processes when a system change cannot be delivered before Go-Live.

Maintain traceability among business requirements, test scenarios, defects, decisions, training materials, and final procedures.

Help confirm operational ownership for ongoing ACT administration, production support, reporting, and enhancement intake.

User Acceptance Testing:

Develop and manage an Absence Management-focused UAT strategy and detailed test plan.

Create end-to-end test scenarios based on actual roles, leave types, business rules, employee populations, integrations, and exception conditions.

Ensure test coverage includes standard transactions as well as complex, negative, retroactive, interrupted, overlapping, and correction scenarios.

Coordinate test data, tester assignments, prerequisites, access, test…