Director Employee Relations

About Blue Cross And Blue Shield Of Minnesota

At Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota, we are committed to paving the way for everyone to achieve their healthiest life. We are looking for dedicated and motivated individuals who share our vision of transforming healthcare. As a Blue Cross associate, you are joining a culture that is built on values of succeeding together, finding a better way, and doing the right thing.

If you are ready to make a difference, join us.

The Director Employee Relations (ER) is a hands‑on, working leader responsible for both personally managing complex employee relations matters and leading a team of Employee Relations and Leave of Absence (LOA) professionals. This role provides enterprise operational, governance, and risk leadership for ER execution, translating ER strategy into disciplined day‑to‑day decision‑making and applying advanced judgment, critical thinking, and risk assessment to high‑stakes cases, investigations, and employment actions.

The Director Employee Relations independently leads the most complex and sensitive ER and LOA matters while also setting standards, guiding team capacity, and ensuring consistent, defensible outcomes across the ER and LOA functions. Serving as a primary escalation point for HRBPs and leaders, this role balances speed, consistency, legal defensibility, and reputational considerations, delivering clear, well‑reasoned recommendations to employment counsel and senior HR leadership.

Collaboration is central to the role. The Director Employee Relations works closely with Legal, HR Business Partners, Total Rewards, Talent Acquisition, People Analytics, Organizational Development, Compliance, and Enterprise Learning. In addition to team leadership and direct case execution, the role owns ER and LOA governance and infrastructure, manages compliance hotline issues, identifies patterns and systemic risk, strengthens leader capability, and leads updates to HR‑related policies and practices to improve upstream prevention, decision quality, and enterprise stability.

• Provides day‑to‑day leadership for the Employee Relations and LOA functions while personally handling complex, high‑risk ER matters, setting priorities, capacity plans, quality expectations, and holding accountability for consistent enterprise practice.
• Owns and executes enterprise ER work, including direct management of sensitive investigations and employment actions, as well as intake, triage, prioritization, assignment, and execution across misconduct, performance issues, ADA/LOA intersections, and policy violations.
• Defines and enforces escalation thresholds, decision‑rights, and role clarity between HRBPs and Employee Relations, ensuring disciplined, consistent, and defensible application of policy and judgment.
• Leads and oversees complex, high‑risk investigations (e.g., protected class, retaliation, senior leader, systemic issues), applying critical thinking to assess facts, credibility, impact, and risk, and producing high‑quality, legally sound written outcomes.
• Owns ER governance, including investigation frameworks, associate handbook, documentation standards, case management processes, government reporting, response timelines, decision consistency, and audit readiness.
• Applies analytical and strategic thinking to monitor ER performance and enterprise risk indicators—case volume, cycle time, repeat patterns, and risk hotspots—and uses insights to reduce recurrence and strengthen prevention.
• Translates ER case data and investigation trends into actionable enterprise insights that inform policy updates, leader capability gaps, training priorities, and emerging people risks; partners with HR, Legal, and Compliance on upstream mitigation strategies.
• Serves as a senior escalation and advisory partner to HRBPs and leaders on high‑impact employment decisions—corrective action, PIPs, terminations, and RIF planning—strengthening leader decision‑making while preventing risk drift, inconsistency, or unnecessary enterprise exposure.
• Acts as a key advisor during high‑visibility or enterprise‑impacting ER matters, considering legal,…