Human Resources Manager

Arboreal Management is an affordable housing owner, developer, and property manager across Washington and Oregon. We manage roughly 8,500 units with about 220 employees, and we are growing fast. Alongside our property operations, we build Maynard, our own AI platform for accounting and operations. Our mission is to deliver quality housing people can afford — run by a team that is well supported and well led.

We are looking for a Human Resources Manager to be the person our 220 employees actually turn to. This role is centered on employee engagement, employee relations, and the general HR work that keeps a growing, distributed workforce functioning well.

You’ll handle the conversations that matter: a manager who needs help with a difficult performance situation, an employee who raises a concern, a site team whose morale has slipped, a policy question nobody has a clean answer to. You will investigate what needs investigating, coach managers through what they should handle themselves, and build the programs that keep people connected to the company as we grow.

We already have a full-time recruiter and a dedicated payroll administrator, so you are not carrying those functions. You will partner with both - but your attention stays on the people, not the pipeline or the pay run.

This is a hands‑on role reporting to the CFO. It suits someone who is genuinely good with people, keeps their judgment steady in messy situations, and can turn a recurring problem into a process instead of handling it fresh every time.

• Be the first point of contact for employees across the company — corporate, site teams, and our Philippines-based staff — on questions, concerns, and conflicts.
• Conduct workplace investigations: intake, interviews, documentation, findings, and recommended action. Escalate high‑risk matters appropriately.
• Coach managers through difficult conversations, documentation, performance improvement plans, accommodations, and terminations — so they handle them well and consistently.
• Mediate conflicts between employees and between teams before they escaltern.
• Spot patterns across complaints, exits, and site‑level issues, and bring the underlying problem forward rather than resolving the same case repeatedly.

• Own employee engagement: run surveys, read the results honestly, and turn them into changes people can see.
• Build and run recognition programs, and make sure good work at the site level gets noticed at the corporate level.
• Run company‑wide communications and connective events across a workforce spread over many properties and two countries.
• Conduct stay and exit interviews; track retention and turnover by role, site, and manager, and report what the numbers say.
• Look after the day‑to‑day employee experience for our offshore team, not just the US staff.

• Run the performance review cycle end to end - calibration, scheduling, completion, and follow‑through.
• Identify where managers need training and either deliver it or bring in someone who can.
• Support career‑path conversations, especially for site staff who want to move up from maintenance or leasing into management.
• Maintain and deliver our onboarding and training programs, including facilitating new‑hire orientation.

• Administer benefits enrollment, changes, and open enrollment; act as the day‑to‑day contact for employees and our broker.
• Manage leave, accommodations, PTO, and L&I claims from first notice through return‑to‑work.
• Own the HRIS as the system of record for employee data, org structure, and documentation, and pull the reporting leadership needs.
• Handle employee‑lifecycle changes - promotions, transfers, comp changes, offboarding - and coordinate them cleanly with Payroll.
• Partner with our Payroll Administrator: supply and verify the employee‑data changes each cycle depends on. (Payroll processing is theirs, not yours.)

• Keep us compliant with federal, Washington, and Oregon employment law, and coordinate with our Philippines team on local requirements.
• Own the employee handbook and HR policies: keep them current, and make…