Head of Employee Relations

Asana is seeking a Head of Employee Relations to lead the strategy and evolution of our employee relations (ER) function. You’ll lead a three-person team, including yourself, with team members based in San Francisco and Dublin. This role is critical in developing ER best practices, coaching, and the development of current and future Asana leaders and managers.

You will be partnering closely with our HR Business Partners, our Legal team, and leaders across the organization. Reporting to our Head of People Success, you’ll blend deep ER expertise with a forward-thinking leadership mindset, leveraging data-driven tools to elevate our approach to employee advocacy, risk mitigation, and scalable solution strategies.

We think of Employee Relations as key to ensuring Asanas are thriving and this role will be tasked with leading and scaling a function with this mandate at its core. We want this work to be closely aligned with our commitment to leading consciously.

This role is based in our Chicago office with an office-centric hybrid schedule. The standard in-office days are Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday. Most Asanas have the option to work from home on Wednesdays. Working from home on Fridays depends on the type of work you do and the teams with which you partner. If you're interviewing for this role, your recruiter will share more about the in-office requirements.

• Scale a global Employee Relations program that is values-aligned, globally consistent, and locally relevant, building workflows, playbooks, and collaboration models across the People team.
• You will not only be hands-on in working through employee relations issues, but you will also be evolving the framework for how we work through them.
• Evolve our ER strategy with AI-enabled curiosity, explore and pilot tools like case analytics, sentiment data, and early detection signals to proactively surface workplace risks and opportunities for learning. Maintain ethical guardrails, transparency, and human oversight as we explore responsible ways to scale our impact.
• Guide the company through complex ER issues with fairness and discretion, owning high-sensitivity investigations from intake through resolution, ensuring a high-integrity experience for all parties involved.
• Build manager and team capability by co-designing ER training in partnership with Legal and L&D, equipping leaders with the skills to handle performance, feedback, and conflict with care and consistency.
• Use data to shape strategy by utilizing dashboards and narrative reports to track ER trends, proactively recommend interventions, and identify opportunities to prevent issues before they escalatem.
• Coach leaders and influence cultural maturity by serving as a trusted advisor, creating space for real talk, developmental feedback, and ethical clarity at moments that matter most.
• Drive the evolution of company programs to support employee law requirements. Use your subject matter expertise to review, assess and evolve our current ER policies and practices to help resolve any complex or unique ER-related issues across the organization.

• 10+ years of employee relations or HR business partner experience in a high growth, fast-paced environment.
• Proven people management experience, with the ability to lead, coach, and develop a high-performing team.
• Strong judgment and discretion; can hold space for complexity and remain grounded in fairness, transparency, and empathy.
• Ability to influence and impact multiple levels within an organization to drive holistic ER strategies.
• Successful record of creating, improving, and executing programs at scale with an ability to drive and measure program effectiveness and high levels of customer satisfaction.
• Ability to strike a balance between strategic partnership-building and rolling up your sleeves.
• Ability to challenge openly and have difficult conversations.
• Systems thinker: you’re able to zoom out from case-by-case to pattern recognition and scalable strategy.
• Curiosity around how tools, including AI and automation, can scale impact, while safeguarding fairness, privacy, and employee voice.
• A passion for advocating for others, speaking up…