Director, Strategic HR Business Partner; Remote

Where you'll work

This is a remote work from home position for candidates located in the greater Boston MA or Cincinnati OH areas. The role requires occasional in person travel up to 20% of the time.

Reporting to the SVP, Talent Strategy Partner, the Director, Strategic HR Business Partner is a strategic leader who drives the talent agenda within a business unit or function. You will be a thought partner with senior business leaders to develop and help drive their talent strategy that will enable the team to deliver against its business strategy and objectives. You will work with our Centers of Excellence, HR Services, Talent and Total Rewards to implement this strategy, applying a strategic and customer focused approach.

• Form effective partnerships with senior leaders to understand the business strategy and translate that strategy into strategic and operational Talent plans.
• Serve as a trusted advisor and coach to senior leaders (VP+) on highly critical and often complex talent and people related issues.
• Drive excellence in Talent Management across the Employee lifecycle and bring the voice of the customer to the broader HR team.
• Partner with Talent Acquisition to recruit and onboard senior leaders; create and implement targeted TA strategies to achieve business goals.
• Lead the performance management and talent review process and partner with leaders to ensure appropriate development plans are in place to support employee growth.
• Guide leaders to identify functional competencies and performance dimensions for specific roles.
• Coach and build capability of managers to be effective people leaders.
• Partner with SVP, Talent Strategy Partner and senior leadership teams to develop a workforce‑planning strategy for accurate hiring and skill‑development forecasts.
• Implement plans to ensure adoption of new processes and protection of Cengage’s culture and values.
• Partner with the Inclusion & Diversity lead to support development and execution of inclusion programs.
• Lead projects that are prioritized and critical to the talent agenda—including compensation reviews, proactive retention, etc.
• Orchestrate organizational re‑design efforts, including Mergers & Acquisitions, as needed.
• Use data and business mentality to pull out insights, anticipate implications for talent strategy, and present recommendations to influence actions.
• Contribute to the global HR community to increase the capability and strategic value of the human resource function.
• Communicate progress, key findings, and results from projects and discussions with key partners, HR team members, employees, and leaders.

Required:

• Minimum 10 years of experience as an HR professional with at least 5 years supporting an organization’s leadership team.
• Experience developing and implementing talent strategies for high‑performance organizations.
• Superior collaboration and communication skills with executive presence; strong presentation skills and comfort addressing groups of all sizes.
• Experience supporting and driving Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programming.
• Comfortable operating in a dynamic and sophisticated environment.
• Ability to use data to develop insights and recommendations.
• Strong coaching, conflict resolution, and ability to have difficult conversations.
• Ability to lead by example and promote a positive, team‑based environment.
• Comfort with ambiguity and constant change, able to work methodically through sophisticated problems, set priorities, and complete commitments.
• Proficiency with Outlook, Word, Excel and PowerPoint.
• Ability to travel up to 20% for required team meetings and other business unit events.
• Bachelor’s degree strongly preferred or equivalent experience.

Preferred:

• Experience working with Global/International teams.
• Workday experience a plus.

At Cengage Group, we take great pride in our commitment to providing a comprehensive and rewarding Total Rewards package designed to support and empower our employees. The full base pay range has been provided for this position; individual base pay will vary based on work schedule, qualifications, experience, internal equity, and…