Director, Employee Experience

Location: Linntown

Position Title:

Director, Employee Experience Position Type:

Full time Scheduled Weekly

Hours:

40

Categories:

Staff Exempt

Job Summary:

Reporting directly to the Interim Vice President for Talent, Culture, and Human Resources, the Director of Employee Experience is a strategic and hands-on leader dedicated to strengthening leadership effectiveness, manager capability, employee relations, and overall organizational health across campus. Balancing high-level strategy with active execution, this role serves as a trusted advisor to leaders, managers, faculty, and staff by moving seamlessly between consultation, organizational strategy, leadership coaching, and direct case management.

The Director designs leadership initiatives, personally conducts complex workplace investigations, facilitates conflict resolution, and advises on sensitive performance and workforce challenges—all to cultivate a supportive, high-performing environment built on accountability, fairness, respect, continuous learning, and compassion.

Job Duties:

Reporting Relationships:

This role will report to the Interim VP of Talent, Culture & Human Resources.

Work Schedule:

This is a full-time role (40 hours per week, 52 weeks per year)
Work Setting:

Hybrid role with the expectation of at least 3 days/week on campus.

What You Will Do:

Strategic Leadership and Organizational Effectiveness:
As a strategic advisor to the Vice President and Bucknell leadership, this role aligns institutional priorities with HR execution by strengthening leadership effectiveness, manager capabilities, and organizational health. By leveraging workforce, engagement, and performance data, the position identifies trends to resolve organizational challenges, clarify roles, and facilitate difficult conversations across academic and administrative departments. Ultimately, it balances long-term strategic initiatives - such as change management, strategic planning, and culture building, with the day-to-day operational demands of a responsive HR function.

Employee Relations and Workplace Investigations:
Serving as the senior employee relations practitioner and trusted advisor on complex workplace issues, this role conducts impartial, thorough, and confidential investigations into misconduct, harassment, discrimination, and policy violations, handling everything from planning and interviews to evidence assessment, documentation, and recommendations. In addition to coaching leaders through performance concerns, workplace conflict, and corrective action, the position facilitates conflict resolution and restorative conversations while partnering with the Vice President, General Counsel, and Deputy Title IX Coordinator on high-risk institutional matters.

Proactively, analyzing employee relations data and trends to identify systemic patterns, mitigate organizational risk, and recommend policy enhancements, education, and strategic interventions that foster a respectful, engaged, and high-performing culture.

Leadership Effectiveness:
This role drives manager capability, accountability, and organizational performance through direct executive coaching, leadership consultation, and practical resource development for building engaged, high-performing teams. The position directs leadership development, supervising onboarding, manager education, and succession planning. Additionally, it continuously evaluates and refines leadership programming using institutional outcomes, performance trends, and organizational feedback to adapt to evolving institutional needs.

Performance Development and Manager Accountability:
Leading Bucknell's performance development strategy, this role drives an equitable, consistent, and growth-focused evaluation process across the University by developing practical tools for continuous feedback, coaching, and accountability. The position directly coaches managers on setting expectations, documenting performance, delivering feedback, and implementing performance improvement plans or corrective actions when necessary. By monitoring the quality and consistency of performance activities, it identifies recurring manager capability gaps and collaborates with the leadership and learning team to deploy targeted interventions that elevate organizational performance.

Learning, Development, and Community Engagement:
Providing strategic leadership and operational oversight, this role drives key talent, culture, and engagement initiatives across the institution. It leads manager and leadership development alongside comprehensive professional development for both faculty and staff, while ensuring seamless new employee orientation and onboarding. Additionally, the position fuels organizational health and workplace culture by directing employee engagement, community engagement programming, employee recognition, and respectful workplace and prevention education.

Supervision and Team Leadership:
Providing direct leadership, coaching, and performance management, this role fosters collaboration across…