Head of HR Enablement, U.S. Region

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Novanta is one global team with over 26 offices located in The Americas, Europe and Asia-Pacific. Looking for a great place to work? You have found it with a culture that embraces teamwork, collaboration and empowerment. Come explore Novanta.

The Head of HR Enablement, U.S. Region is instrumental in fostering the One Novanta Culture and advancing manager capability, engagement, and scalable organizational growth. As a critical partner to People Leaders in the country and collaborating closely with the BU Talent Partner, this role ensures the delivery of high-quality HR support across the country/region through a team of local HRE professionals. By coaching front-line managers throughout the employee lifecycle—including development, engagement, performance management, onboarding, and workforce planning—this role strengthens managerial effectiveness.

This position ensures consistent local adoption and application of HR programs, processes, and tools. As an advocate for the HR Function Operating Model, this role and their team guides managers in adopting MSS/ESS and HR AI tools, while continuously identifying opportunities for HR functional improvement.

The Head of HR Enablement, U.S. Region is accountable for maintaining compliance with local labor laws across all jurisdictions in their scope, in partnership with HR Centers of Excellence, HR Operations, legal, and external labor law vendors, to ensure adherence in all HR programs, processes, policies, and tools.

Responsibilities

• Leads and coaches a small team of HRE professionals who drive consistency in HR delivery to local managers and stakeholders enabling flexibility, scale and a One Novanta Employee experience.

• Acts as a SME and escalation point for their team members in these areas.

• Responsible for the attraction, development, engagement and retention of HRE Team members. Owns their succession plan by driving talent, development and performance management within their team. Solicits feedback from key stakeholders, such as Talent Partners and Site Leaders/Engagement Leaders, to gather performance insights and identify development opportunities of HRE Team members.

• Ensures all employees within the region experience HR uniformly by leveraging standard enterprise-wide HR processes, programs, and tools deployed and trained by the CoE’s to execute HR cycles processes. Ensure HRE professionals are coaching on these programs in a consistent manner. Trains on HR programs and processes within the scope of HRE.

• Ensures local compliance to all labor laws within jurisdictions in all actions taken, and in all programs rolled out by HR CoEs and other Novanta functions. Collaborates with CoE’s to define local policies and practices to ensure compliance.

• Drives continuous improvement of work processes in scope utilizing NGS methods including established change management practices and tools. Looks for location and country trends across HR Programs, processes and tools to identify improvements projects with a focus on automation and AI enablement. Partners with regional counterparts and Global HRE Leader on global process improvement projects.

• Determines how HRE team is deployed to Novanta sites using benchmarked methodologies.

• Partner with local People Leaders to deploy workforce plans including hiring, organization re-designs and reductions in force. Coordinates the HRE team in deploying workforce plans that span multiple locations/ BU’s to ensure consistent employee experience.

• Reviews relevant employee data to identify workforce trends, including engagement and attrition data, with site stakeholders within the country to uncover trends and actions HRE team will support to drive improvement.

• May act as a member of a crisis management team, if needed.

• M&A activities as applicable for country.

Requirements

Education:

• Bachelor’s degree in business administration, HR management or related field

• Graduate degree preferred

Experience:

• 7+ years of experience in Human Resources, preferably in a mid to large-size company with a scaled HR Organizational Design.

• At least 4 years' experience leading people.

• Experience working in a shared services model, providing HR services for various internal customer groups.

Skills & Competencies:

• Deep understanding of HR processes, policies, and systems, including HR technology platforms and shared services delivery models.

• Demonstrated success of identifying, leading and delivering opportunities of process efficiencies through technology/automation/AI. Continuous learner in the future of HR and AI/ Automation opportunities to drive organizations strategy in a scalable way.

• Effective people leader with experience building a high performing team in a scaled HR organization.

• Strong change management skills to support team growth and transformation

• Clear understanding of business operations and how HR can support strategic outcomes. Experience building the capabilities to support this on their team.

• Proven ability to engage, inspire, and influence local people leaders. Effective team player and networker with a collaborative mindset to lead without direct line leadership authority.

• Proficient in analyzing workforce data to recognize trends and develop actionable recommendations. Applies insights to improve HR services and inform strategy.

• Proven ability to support leaders with effective performance management processes.

• Deep competence in conflict resolution, dispute management, and navigating complex employee relations issues with tact, calm, and professionalism.

• Experience with change management

• Thorough understanding of compensation administration and legal compliance across diverse environments.

• Experience with organizational design preferred

Physical Requirements:

• May require regular travel to cover another site within your job scope. Travel to average not more than once per month.

• May require travel to cover another site outside of your job scope for special projects.

• Sitting for extended periods at a desk

• Occasional standing or walking to attend meetings and go to the gemba

• Lifting light objects under 20 pounds

Novanta is proud to be an equal employment opportunity and affirmative action workplace. We consider all qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, military and veteran status, disability, genetics, or any other category protected by federal law or Novanta policy.

Please call +1 781-266-5700 if you need a disability accommodation for any part of the employment process.