Human Resources Director

Banyan Capital Partners, part of Connor, Clark & Lunn Financial Group, is seeking to hire a Director, Human Resources into one of its portfolio businesses.  The Director, Human Resources is the company’s senior-most human resources leader and a member of the senior leadership team. Reporting to the Chief Financial Officer, the Director owns the design, build, and execution of the full HR function and serves as the primary HR advisor to the CEO, CFO, and functional leaders. This is a broad mandate. The successful candidate will set HR strategy and priorities, then personally execute much of the work as there is no existing HR team. The role begins as a standalone position; the Director is expected to assess where dedicated HR capacity is required as the business scales and to build and lead that team over time. The Company is private-equity backed. The Director will contribute to board and sponsor reporting on people matters, support the value creation plan, and play a central role in the HR workstream of acquisitions and integrations. The role suits a candidate who is comfortable operating with pace, limited infrastructure, and direct accountability for outcomes. The offices currently operate on an in-office set up working full time from our Mississauga office. 

Key Responsibilities

• Strategic HR Leadership & Business Partnership
  • Own the HR strategy and multi-year people roadmap, and align it to the Company’s business plan and value creation objectives.
  • Act as a trusted advisor and coach to the CEO, CFO, and functional leaders on organizational, leadership, and employee matters.
  • Contribute the people section of board and sponsor reporting, including headcount, key hires, retention, organizational risks, and mitigation plans.
  • Translate management’s priorities into an annual HR plan with quarterly objectives, agreed in writing with the CFO, and deliver against it.
  • Report progress, risks, and misses transparently and on a regular cadence; escalate early rather than late.
  • Set, track, and manage the HR function’s objectives and budget.
• Organizational Design & Workforce Planning
  • Lead workforce planning in partnership with Finance, including headcount modelling, span of control, and labour mix.
  • Assess current organizational structure and recommend changes to roles, reporting lines, and accountabilities that support growth and margin objectives.
  • Lead change management for restructures, leadership transitions, and process changes, including communication planning.
  • Build succession plans and identify critical-role risk for leadership and key technical positions.
• Talent Acquisition, Development & Performance
  • Own the talent acquisition strategy and lead recruitment, managing external search partners where appropriate.
  • Build a scalable hiring process, including role scorecards, structured interviewing, assessment, and hiring manager training.
  • Design and run the performance management cycle, including goal setting, review process, calibration, and performance improvement plans.
  • Develop career paths, competency frameworks, and job architecture across operations, sales, and corporate functions.
  • Build leadership and management development programming, including onboarding, coaching, and targeted training investments.
• Total Rewards
  • Own compensation strategy and philosophy, including pay bands, salary benchmarking, and the annual review and merit process.
  • Oversee benefits and group retirement programs, vendor selection, renewal negotiations, and cost management.
  • Ensure pay equity and pay transparency obligations are met across all operating jurisdictions.
• Employee Relations, Compliance & Risk
  • Serve as the Company’s subject matter authority on federal and provincial employment legislation across all provinces in which the Company operates.
  • Own HR policy, the employee handbook, employment agreements, and contractor arrangements; manage outside employment counsel.
  • Lead workplace investigations, progressive discipline, terminations, and severance negotiations, and manage associated legal and reputational risk.
  • Oversee health and safety program governance, WSIB / workers’ compensation, disability and accommodation management, and return-to-work processes.
• Culture, Engagement & Communication
  • Define and steward the Company’s culture and values, and translate them into observable leadership behaviours and expectations.
  • Run engagement measurement and act on the results with leadership; own the retention agenda for critical talent.
  • Lead internal communications practices that keep a distributed, field-based workforce informed and aligned.
• HR Operations, Systems & Analytics
  • Own the HR technology roadmap. Develop deep expertise in the HRIS platform and drive utilization of the capabilities.
  • Assess which modules are licensed, live, underused, or unconfigured, and build a prioritized plan to close the gap – including recruitment and onboarding, performance management, compensation management, benefits administration, document management, learning, position management, and analytics and reporting.
  • Drive manager and employee self-service adoption, retire manual and off-system workarounds, and establish data governance and system-of-record discipline.
  • Manage the HRIS relationship, including service and support escalation, module roadmap, and value received against spend at renewal.
  • Partner with Finance and Payroll to ensure accurate, compliant, and efficient payroll and employee data processes.
  • Establish HR reporting and analytics – headcount, turnover, time-to-fill, absenteeism, labour cost, and engagement – and use the data to drive decisions.
  • Continuously improve and document HR processes, moving the function from manual and ad hoc to standardized and scalable.
• Acquisitions & Integration
  • Support HR due diligence on acquisition targets, including compensation, benefits, employment liabilities, and cultural fit.
  • Lead the people workstream of integrations, including organizational design, employment transitions, harmonization of terms, and retention of key staff.
  • Bring acquired businesses onto the Company’s HR policies, systems, and total rewards programs.

Qualifications & Experience

• 12+ years of progressive human resources experience, including 5+ years as the senior-most HR leader or a senior HR business partner to executive leadership.
• Bachelor’s degree in Human Resources, Business, or a related field. CHRL designation preferred; CHRE or a relevant master’s degree an asset.
• Deep, current knowledge of Ontario and federal employment legislation, with working knowledge of other Canadian provinces. Cross-border experience is an asset.
• Demonstrated experience building an HR function from a limited base – policies, systems, and processes – rather than inheriting a mature one.
• Experience in a private equity-backed, founder-led, or otherwise closely held company; comfort with board and sponsor reporting and with a value creation agenda.
• Experience in a distributed, multi-site, or field-services business with a mix of salaried, hourly, seasonal, and contract labour.
• Track record leading full-cycle compensation design, including pay bands, benchmarking, and incentive plan structure.
• Hands-on HRIS ownership – configuring, administering, and driving adoption of a platform, not simply using one. Experience taking an underutilized system to full deployment is highly valued.
• Understanding of HR and payroll system integrations, and the ability to specify HR data requirements to Finance and IT counterparts.
• Comfort with HR data and reporting; able to build and interpret reports and dashboards without relying on others.
• M&A experience across due diligence and integration is an asset.
• Verifiable record of delivering against defined objectives in prior roles. References will be checked, including direct supervisors.

The salary range for this position is $120,000 - $160,000. The salary range provided reflects the base salary range for this position as required by legislation. In addition, there is an annual performance bonus which contributes to the total compensation for this position. Further questions may be directed to the HR team during the interview process.

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