Employee Relations Manager

 

About Gusto

At Gusto, we're on a mission to grow the small business economy. We handle the hard stuff — payroll, health insurance, 401(k)s, and HR — so owners can focus on their craft and their customers. With teams in Denver, San Francisco, and New York, we support more than 500,000 small businesses nationwide and are building a workplace that reflects the people we serve.

All full-time employees receive competitive base pay, benefits, and equity (RSUs) — because everyone who helps build Gusto should share in its success. Offer amounts are determined by role, level, and location. Learn more about our Total Rewards philosophy.

AI is a fundamental part of how work gets done at Gusto. We expect all team members to actively engage with AI tools relevant to their role and grow their fluency as the technology evolves. AI experience requirements vary by role and will be assessed during the interview process.

About the Role:

We're looking for an experienced Employee Relations Manager to lead Gusto's Employee Relations team — a specialized center of excellence that helps steward and protect company culture by ensuring policy and practice alignment across the organization. This role reports into People Team leadership and partners closely with People Partners/HRBPs, Legal, and business leaders on our highest-risk employee matters.

You will lead and coach a team of Employee Relations Partners handling complex performance and investigations casework, using case data to identify patterns and recommend changes to increase Gustie experience and decrease risk. You're comfortable translating policy into consistent day-to-day practice across a fast-scaling technology company, and you know how to coach organizational leaders through difficult conversations, performance improvement plans, and structural team changes without eroding trust.

The ideal candidate has deep fluency with employment policy, sound judgment under ambiguity, and the people-leadership experience to build a team others trust with their hardest moments.

Here’s what you’ll do day-to-day:

• Manage, mentor, and coach a team of Employee Relations Partners — setting quality standards for documentation and process flow, overseeing caseload distribution, and continuous process improvement within the team.

• Lead or oversee complex, high-risk workplace investigations with airtight documentation in our case management system, partnering with Legal to reduce organizational and legal risk.

• Own performance-management casework end-to-end, coaching managers through documented coaching plans, PIPs, disciplinary actions, and exits, while balancing employee experience, fairness, and business risk.

• Translate Gusto's codes of conduct and other policies into consistent, fair practice across departments — especially through periods of rapid scaling and structural change.

• Enable managers on performance management processes, difficult conversations, and structural team changes.

• Track ER metrics and case trends to surface areas of opportunity. Recommend action for managers and People Partners / HRBPs to maximize engagement and minimize risk. 

• Serve as a strategic advisor to senior business leaders on complex personnel decisions, acting as ER's specialized center of excellence alongside People Partners/HRBPs and Legal.

• Operate with urgency and a bias toward resolution — prioritizing the issues that matter most, moving straightforward matters quickly, and applying deeper rigor where the risk or complexity warrants it.

• Demonstrate an AI-native mindset: Actively use AI to work more effectively — synthesizing case trends, drafting documentation, spotting patterns in ER data — while knowing when information needs to stay protected and when a human needs to stay firmly in the loop.

Here’s what we're looking for:

• Bachelor's degree in human resources, business administration, or a related field; an advanced degree or JD is a plus.

• 7–10+ years of progressive HR or Employee Relations experience, including direct ownership of ER casework, plus demonstrated experience leading or supervising a team.

• Deep knowledge of employment law (EE