Employee Relations & Development Manager - West Des Moines IA
6ba6e9a6-404d-4081-9a4a-87d9fdb8d5d1:19000101_000001 ·
- Work mode
- Onsite
- Seniority
- C level
- Employment
- Full time
- Category
- Management
IOWA SELECT FARMS JOB DESCRIPTION
TITLE: Employee Relations & Development Manager
REPORTS TO: Vice President of Human Resources
LAST REVISION DATE: 05/20/2026
PURPOSE OF POSITION:
The Employee Relations & Development Manager builds the capability, confidence, and judgment of leaders across the organization to effectively lead people. Serving as a trusted coach, educator, and strategic partner, this role designs and delivers leadership development programs while equipping supervisors, managers, and leaders with the skills, tools, and support to confidently navigate people leadership challenges and foster a respectful, engaged, and high-performing workplace.
Unlike a traditional employee relations role focused primarily on resolving workplace issues, this position emphasizes developing leaders who can effectively prevent, address, and manage employee situations with increasing independence over time. Through coaching, training, consultation, and practical resources, the Manager strengthens leadership capability while providing guidance on complex or high-risk employee relations matters when needed. As a player-coach, the Manager also leads and develops the Employee Relations team while partnering with more than 200 leaders across 55 counties in Iowa.
Success in this role is measured not only by effective employee relations outcomes, but by the growth and confidence of leaders throughout the organization. By empowering leaders to make sound people decisions and resolve challenges independently, this role strengthens leadership effectiveness, enhances organizational culture, and builds a proactive, consistent approach to people leadership across the organization.
ESSENTIAL JOB FUNCTIONS AND RESPONSIBILITIES
Build Leader Capability
- Serve as the organization's primary coach and advisor for people leadership practices.
- Develop the confidence and capability of more than 200 supervisors, managers, and leaders to effectively manage employee situations.
- Coach leaders through challenging conversations while teaching them how to independently navigate similar situations in the future.
- Help leaders strengthen judgment, decision-making, communication, and accountability in managing their teams.
- Foster a culture where leaders view people management as a core leadership responsibility rather than an HR function.
Leader Development & Training
- Facilitate and update HR training days for new leaders with the support of the HR team
- Administer and interpret Predictive Index behavioral assessments, facilitating individual and team sessions that help employees and leaders increase self-awareness, strengthen communication, and improve collaboration and team effectiveness.
- Evaluate and update existing leadership development programs on soft skills and core leadership competencies and then facilitate training across the organization on it
- Create, update and facilitate developmental action plans and follow up for leaders to utilize within their teams
- Enhance and facilitate succession planning tools and resources
- Manage our performance management platform and routines around annual reviews and routine 1-on-1 feedback and development statuses
- Continue to develop existing toolkits, guides, templates, and other resources that enable leaders to confidently apply what they learn.
- Enhance and facilitate practical, engaging learning opportunities that strengthen day-to-day leadership skills, including:
- Providing effective coaching, feedback, and recognition
- Employee engagement and accountability
- Conducting difficult conversations
- Providing de-escalation and conflict resolution skills
- Performance management programs
- Documentation and HR forms
- Determining appropriate or progressive disciplinary responses and correction actions
- Conducting termination meetings professionally and respectfully
- Situational leadership
- Communication and relationship-building
- Identify and implement a Learning Management System to help deploy and follow up on training materials for new hires, leaders, and routine trainings.
- Continue to develop and facilitate training programs that promote legal compliance, reduce organizational risk, and educate leaders and employees on harassment prevention, retaliation, and other workplace conduct expectations.
Employee Relations
- Provide consultation and guidance on complex employee relations matters, including performance concerns, workplace conflict, policy interpretation, disciplinary actions, investigations, and employment decisions.
- Partner with leaders to resolve workplace issues while balancing employee experience, organizational consistency, and legal compliance.
- Personally manage complex, sensitive, or high-risk employee relations cases.
- Identify trends and recommend proactive strategies to reduce recurring employee relations issues.
- Ensure consistent application of policies, employment laws, and HR best practices.
HR Team Development
- Provide functional leadership to HR team members with dotted-line responsibility for employee relations.
- Mentor, coach, and develop HR staff to expand their employee relations knowledge and consultation skills.
- Help establish consistent practices, tools, and approaches across the HR team.
- Balance workload across the employee relations function, personally stepping in to manage cases or projects when needed.
Organizational Partnership
- Travel throughout Iowa to provide on-site coaching, training, and support.
- Collaborate with HR leadership to continuously improve employee relations practices, leadership effectiveness, and organizational culture.
- Recommend improvements to policies, procedures, training, and leadership resources based on organizational trends and needs.
- Administer annual company feedback survey and help assist leaders with the follow up and action planning from the results
- Provide HR metrics and reporting around engagement, retention, turnover trends and employee feedback on a routine basis to various audiences.
LEADERSHIP COMPETENCIES
- Act with integrity, professionalism, and confidentiality; Trustworthy when handling sensitive information and communications
- This position will work closely with employees, managers, supervisors, support departments, external individuals, etc. so strong written and verbal skills are vital for clear and timely communication. Strong interpersonal skills and professionalism with the ability to collaborate with all departments and audiences across the business
- Time Management and Organizational Skills: Our business culture is fast paced. Ability to prioritize daily tasks, manage multiple tasks, manage timelines, and meet deadlines. Ability to delegate when needed. Maintain structure and routines while remaining flexible.
- Highly organized and proactive; Manage the scheduled day/paperwork and people while taking the initiative are essential. Must be detail-oriented and have a high degree of accuracy, quality control and thoroughness.
- Customer Service Focused: Be friendly, positive, helpful, team-oriented and respectful to all employees, contractors and customers. Support these groups with a “how can I help?” attitude. Demeanor should be positive, professional, and passionate always while maintaining quality of work, being proactive and self-motivated.
- Strong personal initiative, accountability, problem-solving skills, creativity and ability to work independently and as a member of a team. Ability to work well in partnerships involving a wide variety of stakeholders and organizations.
- Adaptable and comfortable with evolving responsibilities
COMPANY VALUES AND EXPECTATIONS:
- We believe in doing the right thing every day, operating with character and integrity, and being stewards of our resource by committing to:
- Our Animals
- Our People
- Our Environment
- Our Community
- The core values of an organization are those values we hold which form the foundation on which we perform work and conduct ourselves. We expect all leaders, managers, and employees to demonstrate, foster and promote:
- Respect: We treat people with respect regardless of personal opinions or differing backgrounds, and no one within the organization is more or less important than anyone else
- Accountability: We hold ourselves accountable for completing our job responsibilities and following through on our commitments. We encompass our ability to recognize our own strengths and areas for improvement as well as accept responsibility for the performance and actions of ourselves and our teams without blaming others.
- Good Decision-Making: We are expected to continuously improve processes, attain results, and create efficiencies to achieve our mission while solving problems based on a combination of factual information, analysis, wisdom, and experience.
- Flexibility: We must react to changing circumstances, ambiguity and uncertainty with confidence, openness, positive energy, and optimism.
- Adhere to Iowa Select Farms bio-security policy at all times which includes reporting any violations or concerns to management team
- Adhere to Iowa Select Farms animal wellbeing policy at all times and partner with the Health and Care team in a timely manner if an incident occurs
- Compliance with Iowa Select Farms safety policies and procedures
- To maintain biosecurity standards, employees working on a farm are prohibited from cohabitating with employees from other production departments or support teams that access farms other than those assigned to their department.
WORK ENVIRONMENT
- This position is usually performed indoors and will have occasional time performed outdoors due to project work working events or capturing photos.
- This job usually operates in an office that is climate controlled and includes hazards typical to that environment.
- This role routinely uses standard office equipment such as computers, phones, photocopiers, filing cabinets and fax machines.
- This position also includes time on farm when necessary for interaction in person and will need to be comfortable working in and being exposed to all facility environments.
PHYSICALITY REQUIREMENTS
- Required to stand; walk; sit; use hands to finger, handle, or feel objects, tools, or controls; reach with hands and arms; climb stairs; balance; stoop, kneel, crouch or crawl; talk or hear.
- The employee must have the ability to sit for long periods of time and to maintain focus on projects such as computer screens or detailed paperwork.
- Ability to lift or move up to 10 pounds and occasionally lift or move up to 75 pounds.
- The employee must be able to continuously repeat necessary movements such as bending, lifting and different hand movements as needed to complete tasks.
- Specific vision abilities required by the job include reading, close vision, distance vision, color vision, peripheral vision, depth perception and the ability to adjust focus.
POSITION TYPE/EXPECTED HOURS OF WORK
- This is an on-site position requiring all daily job duties to be performed in person at designated Iowa Select Farms locations, including office, warehouse, and farm sites, based on business needs and company policy.
- This is a full-time position that will require at least 40 hours a week, typically Monday - Friday. Must be available for weekend and evening work, when necessary.
TRAVEL
- Ability and willingness to travel throughout Iowa to facilitate trainings and meetings for leaders through the utilization of a company vehicle when needed.
SUPERVISOR RESPONSIBILITIES
- Provides functional leadership, coaching, and day-to-day direction and resources to 3-4 HR professionals supporting employee relationships and leadership development. Partners with HR Supervisor to provide ongoing coaching, performance feedback and input on annual performance evaluations.
EDUCATION, EXPERIENCE and OTHER QUALIFICATIONS
- Bachelor's degree in Human Resources, Business Administration, Organizational Leadership, or a related field, or equivalent experience.
- Five or more years of progressive Human Resources experience with significant employee relations responsibilities.
- Demonstrated experience coaching leaders through complex workplace situations.
- Experience designing and facilitating leadership or management training.
- Strong working knowledge of employment law, workplace investigations, performance management, and employee relations best practices.
- Excellent facilitation, coaching, communication, conflict resolution, and relationship-building skills.
- Ability to influence without direct authority and build credibility with leaders at all organizational levels.
Preferred
- Experience mentoring or leading HR professionals.
- Experience supporting geographically dispersed operations.
- Bilingual in English and Spanish.
- SHRM-CP, SHRM-SCP, PHR, or SPHR certification.
OTHER DUTIES
- Please note this job description is not designed to cover or contain a comprehensive listing of activities, duties or responsibilities that are required of the employee for this job. Additional duties, responsibilities, and activities may be assigned or changed at any time with or without notice.