Microsoft is continuing to evolve and grow the Global Employee Relations Team! The Global ER team leads the process, principles, and practices to navigate complex and sensitive matters, conduct investigations and manage workplace conflict.  This team works in close partnership with the Legal and Line HR teams to manages cases involving inquiry into behavior concerns, manager conflict, consulting, investigations and employee grievances related to lived experiences not aligned to aspired culture, and legal risks.   

We are looking for an Employee Relations (ER) Queue Manager with deep experience influencing and impacting high growth and dynamic businesses through effective management (both proactive and reactive) of a wide range of employee relations issues. This person will be accountable for assessing cases across Asia that come to the team to identify the core issues, assign them to the team, and track trends to provide insight on issues occurring across teams, businesses, and the Company.  This person will also be working with employees across organizations, building trusted relationships quickly, and leading with warmth, empathy, compassion, and creativity to think inside of and outside of the box to drive the right solutions.

This role is covering Asia region and there is flexibility on the location of the position, so other locations (within Asia) may be considered.

Responsibilities

Queue Management 

• Manages, distributes, and oversees queries coming through the Customer Relationship Management (CRM)/queue management system; assesses severity levels of queries and determines management approach utilizing a high degree of confidentiality and professional judgement; responds to written correspondence, email and other outreach from employees and manager; shares feedback to the senior advisors for CRM/queue management system (AskHR, Engineering, Project Managers) regarding opportunities to solve problems earlier in the funnel, escalation, and process efficiency. 
• Partners closely with the Area ER Leader(s) to assess complex cases and determine case strategy as well as assessing team bandwidth and case volume to ensure proper case coverage across the region.
• Engages with partners and stakeholders, as needed, to determine appropriate parties for case engagement.
• Identifies, raises, or escalates issues for trends in ER; partners with team and relevant HR partners to share ER issues for a business, region, or geography.
• Collaborates with QM community across multiple stakeholders to ensure accurate and consistent triage of cases, identify process improvement opportunities for optimal routing, minimizing seams across teams and functions.
• Updates and trains the team on new features within the CRM tool and ensures proper tool usage and hygiene for effective data reporting and trend analysis.

 Capability Building

• Coaches employees and managers on navigation of ER processes, provides guidance, coaching or training through the ER experience, and acts as a sounding board for employees and managers on how to navigate work and handle themselves post-investigation.
• Manages through conflict listening for what is said verbally and nonverbally, identifies potential solutions, provides tools and resources for facilitating resolution.
• Consults with partners and stakeholders as subject matter expert on situations or issues providing best practices, influencing policy and observed trends.
• Provide one-on-one consulting/coaching with senior/executive business leaders, or by engaging relevant stakeholders and HR partners in capability building conversations.
• Identifies opportunities through insights to build organizational capability to proactively manage the creation of ER matters.
• Partners with other internal teams to influence policy and decision making based upon preexisting ER best practices and observed trends. Recognizes when standard HR policies and process should be followed and where exceptions should and can be made.
• Coaches and guides parties to leverage best resources and/or approach for the conflict after sharing their findings, or provides the tools that would allow for facilitating conflict resolution to occur as appropriate.

 HR Project and Programs

• Guides and oversees the identification of needs to design and implement ER projects or programs (e.g., policy evolution, process, tools and partnerships with business and HR leaders; oversees project planning and execution.
• Gathers and interprets industry trends about Employee Relations programs and processes and identifies execution or communication gaps within a business, region, or geography; develops and proposes action plans to address the gaps in collaboration with peer disciplines (e.g., Human Resources Consulting and Business Partnership) and business leaders.

 Investigation and Management of Employee Concerns

• Conducts the analysis and resolution of issues with increasing complexity, visibility and risk related to policy, values or, cultural concerns/violations and incident or threat response, independently or by collaborating with managers, peers in Human Resources (HR) and Legal as appropriate; recommends solutions to address issues from a systematic perspective
• Determines appropriate approach, interviews appropriate parties in an investigation in review of concerns on matters related to policy or culture concerns/violations and workplace behaviors. Documents findings, maintains appropriate levels of confidentiality and demonstrates leadership to influence direction of initiatives and investigations. 
• Collaborates with partners across stakeholders to seek counsel from senior peers or managers as needed on proposed strategy weighing complexity, sensitivity, and parties involved.
• Models best practices in interviewing techniques and mastery of empathy, confidentiality, and connecting themes.
• Utilizes tools and resources to track, document work product and makes recommendations for refining, streamlining, and improving tools and their usage to improve future documentation needs.

Other

• Embody our culture and values

Qualifications

Required/Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree in Management, Business Administration, Organizational Behavior, HR, Industrial Relations, Psychology, or related field.
• 7+ years experience with Human Resources ideally with regional exposure to Asia region.
• Strong project management and queue /case management skills

Additional or Preferred Qualifications

• 3+ years Employee Relations experience
• Senior Professional in Human Resources (SPHR)/Society for Human Resources Management-Certified Professional (SHRM-CP) or equivalent
• Project management certification
• Fluency in Chinese languages is a plus as the role may include support to Chinese-speaking markets.

Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran status, race, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable laws, regulations and ordinances. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application or the recruiting process, please send a request via the Accommodation request form.

Benefits/perks listed below may vary depending on the nature of your employment with Microsoft and the country where you work.