Let’s Be Honest…
You didn’t spend a decade navigating collective bargaining, HRIS migrations, and the kind of employee relations situations that make lesser HR leaders quietly update their own résumés… just to end up as a glorified policy librarian.
At a certain point in your career, the job stops being about executing someone else’s people strategy — and starts being about owning one. You’ve probably sat in enough leadership meetings to know exactly what the organization should be doing differently. You’ve seen comp structures that don’t hold, labor relations that are managed reactively, and HR functions that are siloed when they should be integrated.
You’ve been thinking: if I had the full seat, I’d run this differently.
This is that seat.
Why This Role Is Different
This isn’t a “VP HR in everything but title” situation where you own the org chart but not the strategy.
This is the top HR executive role at a well-established regional health system in the greater NYC area — reporting directly to the President & CEO, with full ownership of every people function in the organization. Inpatient Acute Care and outpatient Ambulatory Care. Both. All of it.
The scope is real: HR Operations, Employment & Recruitment, Benefits, Compensation & HRIS, Labor Relations, Training, and the Volunteer Department. Nineteen FTE. An operating budget of $89.5M. Four active collective bargaining agreements that require someone who knows the difference between a grievance and a grudge — and how to handle both.
And the compensation? Above the 90th percentile for VP, HR roles in New York City. Because the organization knows what this role actually demands — and they’re serious about finding the right person to fill it.
What You’ll Actually Be Doing
At the center of it: you’re the person who makes the entire people function cohere.
That means setting department goals, building the operating budget, and making sure the seven functions under your oversight — from a Benefits team managing a complex plan portfolio to a Labor Relations team navigating four agreements — are running as an integrated whole, not as independent fiefdoms.
You’ll lead collective bargaining across four active labor agreements. That’s sustained relationship management alongside hard negotiation — the kind of work where preparation, credibility, and composure matter more than any single tactic.
On the strategic side, you’ll participate in hospital-wide planning, evaluate the demographic and regulatory changes reshaping healthcare HR, and develop programs that get ahead of what’s coming rather than reacting to what’s already arrived. You’ll co-chair the Workforce Initiative of the BCHS PPS — a seat at the table where HR strategy intersects with system-wide performance.
Day to day: you’re the arbiter on policy disputes, the final word on wage and salary issues, and the person managers call when an employee relations situation has outgrown the handbook. You’ll also ensure the accuracy and security of personnel data system-wide — because in a workforce this size, data integrity isn’t an IT problem. It’s an HR one.
The Kind of Leader Who Thrives Here
This role is built for someone who:
- Has 10+ years of managerial experience in hospital or health system HR — and has the scar tissue to prove it
- Has led labor relations in a multi-union environment and can hold their own across a bargaining table
- Thinks in systems: able to see how comp, benefits, HRIS, and employee relations interact — and where the friction is coming from
- Knows New York State healthcare regulatory and employment law well enough not to be surprised by it
- Has operated at the executive level and knows the difference between reporting up and leading up
You’re fluent in the full HR alphabet — FMLA, ADA, NLRA, PTO accrual disputes at 4:45pm on a Friday — and you bring that fluency to every room without making it a performance.
Schedule & Structure
Monday through Friday, full-time, onsite in the greater NYC area. Direct hire, reporting to the President & CEO.
Compensation & Environment
Compensation is positioned above the 90th percentile for VP, HR roles in New York City — a deliberate signal from an organization that understands what genuine HR leadership costs, and what it’s worth.
Beyond compensation: this is a mission-driven health system serving one of the most complex and community-rooted patient populations in New York. The work is visible. The impact is real. And the platform — Acute Care and Ambulatory Care under one roof — gives you the scope to build something that actually holds together.
Bottom Line
If you’re looking for a role where you can finally run the full function — strategy, operations, labor relations, and everything in between — within a health system that has the scale to make it meaningful and the leadership structure to let you lead, this is worth a conversation.
Apply Now
Office
10752 Deerwood Park Boulevard South, Suite 100
Jacksonville, FL, 32256
Contact Us
- contact@polarisplacement.com
(646) 688 - 4072