Head of Human Resources
Location: Greater Chicago Area | 100% On-Site
About the Company
Our client is a well-established, family-owned manufacturing organization with a long history in the Midwest. The company operates multiple manufacturing facilities within the Greater Chicago area and has experienced significant growth in recent years.
As the business continues to evolve from an entrepreneurial, family-owned organization into a more structured and professionally managed company, leadership is investing in the people, processes, and infrastructure needed to support its next stage of growth, including future acquisitions.
About the Role
The Head of Human Resources will serve as the organization’s senior HR leader and a key business partner to the CEO and executive leadership team. This is an opportunity to assess, build, and elevate the HR function while helping a growing manufacturing organization prepare for its next chapter.
The role requires a leader who can balance strategy with hands-on execution. This individual will be responsible for transforming HR from a primarily transactional function into a proactive, measurable, and business-focused organization while leading a small HR team and supporting a predominantly blue-collar manufacturing workforce across multiple nearby facilities.
Key Responsibilities
- Serve as a trusted HR advisor and strategic business partner to the CEO and executive leadership team.
- Assess the current HR function and develop a clear roadmap for its continued evolution.
- Build scalable HR systems, processes, policies, reporting, and infrastructure to support continued growth.
- Establish meaningful HR metrics and dashboards that provide leadership with greater visibility into organizational health and HR effectiveness.
- Strengthen HR compliance, documentation, reporting, recordkeeping, and overall organizational discipline.
- Develop a proactive talent acquisition strategy and improve recruiting, onboarding, and workforce planning.
- Build stronger retention and engagement strategies, particularly for the hourly manufacturing workforce.
- Develop and strengthen the organization’s Employee Value Proposition.
- Introduce greater structure and market data into compensation practices, salary benchmarking, and workforce planning.
- Lead employee relations with a business-minded, objective, and consistent approach.
- Partner closely with operations and plant leadership across multiple manufacturing facilities.
- Prepare the people function and HR infrastructure to support future acquisitions and integration.
- Lead, develop, and evaluate the HR team as the organization continues to grow.
First-Year Priorities
- Complete a comprehensive assessment of the HR function and identify the most important gaps and opportunities.
- Develop an HR roadmap with clear priorities, timelines, and measurable success metrics.
- Establish meaningful HR KPIs and reporting.
- Strengthen compliance, documentation, policies, and processes.
- Evaluate and improve the recruiting and onboarding experience.
- Develop a long-term talent acquisition and retention strategy.
- Build a stronger Employee Value Proposition.
- Introduce proactive compensation benchmarking and market analysis.
- Build strong relationships across executive leadership, operations, plant leadership, and the employee population.
- Help prepare the organization and its people infrastructure for continued growth and future acquisitions.
Qualifications & Experience
- Previous experience as a Head of HR, HR Director, VP of HR, or comparable senior HR leader.
- Demonstrated experience building, transforming, or significantly upgrading an HR function rather than simply maintaining established processes.
- Strong manufacturing experience supporting a blue-collar, hourly production workforce.
- Experience supporting a rapidly growing organization.
- Multi-site manufacturing experience.
- Experience building or improving HR systems, policies, compliance, reporting, and organizational processes.
- Strong talent acquisition and workforce planning experience, including developing recruiting strategies beyond simply filling open positions.
- Experience evaluating compensation, salary structures, market competitiveness, and employee value proposition.
- Strong, business-minded employee relations experience.
- M&A experience is strongly preferred as the organization prepares for future acquisitions.
Leadership Profile
The successful candidate will be a strategic yet hands-on HR leader who is comfortable operating in a growing, entrepreneurial manufacturing environment. They will be approachable, down-to-earth, highly professional, and willing to spend time where the work happens.
This individual should bring a strong business mindset, executive maturity, and the ability to identify problems, develop practical solutions, and drive them through execution. They will need to build credibility across all levels of the organization while bringing greater structure, accountability, consistency, and innovation to the HR function.