Chief Human Resources Officer

The Chief Human Resources Officer (CHRO) is a business executive and trusted adviser to the CEO, Board, and executive leadership team. The CHRO translates Upstate Niagara Cooperative’s strategy and farmer-owned values into a disciplined people strategy that strengthens leadership, culture, capability, accountability, and performance across a complex, multi-site manufacturing organization.

This leader establishes clear direction, sound policies, and consistent execution while balancing enterprise strategy with frontline credibility. Success requires authenticity, confidentiality, courage, business and financial acumen, sound judgment, and follow-through.

Leadership Mandate

• Build a high-performance culture where expectations are clear, leaders are accountable, employees are respected, and results and values reinforce one another.
• Create an enterprise talent system that identifies, attracts, develops, and retains exceptional talent from the frontline through the executive level.
• Strengthen management quality through coaching, development, clear performance standards, and timely accountability.
• Bring operating discipline to HR through clear priorities, SMART goals, measurable outcomes, ownership, and consistent follow-through.
• Serve as a trusted, independent adviser who protects confidentiality and balances employee, business, farmer-owner, legal, and reputational considerations.

Enterprise People Strategy & Executive Partnership

• Develop and execute a multi-year human capital strategy aligned with the Cooperative’s business plan, growth agenda, operating model, and financial objectives.
• Advise the CEO, Board, and executive leadership team on organization health, leadership effectiveness, workforce risk, executive talent, succession, compensation, culture, and organizational design.
• Apply business and financial insight to prioritize people investments and connect them to productivity, retention, capability, risk, and profitability.
• Translate strategy into annual priorities, SMART goals, scorecards, owners, milestones, and disciplined operating reviews.

Culture, Leadership & Accountability

• Define and embed the desired culture through leader expectations, operating routines, talent decisions, recognition, performance management, and accountability.
• Maintain visible presence in manufacturing facilities and with frontline employees; understand operational realities and translate them into practical people solutions.
• Assess leadership objectively and address ineffective or values-inconsistent leadership directly, fairly, and promptly.
• Coach executives, HR leaders, plant leaders, and emerging talent while building their capability and accountability.

Talent, Succession & Organizational Capability

• Build enterprise talent pipelines for hourly, skilled-trades, professional, plant leadership, and executive roles, including workforce planning for critical and hard-to-fill capabilities.
• Lead talent reviews and succession planning for critical roles, including readiness, development, retention risks, emergency successors, and long-term successors.
• Raise the quality, consistency, and speed of hiring and promotion decisions through disciplined talent assessment.
• Develop practical leadership development, onboarding, mentoring, and frontline supervisor programs tied to defined competencies and measurable outcomes.
• Ensure performance management differentiates performance, provides timely feedback, recognizes contribution, and addresses persistent underperformance.

HR Operating Discipline, Policy & Service Delivery

• Establish and consistently apply clear employment policies, standards, decision rights, and governance across all locations.
• Build a capable, service-oriented HR team with clear roles, measurable outcomes, appropriate delegation, and accountability.
• Personally engage in high-risk, high-impact, confidential, executive, and precedent-setting matters while empowering the team to resolve routine issues.
• Establish disciplined workflows, service standards, dashboards, audits, and follow-up mechanisms across recruiting, employee relations, investigations, performance, development, HRIS, benefits, and compliance.
• Use people analytics and external benchmarks to identify trends, anticipate risk, and improve decisions.
• Champion modernization of HR technology, data, analytics, automation, and service delivery through strategic investment and strong execution.

Labor Relations, Compliance & Risk

• Set the strategy for constructive labor relations and collective bargaining and ensure consistent contract administration.
• Ensure compliance with applicable employment, labor, benefits, affirmative action, equal employment opportunity, privacy, recordkeeping, and other laws and regulations.
• Oversee fair, timely, well-documented investigations and employee-relations decisions while protecting confidentiality and ensuring consistent treatment.
• Partner with Legal, Finance, Operations, Safety, and Quality to identify and mitigate workforce, conduct, compliance, and reputational risks.

Total Rewards, Engagement & Governance

• Design and govern compensation, incentive, benefit, recognition, and wellness programs that are competitive, financially responsible, performance-oriented, and aligned with Cooperative values.
• Use engagement data, retention trends, site-level insight, and leader accountability to strengthen the employee experience.
• Support the Board’s compensation and succession responsibilities with sound analysis, judgment, and confidentiality.
• Serve on the company retirement committee and provide appropriate oversight of retirement-plan administration and fiduciary processes.
• Represent the Cooperative professionally in relevant community, industry, and talent-market relationships.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Human Resources, Business Administration, Organizational Leadership, or related field; advanced degree strongly preferred.
• At least 15 years of progressive HR leadership experience, including enterprise responsibility in an organization of 1,000 or more employees.
• Significant leadership experience in a multi-site manufacturing, food, agriculture, consumer products, distribution, or comparable operational environment; unionized experience strongly preferred.
• Demonstrated success changing culture, improving leadership quality, and building a sustained high-performance environment with measurable results.
• Proven expertise in executive succession, talent assessment, leadership development, organization design, performance management, labor relations, and total rewards.
• Strong knowledge of employment law, collective bargaining, investigations, HR governance, and policy administration.
• Strong business and financial acumen, including the ability to interpret financial and operating results, build business cases, evaluate tradeoffs, and connect people decisions to enterprise value.
• Executive presence and communication skills sufficient to influence the Board, CEO, senior leaders, plant management, union leaders, and frontline employees.
• Ability and willingness to travel regularly among company locations and maintain visible engagement in manufacturing operations.

Leadership Attributes

• Authentic & Trustworthy – Candid, fair, discreet, consistent, and dependable.
• Confidential & Independent – Protects sensitive information and provides objective counsel.
• Operationally Disciplined – Creates clarity, measures progress, and drives follow-through.
• Empowering & Accountable – Develops capable leaders while holding them accountable for results.
• Courageous & Constructive – Addresses difficult issues and underperformance directly and fairly.
• Manufacturing Credible – Understands plant operations, labor realities, safety, and manufacturing economics.
• Exceptional Judge of Talent – Recognizes capability, potential, character, and fit.

Core Competencies

• Strategic Mindset – Translates future possibilities into practical strategy.
• Business Insight – Connects business, manufacturing, and financial drivers to organizational goals.
• Drives Results – Converts priorities into disciplined execution and measurable results.
• Builds Effective Teams – Creates capable teams with clear purpose and accountability.
• Develops Talent – Builds capability and succession through coaching and development.
• Instills Trust – Builds confidence through honesty, consistency, discretion, and sound judgment.
• Courage – Addresses difficult issues and challenges poor leadership with conviction.

Measures of Success

• A credible human capital strategy and annual operating plan are translated into SMART goals and reviewed through a reliable scorecard cadence.
• Critical roles have viable emergency and long-term succession coverage, with defined readiness and development plans and a stronger internal pipeline.
• Leadership quality and accountability improve, including stronger frontline-manager capability and timely action on weak or values-inconsistent leadership.
• Engagement, regrettable turnover, time-to-fill, internal promotion, retention of high performers, labor outcomes, and HR service delivery demonstrate measurable improvement.
• Policies and employee-relations decisions are clear, consistently applied, legally sound, well documented, and trusted across locations.
• HR is viewed as capable, responsive, business-minded, and accountable—able to execute independently while escalating the right issues.

Working Conditions & Administrative Information

• Executive office and manufacturing-plant environments; regular travel among company facilities is required.
• May require availability outside normal business hours for urgent employee, labor, safety, operational, or crisis matters.
• Supervises the Enterprise Human Resources function and designated direct reports.

Pay: $265,000–$325,000 annually*

*The salary range represents the good faith and reasonable minimum and maximum pay for this role at the time of posting. Actual compensation may vary based on experience, skills, training, knowledge, education, and overall qualifications.