Associate Vice President of HR Operations

Overview

Join The New School

At The New School, we redefine the boundaries of education, creativity, and innovation. Founded in 1919 and located in the heart of New York City, we are home to over 9,000 students from over 100 countries, offering more than 135 degree and diploma programs across our renowned colleges, including Parsons School of Design, The New School for Social Research, Eugene Lang college of Liberal Arts, Parsons Paris, and the College of Performing Arts.

Our progressive, interdisciplinary approach has earned us recognition as one of the most forward-thinking institutions in the world.

Reporting to the Vice President of Human Resources, this role serves as a member of the Human Resources leadership team responsible for the strategic direction, operational efficiency, and integrity of HR processes and workflows, technologies, and data-driven processes. This role requires a blend of financial acumen, advanced analytical ability, and systems engineering expertise. This role oversees the entire employee life-cycle infrastructure from faculty and student employment processing to staff transitions, ensuring that HR operations are optimized, compliant, and supportive of the university’s institutional imperatives.

A key priority for this role is the modernization of HR service delivery through the build-out of a dedicated Workday Specialist function, designed to move the department from reactive system maintenance to proactive strategic enablement.

The Assoc.

VP ensures that HR systems, processes, and services are scalable, compliant, data-driven, and aligned with the university’s academic, research, and financial objectives. This role acts as a principal advisor to executive leadership and partners closely with Finance, Information Technology, Institutional Research, and academic and administrative units to enable sound workforce planning, fiscal responsibility, and organizational effectiveness.

• Scalable Systems & Process Design
• Infrastructure Design:
  Architect and implement HR processes and systems that are designed to scale with the university’s growth and evolving complexity.
• Workday Optimization:
  Design and launch a new Workday Specialist function. This includes defining the role s parameters, recruiting the talent, and ensuring the function bridges the gap between technical configuration and functional HR needs.
• Process Engineering:
  Lead the "Continuous Improvement" roadmap, identifying manual bottlenecks and replacing them with automated, scalable Workday workflows.
• Provide executive leadership for HR operations infrastructure, ensuring consistency, efficiency, and high-quality service delivery for faculty, staff, and student employees.
• Financial Management & Resource Allocation
• Budgetary Stewardship:
  Provide executive oversight of the HR operations budget and partners with the CFO to ensure HR initiatives (such as the Involuntary Program and VSP) meet university-wide fiscal targets.
• Cost-Benefit Analysis:
  Evaluates the financial impact of HR system investments and process changes, ensuring maximum ROI on the university’s Workday investment.
• Partner with Finance to support annual and multi-year workforce planning and zero-based budgeting processes, ensuring personnel costs align with institutional fiscal targets.
• Data Analysis & Workforce Insights
• Advanced People Analytics:
  Oversee the development of sophisticated reporting, dashboards, and metrics to inform senior leadership decisions regarding workforce trends, retention, and departmental performance.
• Data-Driven Budgeting:
  Partner with the CFO and Finance to provide data-rich support for annual zero-based budgeting processes, ensuring that personnel costs and unit budget targets are managed with precision.
• Partner with Finance, Institutional Research, and academic leadership to integrate workforce data into institutional planning and budget decisions.
• Integrity & Auditing:
  Establish rigorous audit protocols to ensure the quality and integrity of all HR transactions and foundational data, particularly during large-scale initiatives like VSP/VERP or organizational restructuring.
• Oversee…