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Head of People in San Ramon, California at Hope Program, A Licensed Clinical Social Worker Professional Corporation

NewSalary: $144345 - $209243
Hope Program, A Licensed Clinical Social Worker Professional Corporation
San Ramon, California, 94583, United States
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Job Description

Head of People

HOPE Program / New Beginnings / MSO Platform
Location: California
Reports to: Founder / Owner / CEO
Direct Reports: Recruiter; potential HR Operations Manager and additional future People team members

About the Organization

HOPE Program and New Beginnings provide specialized outpatient mental health, forensic treatment, and related behavioral health services across California. The organization serves a complex and highly regulated client population, working with individuals, families, public agencies, referral partners, and justice-system stakeholders. The work is mission-driven, clinically sophisticated, operationally dynamic, and deeply human.

As the organization continues to grow, it is building a stronger People infrastructure to support employees across HOPE and New Beginnings, while also developing People-related capabilities that can support external clients through a management services organization, or MSO, arrangement. This creates a unique opportunity for an experienced HR leader to build the full People function in a high-impact, founder-led organization.

The Opportunity

The Head of People will lead the full HR ecosystem for the organization, including talent acquisition, onboarding, employee relations, performance management, retention, payroll, compensation, compliance, HR operations, manager support, and organizational development.

This is both a strategic and hands-on role. The right leader will bring mature judgment, strong California employment law and wage-and-hour knowledge, operational discipline, and the ability to build practical systems in a fast-moving environment. They will serve as a trusted thought partner to a dynamic founder/owner CEO, helping identify risk, solve problems, strengthen the employee experience, and build scalable People practices that support growth.

The Head of People will inherit and develop a small team, including a recruiter and an HR Director, while building the structure, tools, cadence, and service model needed for the next stage of the organization.

Key ResponsibilitiesPeople Strategy and Organizational Leadership
  • Build and lead a scalable People function that supports HOPE, New Beginnings, and future MSO-supported client organizations.
  • Partner closely with the Founder/CEO and senior leadership team on organizational design, workforce planning, leadership effectiveness, retention, culture, and risk mitigation.
  • Translate business priorities into practical People strategies, systems, and processes.
  • Assess the current HR infrastructure and create a roadmap for what needs to be built, improved, automated, documented, or clarified.
  • Establish clear People team service standards, workflows, escalation paths, and accountability mechanisms.
  • Serve as a steady, thoughtful, solutions-oriented leader in a mission-driven, regulated, and high-stakes operating environment.
    • Talent Acquisition and Workforce Planning
  • Lead the organization’s talent acquisition strategy, ensuring recruiting supports growth, clinical quality, compliance, and retention.
  • Manage and develop the recruiter, strengthening sourcing, screening, selection, offer, and onboarding practices.
  • Partner with hiring managers to clarify roles, improve job descriptions, assess candidate quality, and make sound hiring decisions.
  • Build recruiting processes that are efficient, compliant, equitable, and aligned with the realities of clinical and behavioral health hiring.
  • Track recruiting metrics, including time to fill, source effectiveness, candidate quality, offer acceptance, and early turnover.
  • Help the organization compete for talent in a challenging market for clinicians, behavioral health professionals, administrative staff, and operational leaders.
    • Employee Relations, Retention, and Manager Support
  • Serve as a trusted resource for employees and managers, providing balanced, timely, and sound guidance.
  • Lead employee relations matters with strong judgment, appropriate documentation, and an eye toward both fairness and risk mitigation.
  • Coach managers on performance concerns, communication, accountability, documentation, and employee development.
  • Build practical retention strategies that address employee experience, manager capability, career development, workload, communication, and recognition.
  • Identify patterns in employee concerns, turnover, engagement, or performance issues and recommend proactive solutions.
  • Support a culture that is mission-aligned, professional, accountable, and respectful.
    • Compliance, Risk Identification, and Wage-and-Hour
  • Own HR compliance across the organization, with particular attention to California wage-and-hour requirements, exempt/non-exempt classification, meal and rest breaks, overtime, final pay, recordkeeping, leaves of absence, accommodations, and wage statements.
  • Identify employment-related risk and recommend practical mitigation strategies before issues escalate.
  • Ensure HR policies, handbooks, templates, employment practices, and manager guidance are current, compliant, and consistently applied.
  • Partner with legal counsel, payroll partners, brokers, and outside advisors as needed.
  • Maintain strong documentation practices and ensure the organization is prepared for audits, claims, investigations, or agency inquiries.
  • Support compliance needs related to a multi-site, multi-entity, and MSO-supported operating model.
    • Payroll, HR Operations, and Systems
  • Oversee payroll accuracy, timeliness, controls, and compliance, ensuring strong coordination among HR, finance, operations, and managers.
  • Build or refine HR operations processes across onboarding, offboarding, employee data, personnel files, benefits administration, payroll changes, leaves, policy acknowledgments, and reporting.
  • Evaluate current HR systems and recommend improvements that support scale, data integrity, compliance, and manager self-service.
  • Create reliable reporting on headcount, turnover, hiring, retention, payroll, compliance, and other key People metrics.
  • Ensure the People function is organized, responsive, and able to support both day-to-day needs and longer-term growth.
    • Performance, Compensation, and Talent Development
  • Build and improve performance management practices that are clear, practical, and aligned with the organization’s values and operating needs.
  • Support managers in setting expectations, giving feedback, addressing performance issues, and developing employees.
  • Help create compensation structures and practices that are competitive, internally consistent, compliant, and financially responsible.
  • Support career pathing, role clarity, and development planning where appropriate, especially in clinical, administrative, and leadership roles.
  • Partner with leadership to identify high-potential employees, succession needs, and capability gaps.
    • MSO and External Client Support
  • Help design a People service model that can support employees of HOPE and New Beginnings, as well as external clients served through an MSO arrangement.
  • Develop scalable, repeatable HR processes that can be adapted across entities while respecting legal, operational, and cultural differences.
  • Create documentation, playbooks, templates, and service standards that allow the People function to support growth beyond a single operating company.
  • Partner with leadership to determine which HR services should be centralized, customized, outsourced, or delivered directly.
    • Ideal Candidate Profile

    The ideal candidate is an experienced HR leader who has built or significantly upgraded a People function in a complex, growing organization. They are equally comfortable advising a founder, resolving a sensitive employee relations matter, tightening wage-and-hour compliance, improving recruiting discipline, and rolling up their sleeves to fix an HR process.

    They bring excellent judgment, emotional intelligence, operational rigor, and a practical understanding of risk. They know how to balance mission and compliance, speed and discipline, empathy and accountability. They are not looking for a policy-only role; they are a builder, operator, advisor, and people leader.

    Qualifications
  • Significant HR leadership experience, ideally including ownership of the full HR function.
  • Strong knowledge of California employment law and wage-and-hour compliance.
  • Experience overseeing recruiting, payroll, HR operations, employee relations, compliance, performance management, and retention.
  • Demonstrated ability to build HR infrastructure in a growing, multi-site, multi-entity, or founder-led organization.
  • Experience managing direct reports and building team capability.
  • Strong employee relations judgment, including investigations, documentation, performance concerns, and manager coaching.
  • Ability to serve as a credible thought partner to a founder/owner CEO and senior leadership team.
  • Comfort operating in a regulated, service-oriented, mission-driven, or healthcare/behavioral health environment.
  • Strong systems orientation, with the ability to create scalable processes, reporting, workflows, and accountability.
  • Excellent communication skills, including the ability to be direct, thoughtful, calm, and trusted across all levels of the organization.
    • Preferred Background
  • Experience in behavioral health, healthcare, social services, human services, or another regulated service environment.
  • Experience supporting clinicians, hourly/non-exempt employees, distributed teams, or field-based employees.
  • Experience with MSO, multi-entity, professional services, or shared-services operating models.
  • Experience partnering with founders, owner/operators, or entrepreneurial executive teams.
  • Familiarity with HRIS, ATS, payroll systems, benefits administration, and compliance reporting.
    • Leadership Attributes
  • Sound judgment and high integrity.
  • Practical, grounded, and solutions-oriented.
  • Strong risk radar with the ability to identify issues early.
  • Comfortable with ambiguity and able to create structure without over-engineering.
  • Empathetic but not conflict-avoidant.
  • Clear, credible, and calm under pressure.
  • Able to build trust with executives, managers, clinicians, and employees.
  • Strong bias toward documentation, follow-through, and operational excellence.
  • Mission-aligned and respectful of the sensitive nature of the organization’s work.
    • Measures of Success

    In the first year, the Head of People will be expected to:

  • Stabilize and strengthen core HR operations, payroll, compliance, and employee relations practices.
  • Build a clear People roadmap aligned with organizational growth and risk priorities.
  • Improve recruiting process discipline, candidate experience, hiring manager partnership, and hiring outcomes.
  • Identify and mitigate key wage-and-hour and employment compliance risks.
  • Establish stronger reporting and visibility into headcount, turnover, hiring, retention, and employee relations trends.
  • Build trust with the Founder/CEO, senior leadership team, managers, employees, and People team members.
  • Create the foundation for a scalable People service model that can support HOPE, New Beginnings, and future MSO-supported clients.
    • Compensation

    Compensation will be competitive and commensurate with experience, scope, and market factors. The organization offers the opportunity to build a meaningful People function in a growing, mission-driven, founder-led behavioral health platform.

    Job Location

    San Ramon, California, 94583, United States

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