Group Vice President - Human Resources - West

Group Vice President - Human Resources - West | Summit Healthcare Mgmt | Nashville, Tennessee

About the Job:

PURPOSE STATEMENT:

Summit Behavioral Healthcare is a leading provider of behavioral healthcare services, operating a growing network of acute psychiatric hospitals and substance use disorder treatment facilities across the United States. Our mission is to improve the lives we touch by providing high-quality, compassionate behavioral healthcare. Summit is committed to building a culture that attracts, develops, engages, and retains exceptional employees and leaders who share our commitment to the patients, families, and communities we serve.

The Group Vice President-Human Resources serves as the senior Human Resources executive and strategic people advisor to the Group President and senior operations leadership for an assigned division of Summit Behavioral Healthcare. Reporting to the Chief Human Resources Officer, this role is responsible for developing and executing the Group's people strategy, leading HR delivery across assigned markets and facilities, and ensuring workforce priorities are aligned with operational and organizational objectives. The Group VP-HR provides strategic and operational leadership across employee retention and engagement, talent and leadership development, workforce planning, organizational effectiveness, employee relations, and HR operations while developing a high-performing field HR organization capable of supporting Summit's continued growth and evolution.

Roles and Responsibilities:

ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONS:

Strategic HR Partnership and Operational Leadership

• Serve as the senior HR advisor to the Group President and senior operations leadership, translating business priorities into actionable people, organizational, and workforce strategies across assigned markets and facilities.
• Exercise appropriate HR decision-making authority across the Group, providing consistent, timely, and business-oriented guidance while ensuring alignment with enterprise HR strategy, organizational objectives, and applicable employment requirements.
• Establish a regular MOR operating cadence with Group and regional leadership to review retention, engagement, workforce, employee relations, staffing, and other key people metrics, identifying areas requiring intervention, action planning, and leadership accountability.
• Proactively identify workforce risks, organizational challenges, and emerging trends, partnering with Operations to develop and execute measurable action plans that improve workforce stability and operational performance.
• Lead the people strategy associated with organizational growth, restructuring, leadership changes, new programs, acquisitions, and other business initiatives impacting assigned markets and facilities.

Culture, Employee Engagement and Retention

• Own the Group's employee retention strategy and partner with operational leaders to achieve established retention goals, ensuring targeted action plans are developed and executed for facilities, markets, departments, or leaders performing below expectations.
• Lead employee engagement strategies across the Group, ensuring engagement survey results, employee feedback, and other indicators are translated into measurable leadership action plans and sustained improvements in the employee experience.
• Analyze trends across recruitment, onboarding, employee relations, engagement, retention, and offboarding to identify root causes of workforce challenges and implement improvements throughout the employee lifecycle.
• Partner with operational leaders and HR teams to strengthen organizational culture, leadership accountability, employee recognition, communication, and the overall employee experience across assigned markets and facilities.
• Collaborate with Operations, Talent Acquisition, HR Centers of Excellence, and field HR to implement strategies that strengthen Summit's employment value proposition and advance the organization's goal of becoming an employer of choice.

Talent, Leadership Development and Organizational Capability

• Partner with the training department leadership, senior operations leadership, and HR leadership to design, build, and implement scalable talent management, leadership development, performance management, succession planning, and organizational development practices.
• Lead Group-level talent reviews and succession planning processes, identifying high-potential employees, critical roles, leadership gaps, and development priorities while measuring progress in building internal leadership pipelines and organizational bench strength.
• Build leadership capability across the division through targeted training, coaching, and development focused on effective people leadership, performance management, employee engagement, retention, accountability, change leadership, and organizational effectiveness.
• Strengthen talent selection practices by partnering with Talent Acquisition and Operations to implement behavioral interviewing, structured interview guides, candidate scorecards, and hiring leader training designed to improve selection consistency and quality of hire.
• Develop and mentor Regional/Market HR Business Partners and field HR leaders, building a high-performing HR leadership pipeline capable of providing strategic HR partnership and assuming progressively greater responsibility across the organization.

Workforce Strategy, Talent Integration and Organizational Effectiveness

• Partner with Operations, Finance, Talent Acquisition, and HR leadership to develop workforce plans that align staffing levels, position control, workforce availability, and talent needs with current and projected operational requirements.
• Monitor and analyze key workforce indicators, including vacancies, turnover, staffing levels, agency and contract labor utilization, scheduling trends, and other workforce metrics, identifying risks and partnering with operational leadership to implement timely corrective actions.
• Serve as the primary HR liaison between Talent Acquisition and Group operations, ensuring recruiting strategies and priorities are aligned with business needs while promoting operational leader accountability for timely and effective participation throughout the hiring and selection process.
• Partner with operational leaders to identify the root causes of persistent workforce challenges, distinguishing among recruitment, compensation, scheduling, leadership, selection, onboarding, engagement, and retention issues to develop targeted and sustainable solutions.
• Provide leaders with actionable workforce data, reporting, and insights that strengthen position control, staffing oversight, labor optimization, organizational design, and workforce decision-making across assigned markets and facilities.

HR Leadership, Employee Relations & Operational Excellence

• Lead, coach, and develop the Regional/Market HR Business Partner organization, establishing clear performance expectations, consistent HR practices, and accountability for delivering high-quality HR partnership across assigned markets and facilities.
• Provide senior-level oversight and consultation on complex, high-risk, or sensitive employee relations matters, ensuring investigations and corrective actions are thorough, timely, consistent, and aligned with organizational policies and applicable employment requirements.
• Establish and monitor employee relations performance standards, including investigation and case resolution timelines, recurring issue trends, and facility-level risk indicators, implementing corrective strategies and leadership accountability when performance falls below expectations.
• Partner with SSC HR functions and facility leadership to ensure HR policies, programs, systems, processes, and organizational initiatives are consistently and effectively implemented throughout the Group.
• Continuously evaluate the effectiveness and capability of the field HR operating model, developing HR talent, improving service delivery, and driving greater consistency, efficiency, scalability, and accountability across the HR function.
• Ability to travel to assigned facilities, as needed.

EDUCATION/EXPERIENCE/SKILL REQUIREMENTS:

• Bachelor's degree in Human Resources, Business Administration, Organizational Development, Healthcare Administration, or a related field required.
• Master's degree in Human Resources, Business Administration, Healthcare Administration, Organizational Development, or a related discipline preferred.
• Five or more years of senior Human Resources leadership experience within healthcare, with behavioral healthcare experience strongly preferred.
• Demonstrated experience providing strategic HR leadership within a multi-site, geographically dispersed organization and partnering directly with senior operational and executive leaders.
• Broad HR leadership experience across employee retention and engagement, employee relations, talent management, leadership development, workforce planning, organizational effectiveness, and change management, with demonstrated success using workforce data and analytics to improve organizational outcomes.

LEADERSHIP ATTRIBUTES:

• Demonstrates exceptional emotional intelligence, self-awareness, executive presence, and interpersonal judgment, with the ability to build trusted relationships, navigate complex and sensitive situations, influence senior leaders, and effectively challenge conventional thinking when necessary.
• Possesses strong business acumen and a competitive, results-oriented mindset with a high sense of ownership and accountability; demonstrates the ability to translate people strategies into measurable workforce and operational outcomes while balancing strategic priorities with effective execution.
• Serves as a collaborative and courageous leader who develops others, communicates with transparency, leads effectively through change and ambiguity, and demonstrates the resilience, adaptability, and sound judgment necessary to succeed in a complex, fast-paced, multi-site healthcare environment.

LICENSES/DESIGNATIONS/CERTIFICATIONS:

Professional HR certification, such as SHRM-SCP, SPHR, or equivalent, preferred.

WORK LOCATION:

This position is a remote position.

SUPERVISORY REQUIREMENTS:

Five or more years of supervisory experience, preferably in behavioral healthcare.

Why Summit Healthcare Mgmt?Summit Healthcare Mgmt offers a comprehensive benefit plan and a competitive salary commensurate with experience and qualifications. Qualified candidates should apply by submitting a resume. Summit Healthcare Mgmt is an EOE.

Veterans and military spouses are highly encouraged to apply. Summit BHC is dedicated to serving Veterans with specialized programming at our treatment centers across the country. We recognize and value the unique strengths of the military community in supporting our mission to serve those who have served.