Employee Relations Manager, Gusto
$150.6-185.8k
+ Equity
2-3 days a week in office
Automated payroll, benefits & HR platform
Be an early applicant
Automated payroll, benefits & HR platform
1001+ employees
Be an early applicant
$150.6-185.8k
+ Equity
2-3 days a week in office
1001+ employees
Company mission
To grow the small business economy.
Role
Who you are
- The ideal candidate has deep fluency with employment policy, sound judgment under ambiguity, and the people-leadership experience to build a team others trust with their hardest moments
- Bachelor's degree in human resources, business administration, or a related field; an advanced degree or JD is a plus
- 7–10+ years of progressive HR or Employee Relations experience, including direct ownership of ER casework, plus demonstrated experience leading or supervising a team
- Deep knowledge of employment law (EEOC, ADA, FMLA, FLSA) and experience conducting employee investigations — interviewing, assessing facts, documenting findings, and partnering with Legal when appropriate
- Strong coaching and mentoring skills, with the ability to influence, inspire, and guide both within and outside of hierarchical lines.
- Excellent judgment navigating ambiguity — balancing employee experience, fairness and consistency, business needs, and organizational risk when making recommendations
- Strong data literacy — comfortable using case trends and ER metrics to make proactive, defensible recommendations
- Experience operating in a fast-scaling technology company — comfortable with frequent organizational changes and distributed/hybrid team dynamics
What the job involves
- We're looking for an experienced Employee Relations Manager to lead Gusto's Employee Relations team — a specialized center of excellence that helps steward and protect company culture by ensuring policy and practice alignment across the organization. This role reports into People Team leadership and partners closely with People Partners/HRBPs, Legal, and business leaders on our highest-risk employee matters
- You will lead and coach a team of Employee Relations Partners handling complex performance and investigations casework, using case data to identify patterns and recommend changes to increase Gustie experience and decrease risk. You're comfortable translating policy into consistent day-to-day practice across a fast-scaling technology company, and you know how to coach organizational leaders through difficult conversations, performance improvement plans, and structural team changes without eroding trust
- Manage, mentor, and coach a team of Employee Relations Partners — setting quality standards for documentation and process flow, overseeing caseload distribution, and continuous process improvement within the team
- Lead or oversee complex, high-risk workplace investigations with airtight documentation in our case management system, partnering with Legal to reduce organizational and legal risk
- Own performance-management casework end-to-end, coaching managers through documented coaching plans, PIPs, disciplinary actions, and exits, while balancing employee experience, fairness, and business risk
- Translate Gusto's codes of conduct and other policies into consistent, fair practice across departments — especially through periods of rapid scaling and structural change
- Enable managers on performance management processes, difficult conversations, and structural team changes
- Track ER metrics and case trends to surface areas of opportunity. Recommend action for managers and People Partners / HRBPs to maximize engagement and minimize risk
- Serve as a strategic advisor to senior business leaders on complex personnel decisions, acting as ER's specialized center of excellence alongside People Partners/HRBPs and Legal
- Operate with urgency and a bias toward resolution — prioritizing the issues that matter most, moving straightforward matters quickly, and applying deeper rigor where the risk or complexity warrants it
- Demonstrate an AI-native mindset: Actively use AI to work more effectively — synthesizing case trends, drafting documentation, spotting patterns in ER data — while knowing when information needs to stay protected and when a human needs to stay firmly in the loop
Our take
For many small businesses, vital administrative tasks such as payroll, taxes, and benefits are manual tasks that take time and energy - which many SMB owners don’t have. The co-founders of Gusto all come from small business backgrounds, which is why they created a platform that would handle employee payments, benefits administration, and compliance support specifically for small businesses.
The company may have started slowly, as the founders focused on nailing each individual aspect of Gusto’s operations, but has now skyrocketed to unicorn status with more than 400,000 customers and a multi-billion dollar valuation. And in 2021, Gusto began acquiring other companies to strengthen its offering and position in a competitive market, including the likes of Ardius, Symmetry and Guideline.
Through its continued acquisitions and fundraising efforts, the company has carved out a strong position for itself in the space. It continues to expand its platform, for example by partnering with Parafin to launch a payroll line of credit for small businesses, and more recently launching Cofounder, an AI teammate tailored to the needs of small businesses.
Steph
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
45% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Funding (last 2 of 9 rounds)
May 2022
$55m
SERIES E
Aug 2021
$175m
SERIES E
Total funding: $706.3m
Company benefits
- Medical, dental, and vision insurance for employees and dependents
- Family care and support, including family planning and fertility benefits
- Gender-affirming care and support
- A variety of mental health resources
- Paid vacation, sick time, bereavement, and holidays, paid leaves, sabbatical, and more
- Free meals and refreshments at the office (conversation and community is an added bonus!)
Company HQ
Central Waterfront, San Francisco, CA
Leadership
Joshua Reeves
(CEO & Co-Founder)Studied Electrical Engineering at Stanford and went onto co-found Gusto in 2011.
Tomer London
(CPO & Co-Founder)Has a PhD in Electrical Engineering from Stanford. Was a Researcher at Intel, and then interned at Bump Technologies. Co-founded Vizmo before co-founding Gusto in 2011.
Edward Kim
(Head of Technology & Co-Founder)Studied Electrical Engineering at Stanford. Was Senior Project Engineer at Volkswagen of America Electronics Research Lab and then co-founded Picwing before co-founding Gusto in 2011.
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