Who We Are

BioMarin is the world leader in delivering therapeutics that provide meaningful advances to patients who live with serious and life-threatening rare genetic diseases. BioMarin targets diseases that lack effective therapies and affect relatively small numbers of patients, many of whom are children. These conditions are often inherited, difficult to diagnose, progressively debilitating and have few, if any, treatment options. BioMarin will continue to focus on advancing therapies that are the first or best of their kind. BioMarin has experienced substantial growth organically since its inception, primarily over the last decade.  While this steady growth in both cost structure and staff was essential to BioMarin’s emergence as a leading, fully integrated global biopharma with approximately $2 billion in revenues from over 75 countries, a robust R&D pipeline, operating profits, and world-class technical capabilities through its 3,000 employees; BioMarin leadership desires to optimize the efficiency of its operations for the future through its next phase of growth.


It takes a village, and at BioMarin our Corporate Groups are the people behind our success. Groups such as IT, Finance, Legal, Global Compliance & Ethics, and our People Team provide foundational support of all areas of operation at BioMarin.

The Role

Reporting to the Vice President, People, Technical Operations, the Employee Relations Director is responsible for execution of the Employee Relations Strategy across BioMarin, including Technical Operations, Research & Development, Commercial and Corporate Functions. 

This role is responsible for providing strategic and operational guidance on enterprise-wide employee relations activities, policies, processes, and procedures pertaining to the BioMarin US locations. This role will command employee relations expertise, investigation skills, excellent judgment, and highly developed analytical, interpersonal, problem-solving and communication skills. This position will support business leaders to handle workplace concerns and co-create action plans and provide intervention as necessary. This role will work extensively with Business leaders to identify opportunities to address repeating employee relations issues proactively and preventatively and will provide guidance and coaching to managers of all levels to address behavioral and performance areas. The Employee Relations director will stay attuned to organizational and operational changes across BioMarin locations in the US to identify potential employee relations risks and develop plans to address proactively.

This requires being on-site in Novato a minimum of two days per week which right now are Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

Responsibilities

Working with the People Partners across the People function, this position is responsible for ensuring that employee relations issues are addressed in a robust, consistent, appropriate, and legal expectations and guidelines are fulfilled for both the employee and the company.  This role will work closely with our partners in Legal and in Compliance.  This role will have ownership over employee relations but is an individual contributor role with no direct reports currently.

Responsibilities include for the role include (but are not limited to):

• Overseeing the management of the employee relations processes and procedures to enable effective conflict resolution, and problem solving.
• Conducting, overseeing, and assisting employee relation issues to manage employee concerns and to identify and implement appropriate action and accountability practices in accordance with progressive discipline principles.
• Identifying a fair and inclusive process appropriate for employee concerns or grievances including the leading of fact-finding, appropriate due diligence, and investigations to ensure the adherence to BioMarin’s employee relations policies and practices.
• Leading conflict resolution training in order to train managers to work with their teams to promote a great work experience. 
• Ensuring employees are treated fairly and all voices are heard, action led to support a diverse workforce of individuals with different backgrounds and cultures, gender, races, sexual orientations to work towards elevating the employee experience to deliver a more wholesome work environment for all diverse employees.
• Staying attuned to organizational and operational changes across the company to identify potential employee relations risks and develop plans to address proactively.
• Providing guidance and coaching to managers of all levels to address employee behavior and performance.
• Providing guidance and assisting with the development and delivery of appropriate performance feedback or action plans including corrective/disciplinary actions.
• Ensures that effective and robust documentation techniques are used and maintains accurate, confidential records regarding all reported matters and fact-finding documentation.
• Interpreting and applying understanding of Employee policies and practices, employment law, and other regulations to provide guidance or clarification on ER matters.
• Maintaining the highest level of integrity when managing employee relations issues and managing reported matters.
• Experience with internal alternative dispute resolution, specifically workplace mediation and other conflict resolution skills.
• Working collaboratively and proactively with other teams, within Legal, Compliance and Payroll to develop an approach that provides the best support to the business.
• Providing guidance aligned to supporting leaders to competently deal with investigations, disciplinaries, grievances, performance management issues / absences, sensitively in line with policy principles.
• Providing insight to ensure the continued development of relevant employment related people policies and procedures.
• Supporting training initiatives and the continual development management toolkits for leaders.
• Proactively working with leaders to enable them to competently manage people issues promptly using best practice approaches & people policies principles
• Maintaining up to date knowledge on employment law principles and associated legislative changes and effectively utilize this knowledge
• Ensuring ER cases are recorded, tracked, and proactively managed to conclusion or hand off to the relevant Strategic Business Partner.
  
  Requirements
  
  
• 10 years of experience working in the Employee Relations field.
• Strong analytical, interpersonal, problem-solving and communication skills.
• Proven investigation skills including interviews and investigative report writing.
• Excellent writing and language skills
• Strong attention to detail in documentation of employee relations issues
• Ability to work in a dynamic and agile environment.
• Strong strategic, negotiations and diplomacy skills.
• Strong understanding of California-specific and federal employment laws..
• Ability to comprehend, interpret, and apply the appropriate sections of applicable laws, guidelines, regulations, and policies.
• Exceptional interpersonal skills.
• Strong understanding of dispute resolution and compensation administration.
• Ability to remain tactful, calm, and persuasive in controversial and/or confrontational situations.

We are an equal opportunity employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, national origin, disability status, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law.

In the U.S., the salary range for this position is $ 176,000 to $ 264,000 per year, which factors in various geographic regions. The base pay actually offered will take into account internal equity and also may vary depending on the candidate's geographic region, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience among other factors. A discretionary bonus and/or long-term incentive units may be provided as part of the compensation package, in addition to the full range of medical, financial, and/or other benefits, dependent on the level and position offered.