Job Information
King County DHR Transit Leaves Manager in Seattle, Washington
The* Employee Services Division within the *Metro Transit Department (MTD) *seeks an experienced, collaborative, and motivated *Transit Leaves Manager to fill a* Special Duty Assignment (SDA)/Term Limited Temporary (TLT) position. *This position is anticipated to last through March 31, 2025, with the possibility of extension. As the Transit Leaves Manager, you will lead, guide, oversee, and support Metro's Leaves Team, ensuring the seamless execution of all protected leave processes within the Department while maintaining compliance and ensuring overall process success. This role will also build and implement a strategy to centralize Leave support *for the entire Metro Transit Department while delivering high level quality service to support Metro's protected leave needs. The *Transit Leaves Manager is a member of the Employee Services Management Team (ESMT) *and *reports to Metro's HR Manager III. This position collaborates closely with human resource professionals across the county to offer specialized support to both management and employees. This involves finding a balance between departmental operational requirements and compliance with relevant federal, state, and local laws, as well as labor agreement provisions.
Job Duties
Applying equity, racial, and social justice principles is a daily responsibility and a foundational expectation for all King County employees. All employees are expected to model and apply our equity, racial, and social justice shared values, behaviors, and practices. As the Transit Leaves Manager, you will:
Manage the Transit Leaves Team by defining clear objectives, fostering effective communication, supporting team performance, offering coaching and feedback, acknowledging strengths, fostering their development, and navigating challenges.
Lead the team and processes associated with protected leave management to adhere with state and federal requirements and labor agreement provisions to ensure policies are applied accurately, consistently, and equitably across the organization.
Build and implement a strategy to centralize leaves management for the entirety of the Metro Transit Department, centering the goal of consistent and equitable access to programs and entitlements.
Develop, implement, and monitor performance metrics for the Transit Leaves program.
Develop an onboarding/orientation for leave processes and systems to current and future team members of Metro.
Provide continuous learning opportunities to ensure team is up to date on HR and protected leaves best practices, laws, policies, processes, and contracts.
Work collaboratively with the team by involving them in decisions and listening to and incorporating their feedback and suggestions.
Evaluate individual and team performance and work collaboratively with team members to develop performance.
Serve as a subject matter expert for the team and Metro partners on FMLA and other pertinent laws and regulations, providing sound guidance and direction to the team on the most complex leave cases.
Collaborate with internal Employee Services teams and external partners such as the Department of Human Resources, Safety & Claims/Workers' Compensation, Office of Labor Relations, and Central Payroll, ensuring Leaves Team provides compliant advice to managers and employees based on collective bargaining agreements, Contingent Worker Manual, Master Labor Agreement, government regulations, benefit plans, as well as King County and Metro policies.
Manage complex policy exceptions and servic