KKR Capstone Principal – Human Capital Center

About Broad Based Ownership and KKR’s Human Capital Center

We strongly believe that people are the critical asset in a business – from senior leaders, to plant employees, to engineers, and to sales personnel. We therefore structure our equity plans to encompass the entirety of a company’s workforce. This approach began with our Industrials industry team, and has since been adopted across the entirety of Americas Private Equity and increasingly in other regions and strategies across KKR.  At previous portfolio companies, we have found the impact on morale and engagement from company-wide ownership to be incredible and had the opportunity to capture some video footage.  Please feel free to visit our YouTube channel where you can view these videos, including the below:

• Capital Safety
• Gardner Denver
• C.H.I. Overhead Doors

As you will see in the videos, our unique approach to employee engagement at our portfolio companies extends well beyond ownership.  We make very substantial investments in people.  This includes enhancing worker safety and investing in professional development across a variety of functional areas.  We also make significant investments in the community. To bring together our holistic view of how to invest in human capital, we have recently created a Human Capital Center (HCC) within KKR.   The role of the HCC is to bring together resources, best practices, and standards that can be leveraged by our investment teams and portfolio company management teams worldwide.

We also partner closely with Ownership Works, a non-profit organization founded to scale shared ownership as a means of addressing economic insecurity among employees, narrowing the racial and gender wealth gaps, and strengthening companies and communities in the process. 

The Role

As part of the KKR Portfolio Human Capital Center, the individual will work closely with portfolio company executives and KKR executives to craft innovative, commercially viable programs and strategies for portfolio company employee well-being.   Success in this role will:

• Improve outcomes in terms of financial resilience as well as physical and mental health for KKR portfolio company employees
• Provide employee owners a meaningful and inclusive voice in shaping the benefits programs that will drive the most productivity and engagement possible

This role will also act as a generalist across other aspects of the Human Capital Center, providing support to companies launching employee ownership and on other human capital topics.

Specifically, the individual will:

• Create and execute a strategy to drive financial resiliency among KKR portfolio company employees, including a playbook for portfolio companies to deploy and to be held accountable to measurable results over time
• Work with a variety of third-party partners in the financial wellness/literacy space to craft programs, measure impact, and continuously innovate and improve approaches
• Be the lead across KKR for best practices in employee well-being and integrating well-being programs, including worker voice on benefits, into broad-based ownership program implementation
• Tie financial wellness/resiliency and other employee well-being programs to performance and find critical KPIs to track and measure progress
• Manage day-to-day relationships with external partners, including tracking performance and reviewing opportunities for increased impact with the partners on a regular basis
• Collaborate closely with Ownership Works to further widespread adoption of how financial wellness/resiliency and employee wellness supports the overall mission of the employee ownership movement
• Support the implementation of employee engagement programs, which include broad-based ownership plans, financial literacy programs, and community engagement initiatives at portfolio companies

The ideal candidate will bring:

• 5-10+ years of relevant work experience with a strong record of driving tangible impact either in-house or for clients
• Experience in human capital management or human capital consulting a plus
• The combination of a commercial mindset and mission-orientation
• Gravitas to interact at the highest levels of portfolio companies
• Self-starting, detail-oriented, quality conscious, and the ability to multi-task in a fast-paced environment
• Ability to balance multiple stakeholders, work collaboratively and without ego to drive results
• Superior written and verbal communications skills with the ability to communicate and influence through consensus-building; seen widely as a trusted and welcomed partner and advisor
• Curiosity and a continuous improvement mindset
• Experience implementing transformative programs across organizations, with quantitative results to support
• Excellent project management skills to run multiple projects/engagements simultaneously

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