Blue Marble Space (BMS) is seeking an agile, part-time Human Resources Manager (HR) to support the work of a growing not-for-profit organization and its STEM-focused global community of affiliate scientists, young scientist students, and research scientist staff.

The HR Manager’s primary task will be coordinating and managing activities related to the organization’s personnel and ensuring compliance with multi-state agencies, laws, and regulations. This will mean interfacing with employees, contractors, students, and key company stakeholders (including the federal government) to present Blue Marble Space as an attractive employer. Additional responsibilities will be to prepare & process payroll monthly, take over leadership of existing HR duties, take stock of existing benefits packages and plan for growth and improvements, and lay the foundation for a scalable HR infrastructure. This will involve daily interactions with organizational leadership and maintaining up-to-date rosters of our programs. The successful candidate will report directly to the BMS CEO and CFO and engage with the broader administrative team. Growth opportunities include building the HR department as the company grows, developing new processes and workflows, and becoming involved in the organization’s community, including coordinating the organization’s flagship Young Scientist Program and other events managed by the company, such as conference organization.

The successful candidate will have demonstrated HR qualifications, be ready to take on new leadership experience, and possess the talent to learn new software and system integrations. To be successful in this role, the candidate will be an outstanding communicator, be comfortable working 100% remotely with little to no supervision, be self-motivated, an initiative-taker, and be a cheerleader for the mission of the organization. Additional experience with the Heartland Payroll’s ecosystem, Slack, and Google Docs, and Sheets is beneficial. CA employment law compliance experience is a must.

Duties and Responsibilities

• Manage the staffing process, including recruiting, hiring, onboarding, and offboarding.

• Ensure job descriptions are up to date and compliant with all local, state, and federal regulations.

• Investigate employee issues and conflicts and bring them to resolution

• Ensure the organization’s compliance with local, state, and federal regulations

• Ensure all company HR policies are applied consistently

• Maintain company organization charts and employee directory

• Maintain employee files

• Partner with management to ensure strategic HR goals are aligned with organization initiatives

• Maintain HR and payroll systems and processes. Create policy & procedural documentation as needed to strengthen Company policies.

• Analyze trends in compensation and benefits.

• Maintain insurance plans for employees.

• Manage benefits administration, update payroll, and communicate with staff about policy changes.

• Create necessary employer business filings in states where the organization has employees or hires new employees. Maintain an up-to-date listing of state filing deadlines and file annual reports as needed.  

• Coordinate with payroll processing Company to ensure systems are connected with federal and state agencies and that accurate payroll tax withholding rates are used for payroll tax filings.

• Review quarterly payroll tax filings completed by payroll processing company and communicate errors in a timely manner to assigned payroll specialist.

• Review and approve employee timesheets and vacation requests to ensure accurate payroll processing.

• Ensuring new hires are properly on-boarded into payroll processing system and that all forms and employee profile is complete, accurate, and kept up to date

• Preparing and processing payroll in timely manner

• Coordinate and acquire all necessary approvals to distribute payroll

• Supervise & approve the recording of payroll into the accounting system

• Maintain fringe benefit allocation by employee

• Making adjustments in pay for pay changes, raises and/or bonuses

• Handling changes to employees retirement contribution elections to ensure proper deductions and timely company remittance to employee’s account

• Perform monthly, quarterly, and annual reconciliation of payroll general ledger accounts to source documents and keep auditable records for annual financial statement audit

• Prepare Ad Hoc reports for management as needed

Skills and Qualifications

• A bachelor’s degree in human resources, labor relations, organizational development, business or other related field; relevant work experience may be a substitute

• Effective verbal and written communication skills

• Excellent attention to detail

• Knowledge of a broad range of human resource strategies and practices, including compensation, performance management, safety, hiring and employee relations; able to apply these strategies and practices in compliance with employment regulations

• Ability to create a culture of diversity, inclusivity, collaboration, and teamwork

• Knowledge of payroll, garnishments, and benefits distribution

• Knowledge in employer compliance. Experience researching and complying with multi-state employment laws and regulations and strong familiarity with California laws.

• Experience with Heartland Payroll & EASE human resources information system is a plus but not required

• Experience with researching and analyzing data to guide strategic employment planning