Conventional business wisdom tells you that when your company grows to about 100 employees, it’s time to hire a full-time Human Resources Director. At Biohabitats, we are not quite there, but we began to feel the growing pains of not having someone dedicated full time to HR about two years ago. With eight bioregion offices scattered across the US and work throughout the world, the need to have someone solely dedicated to our team members’ well-being became paramount. As we began thinking about this position, we wanted to be sure it both reflected and reinforced our culture, and we couldn’t come to terms with the label ‘Human Resources Director.’

Traditionally, Human Resources is a management position. It is about making sure you are meeting the legal requirements you need to meet as a company, managing employee benefit programs, supporting your onboarding and offboarding processes, and resolving conflicts. Of course, we need to do all these things, but staying on the right side of legal requirements seemed like a low bar; we thought we could do better.