Vice President, Talent and Workforce Strategy - Eden Prairie, MN

UnitedHealth Group is a health care and well-being company that's dedicated to improving the health outcomes of millions around the world. We are comprised of two distinct and complementary businesses, UnitedHealthcare and Optum, working to build a better health system for all. Here, your contributions matter as they will help transform health care for years to come. Make an impact with a team that shares your passion for helping others. Join us in making healthcare work better for everyone through people-led, responsible AI while Caring. Connecting. Growing together.

Build the future-ready workforce required for an AI-powered enterprise by integrating workforce strategy, talent management, performance, mobility, and AI-enabled work redesign. Co-own AI workforce modernization with Optum Technology, translating technology roadmaps into changes in work, roles, skills, talent supply, and measurable workforce outcomes.

Position Summary

The Vice President, Talent and Workforce Strategy is the enterprise leader accountable for connecting business strategy, workforce intelligence, talent decisions, and AI workforce redesign. This executive will modernize and simplify an integrated talent and performance strategy that optimizes enterprise resources, strengthens business performance, anticipates future capability needs, accelerates internal mobility, and builds succession depth for critical roles, including CEO, CFO, CMO, and other enterprise leadership positions. The role also brings explicit accountability for organizational effectiveness and leadership development, ensuring talent and workforce strategies strengthen employee and leader effectiveness as well as business outcomes.

A defining priority is co-leading AI workforce modernization with Optum Technology. The role will ensure AI is not treated as a technology deployment alone, but as a business and workforce transformation that redesigns workflows, clarifies human and digital-worker roles, builds role-based capability, and converts productivity potential into adopted, sustainable value. The leader will work across Optum and UHC businesses, enterprise People capabilities, Finance, and Technology to scale common methods while enabling business-specific execution. Workforce modernization will also be aligned to employee experience priorities and sustainable behavior change.

Enterprise Accountabilities

• AI workforce modernization: Co-own the enterprise workforce modernization agenda with Optum Technology integrating business, technology, data, and People strategies into prioritized job-family and capability roadmaps while driving effective communication and adoption plans, upskilling and reskilling approaches and building a AI future ready enterprise
• Work and role redesign: Establish a repeatable approach to deconstruct work, simplify before automating, define future workflows, and translate AI deployment into role, skill, capacity, location, and operating-model implications
• Workforce strategy and intelligence: Build forward-looking views of workforce supply, demand, cost, critical skills, and automation potential; convert insights into decisions on build, buy, borrow, redeploy, reskill, and reduce
• Talent, performance, and succession: Modernize and simplify the integrated talent and performance strategy to focus resources on the capabilities and leaders most critical to business outcomes. Lead enterprise talent reviews, succession planning, executive readiness, and differentiated talent investment, with particular focus on succession depth for critical roles, including CEO, CFO, CMO, and other enterprise leadership positions. This includes enterprise approaches to leadership development and development planning that strengthen leadership readiness and bench strength
• Performance and mobility: Modernize performance, development, career, and mobility practices so talent moves faster to priority work and employees have clearer pathways to build future-relevant skills. Establish skills-based approaches across talent management, workforce planning, learning, and organization design, including career-marketplace and career-navigation strategies that connect talent supply to enterprise demand
• Value realization: Define adoption, capability, workforce, productivity, and talent outcomes; partner with Finance and business leaders to track benefits, risks, and execution against commitments

Primary Responsibilities

• AI Workforce Modernization: Serve as the People co-owner with Optum Technology for AI workforce modernization. Align business priorities, technology delivery, skills, role redesign, change, and workforce actions. Establish human-agent operating principles, adoption expectations, governance interfaces, and scalable activation methods.
• Talent, Succession & Leadership Readiness: Own and simplify the integrated enterprise talent and performance strategy, including talent philosophy, talent reviews, succession, critical-role planning, executive pipelines, and differentiated investment. Strengthen objectivity through integrated talent and performance signals; optimize resources toward the highest-value priorities; and build ready-now and longer-term succession depth for CEO, CFO, CMO, and other critical enterprise roles.
• Strategic Workforce Planning: Create enterprise and business workforce strategies linked to growth, productivity, and operating plans. Prioritize critical job families and capabilities; develop scenario-based plans for talent supply, location, labor mix, automation, reskilling, redeployment, and external hiring.
• Performance, Careers & Mobility: Evolve performance management toward continuous goals, feedback, differentiation, and development. Scale enterprise mobility and career practices that connect employees to priority opportunities and enable movement across businesses and talent pools.
• Workforce technology and data: Shape requirements for workforce intelligence, skills, talent, and organization-design platforms. Partner with Technology and data teams to create trusted insights, responsible AI controls, and usable decision support. Drive a cohesive talent technology roadmap across talent, performance, workforce intelligence, skills, and mobility platforms that improves user experience and business outcomes
• Enterprise operating model: Clarify decision rights across the enterprise, CPOs, People Business Partners, Talent Acquisition, Learning, Total Rewards, People Analytics, Finance, and Technology. Build reusable standards while preserving business accountability for adoption and value. Advise leaders on organizational effectiveness and the workforce implications of strategic change, and lead cross-functional transformation efforts spanning business, People, Technology, Finance, and Operations
• Change and leader activation: Equip leaders and People Business Partners to redesign work, lead through transitions, and make transparent workforce decisions. Integrate communications, learning, change readiness, and employee listening into modernization roadmaps
• Executive advisory: Serve as a trusted advisor to the SVP, Talent, Strategy & Innovation, CPOs, People Leadership Team, and Optum executives. Translate external trends, workforce signals, and execution data into clear choices, risks, and recommendations. Partner with People leadership team on executive talent decisions, succession risks, leadership capability, critical-role identification, and development planning
• Team leadership: Lead and develop a high-performing enterprise team spanning talent management, workforce strategy, performance, mobility, and modernization; mobilize matrixed teams across businesses and functions. Build organizational capability through coaching, talent planning, team development, and collaboration across People functions, business leaders, and enterprise partners

Measures of Success

• Workforce modernization: Priority job families with approved future-state work, role, skill, and workforce roadmaps; adoption and value tracked
• Talent readiness: Ready-now and longer-term succession depth for critical roles, including CEO, CFO, CMO, and other enterprise leadership positions, with timely action on talent risks
• Skills and mobility: Improved visibility to future skills, increased reskilling and redeployment, and faster movement of talent to priority work. Success also includes solid career navigation, skills growth, and talent-supply-to-demand matching through enterprise mobility mechanisms
• Performance and experience: Simplified, integrated talent and performance practices; resources focused on the highest-value priorities; clearer goals and feedback; and manager effectiveness and business outcomes. Leader confidence, employee experience, organizational effectiveness, and talent-practice adoption are also explicit indicators of success
• Technology partnership: Joint business-technology roadmaps, disciplined governance, reusable solutions, and reduced duplication across businesses. Talent technology utilization, workforce intelligence capability, and improved user experience are tracked as additional outcomes
• Business value: Finance-aligned productivity, capacity, cost, quality, and growth outcomes realized without compromising trust or responsible use

You’ll be rewarded and recognized for your performance in an environment that will challenge you and give you clear direction on what it takes to succeed in your role as well as provide development for other roles you may be interested in.

Required Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree required; advanced degree in business, human resources, organization development, strategy, analytics, or a related field preferred
• 15+ years of progressive leadership experience across workforce strategy, talent management, organization transformation, People Business Partner leadership, or related disciplines in a large, complex organization
• Demonstrated success leading enterprise workforce or operating-model transformation with measurable business, productivity, talent, and adoption outcomes
• Deep expertise in strategic workforce planning, talent and succession, performance, skills, mobility, organization design, and change leadership
• Experience partnering with Technology, product, analytics, and business leaders to translate AI, automation, and digital strategies into workforce implications and execution plans
• Executive-level influence and communication, including the ability to simplify complex choices for C-suite and Board audiences and align leaders across a highly matrixed enterprise
• Solid commercial, financial, analytical, and risk judgment; ability to connect workforce actions to operating plans and value realization

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience leading workforce transformation associated with AI, automation, digital transformation, or future-of-work initiatives
• Experience with talent marketplaces, skills-based organizations, workforce intelligence platforms, or related workforce technologies
• Experience partnering with executive committees, boards, or large-scale enterprise leadership teams

Leadership Profile:

• Enterprise architect: sees across businesses, technologies, talent systems, and operating models and converts complexity into an integrated path forward
• Transformation operator: pairs bold future-state thinking with disciplined sequencing, governance, adoption, and measurable delivery
• Technology-fluent People leader: understands AI-enabled work deeply enough to challenge assumptions and co-create solutions with technology leaders
• Talent steward: balances enterprise performance, workforce transitions, employee growth, and trust with candor and sound judgment
• Influential collaborator: creates alignment across CPOs, business executives, Finance, Technology, and People capabilities without relying on formal authority

Pay is based on several factors including but not limited to local labor markets, education, work experience, certifications, etc. In addition to your salary, we offer benefits such as, a comprehensive benefits package, incentive and recognition programs, equity stock purchase and 401k contribution (all benefits are subject to eligibility requirements). No matter where or when you begin a career with us, you'll find a far-reaching choice of benefits and incentives. The salary for this role will range from $200,400 to $343,500 annually based on full-time employment. We comply with all minimum wage laws as applicable.

At UnitedHealth Group, our mission is to help people live healthier lives and help make the health system work better for everyone. Together, we are shaping the future of healthcare by harnessing technology and innovation to make care simpler to navigate, more affordable and more connected for the people we serve. We are committed to creating an inclusive workplace where everyone feels welcomed, valued, heard and respected, empowering people to bring their authentic selves to work and strengthening our collective impact through diverse talents, backgrounds, experiences and perspectives.

UnitedHealth Group and its affiliated brands are an Equal Employment Opportunity employer under applicable law and qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, national origin, religion, age, color, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, or protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by local, state, or federal laws, rules, or regulations.

UnitedHealth Group and its affiliated brands are a drug-free workplace. Candidates are required to pass a drug test before beginning employment.