Human Resources Business Partner

About the Role

Simon & Schuster is looking for an experienced and dynamic HR Business Partner to join our New York team and play an important role in shaping the employee experience, developing talent, and strengthening our culture.

In this highly collaborative role, you’ll work closely with leaders and employees across the organization, bringing thoughtful counsel, strong HR expertise, and a deep understanding of the business to help our people and teams thrive.

We’re looking for someone with sound judgment, genuine curiosity, and a talent for building trusted relationships. You’ll be a strategic advisor to senior leaders, an approachable and credible partner to employees, and an active contributor to the broader HR team.

You’ll be equally comfortable thinking through organizational strategy, coaching a manager through a difficult conversation, identifying opportunities to strengthen a team, and helping create an environment where people can grow, build meaningful careers, and do their best work.

What You’ll Do

Partner with the business. Build strong, trusted relationships with leaders and employees, developing a deep understanding of their teams, priorities, opportunities, and challenges. Translate business needs into thoughtful people strategies and practical solutions.

Develop leaders and teams. Coach managers and leaders on organizational effectiveness, team dynamics, performance, employee engagement, and leadership development. Help managers become stronger people leaders and create environments where teams can succeed.

Grow careers and talent. Partner with leaders to identify, develop, and retain talent. Support career development, succession planning, internal mobility, and thoughtful conversations about employees’ growth and potential.

Strengthen our culture. Play an active role in building an inclusive, collaborative, high-performing culture. Listen closely to employees, identify themes and opportunities, and help translate feedback into meaningful action.

Navigate complex people matters. Provide thoughtful, balanced guidance on employee relations, performance management, organizational changes, and other sensitive situations. Bring sound judgment, empathy, consistency, and a solutions-oriented mindset.

Use insights to drive action. Look beyond individual situations to identify trends across teams. Use employee feedback, talent data, and business context to recommend actions that improve engagement, retention, performance, and organizational health.

Lead through change. Help leaders and employees navigate growth, transformation, and organizational change with clarity and care. Anticipate the people implications of business decisions and help teams move forward successfully.

Collaborate across HR. Work closely with colleagues across Talent Acquisition, Learning & Development, Total Rewards and Operations to deliver a connected and excellent employee experience.

Help build what’s next. Bring ideas. Challenge assumptions thoughtfully. Identify opportunities to make our people practices simpler, stronger, and more impactful, and help turn those ideas into action.

What You’ll Bring/Qualifications

• Significant HR experience, including experience as an HR Business Partner or in a similarly consultative people role
• A track record of building trusted relationships with leaders and employees at multiple levels
• Strong coaching and influencing skills, with the confidence to offer a point of view and the judgment to know when to listen
• Experience supporting talent management, organizational development, performance management, employee relations, and change
• Excellent judgment and discretion when navigating sensitive or complex situations
• A practical, business-minded approach with an ability to connect people decisions to organizational goals and outcomes
• Strong communication skills and the ability to bring clarity to complicated issues
• Curiosity, empathy, resilience, and a genuine interest in people and what helps them succeed
• The ability to balance strategic thinking with hands-on execution
• A collaborative mindset and a desire to contribute to the success of the broader HR team

Experience in publishing, media, entertainment, or another creative and dynamic industry is valuable, but not essential. What matters most is your ability to understand a business, earn trust, and help people and teams become better.

Why Simon & Schuster

Books have the power to entertain us, challenge us, teach us, connect us, and change the way we see the world. Behind those books are extraordinary people, and we want Simon & Schuster to be a place where those people can do the best work of their careers. Joining our HR team means helping shape that experience.

You’ll have the opportunity to partner with talented colleagues across an iconic publishing company, influence how we develop leaders and teams, strengthen our culture, and help create meaningful career experiences for our employees.

We take the work seriously. We value different perspectives. We believe strong cultures are built deliberately through trust, accountability, opportunity, collaboration, and the everyday experience people have at work.

If you’re energized by the idea of combining people, culture, careers, and business strategy, we’d love to hear from you.