HR Expert Services Policy Consultant in Manchester

The Government People Group exists to work with departments, professions, and functions to build a modern, effective Civil Service. We support the government workforce with the right skills and capability. We are working with leaders to get the right people in the right jobs, with the right skills and continuous learning to excel in their roles.

We provide leadership, and in turn, create leaders with exceptional line management capability across departments, influencing partners in the wider public sector and beyond. This involves getting our retention and reward strategy right, to nurture specific skills, and create pride and resilience in our workforce. Our role is also to provide system leadership across central government in pulling together back office services.

Collectively, we help support the Cabinet Office’s priority to drive efficiencies, and reforms that will make government work better, to ultimately provide a better service to the public. This role is within the Pay, Policy and Pensions domain of GPG, which plays a central role in developing and maintaining core HR model policies. This ensures all government departments and agencies have access to consistent, legally compliant, and best-practice policy and procedures, thereby avoiding duplication of effort and ensuring value for money across government.

A key function of the team is providing expert policy advice, addressing complex HR policy queries and proactively amending policies to reflect changes in legislation, such as the Employment Rights Bill and case law. Policy & Practice also delivers and coordinates specialist independent expert services such as Mediation, HR Investigations, Workplace Adjustments, and Job Evaluation, offering crucial advice and support to departments. It collaborates with departments to develop and sustain a comprehensive, cross-government wellbeing offer.

Through supporting HR forums and a digital hub, it actively fosters best practice and shared learning within the HR function. Successful candidates will have an excellent opportunity to develop and enhance core HR skills and expert business knowledge. Comprehensive training will be provided across all necessary areas, offering significant scope to expand HR knowledge and expertise.

Role responsibilities:

• HR Policy Development and Maintenance: Oversee and maintain a portfolio of HR model policies, ensuring they remain legally compliant and are updated as required.
• Expert Policy Advice: Lead and line manage a small team in delivering expert guidance and advice on complex HR policy matters to government departments via the Policy & Practice Hub.
• Stakeholder Engagement and Communication: Develop and provide policy updates and information to departments through various established channels, including the departmental HR contacts and practitioners, networks, Trade Unions, and legal teams.
• Policy Commission Triage: Perform an initial assessment role for potential new HR policy commissions, whether originating from departments, Senior Leaders/Ministers, or in response to changes in legislation.
• Correspondence Handling: Manage and respond to formal requests, including Freedom of Information requests, Parliamentary Questions, and Official Correspondence.
• Work Programme: Supporting G7 Team Leader to coordinate and monitor the domain work programme, assessing and highlighting domain progress against key priority deliverables to the Senior Management Team.
• Secretariat: Providing secretariat support to engagement groups including maintaining membership lists, commissioning and collating regular data requests, providing updates to the membership and recording notes from meetings.
• Hub Activity: Maintaining and uploading to a digital cross government information store which hosts a range of HR products and information.
• Other activities may include working with senior colleagues to scope and implement improvements to content or working on other expert service delivery areas, along with participation in delivering special projects.
• Operational leadership and line management of team members across multiple locations.
• Develop self and teams to provide a continuous learning environment to increase HR policy and service expertise and supporting knowledge Management within the domain.

Proud member of the Disability Confident employer scheme.