Employee Relations Centre of Excellence Manager in Widnes

Be the trusted authority. Shape best practice. Make work better for everyone. At the heart of our charity is a belief that great people management enables great lives. We’re now looking for an experienced and values-driven Employee Relations Centre of Excellence Manager to play a pivotal national role in shaping how we manage, resolve, and learn from employee relations matters across England and Scotland. This is an influential role where your expertise will directly support leaders, protect the organisation, and promote a culture of early resolution, fairness, and continuous improvement.

This is a full time permanent role with presence at our head office in Widnes required at least once a week so our ideal candidate will be based within an hour's commute of our head office in Widnes.

What is "The Deal" for you?

• Flexibility: You can work your 37.5 hours over 4 days and enjoy a long weekend, or split the hours over 5 days to accommodate your other commitments.
• Pension: contributory pension scheme
• Benefits: retail discounts, holiday discounts, cycle to work scheme and travel discounts through our benefits app
• Best Lives Possible: You'll be working for an award winning charity who is passionate about ensuring our colleagues and the people we support lead the best lives.
• Development: We'll work with you to develop your career or to learn and experience new things. We're passionate about developing our people!
• Support: From our Employee Assistance Programme (available 24/7), financial support options, and wellbeing fund you'll have the support available to lead an easier (financial) life.

Who you’ll be supporting & more about the role:

As our Employee Relations Centre of Excellence Manager, you’ll lead and develop a highly skilled ER Specialist team, drive improvements in service delivery, data quality and insight, and ensure our policies, frameworks and practices reflect the very best in UK employment law and sector standards. You’ll be the primary escalation point for complex and high-risk ER cases, offering expert advice across disciplinary, grievance, sickness absence, performance management and appeals processes. Working closely with operational leaders, People Team colleagues, legal partners and external networks, you’ll help position the charity as a sector leader in employee relations, while fostering a positive, supportive and resilient organisational culture.

In this varied and high-profile role, you will be:

• Acting as the senior escalation point for complex and high-risk ER cases, ensuring timely, fair and legally compliant outcomes.
• Leading, motivating and developing the ER Specialist team to deliver a high-performing, customer-focused advisory service.
• Driving continuous improvement in ER processes, frameworks, documentation quality and service efficiency.
• Analysing ER data and trends to provide clear insight, narrative reporting and recommendations to senior leaders.
• Leading the development, review and implementation of ER policies and procedures aligned to our people strategy and values.
• Monitoring and interpreting changes in employment legislation, ensuring compliance and risk mitigation.
• Supporting and delivering ER projects and charity-wide initiatives that strengthen organisational capability.
• Coaching and mentoring managers and colleagues to build confidence in early intervention and effective people management.
• Representing the charity in external ER forums and networks, contributing to sector best practice and benchmarking.

Your values:

Our ideal candidate: You’ll be a confident, credible ER professional who thrives in complexity and brings calm, clarity and fairness to challenging situations.

Essential experience and knowledge:

• CIPD qualified (or degree equivalent) with evidence of continuous professional development.
• Experience of leading teams.
• Extensive experience managing complex Employee Relations caseloads.
• Strong, up-to-date knowledge of UK employment law and best practice.
• Proven experience influencing and advising senior stakeholders.
• Policy development and review experience.
• Experience designing and delivering ER or people-management training.
• Strong analytical skills, with the ability to interpret data and trends to inform decisions.
• Experience leading HR or ER projects and contributing to change initiatives.
• Confident user of HR systems and digital platforms.

Skills and personal attributes:

• Excellent conflict resolution, coaching and influencing skills.
• Highly organised, able to manage competing priorities and deadlines.
• Clear, adaptable communicator who can explain complex issues simply.
• Resilient, empathetic and solution-focused.
• Strong sense of integrity, fairness and discretion.
• Flexible and adaptable in a dynamic, national organisation.

Previous people leadership experience is desirable, but above all we’re looking for someone who can lead through expertise, credibility and values.

Why join us?

• A genuinely meaningful role with national reach and real organisational impact.
• The opportunity to shape ER strategy and best practice across a large, values-led charity.
• Collaborative, supportive people culture with a strong focus on continuous improvement.
• Hybrid working with infrequent national travel.
• The chance to use your expertise to make work fairer, safer and more positive for thousands of colleagues.

If you’re passionate about employee relations, confident handling complexity, and motivated by making a positive difference, we’d love to hear from you. Apply now and help us create better experiences at work — for everyone.

Please note, if you are interested in this role, we welcome your application as soon as possible! Depending on the volume of applications received, the vacancy may be closed before the expected advertising end date.

Interested and want to know a bit more? To find out more about our charity check out: YouTube. We’re really proud to be a Hive HR Employee Voice Certified organisation, a recognition that confirms our commitment to creating a culture where our colleagues are not only encouraged to share their thoughts, but where this feedback is actively sought and acted upon to drive positive change at every level. In our 2025 Colleague Engagement Survey, 59% (nearly 3,800) of our people shared their feedback and insights, giving us an incredible Employee Net Promoter Score of +34. The Employee Net Promoter Score is a measure of how willing our colleagues are to recommend us as a good place to work to their loved ones – and a score of +34 is considered a Very Good score when compared to global benchmarks set by hundreds of other organisations.