Employee Relations Specialist in Crawley

Job Type: Full-time or part time (minimum 30 hours per week). Salary: Starting from £55,000 (depending on experience). We offer a competitive salary package aligned with current market rates for this role. The final offer will reflect your skills, experience, and qualifications, alongside our commitment to internal equity.

Location: South East England (hybrid). This is a hybrid role where you’ll mainly work from home, with regular travel across the South East (Sussex, London and Kent) for client and internal meetings.

About us: We’re a full-service HR consultancy that partners with clients to help their people and businesses thrive. Sometimes we act as their in-house HR team, sometimes as an extension of their existing people team — but always as a trusted partner that genuinely cares.

What you’ll be doing: As an Employee Relations Specialist, you’ll be the person clients turn to when things get complex or sensitive. You’ll bring clarity, fairness and calm confidence to a wide range of ER issues, helping clients navigate situations that really matter. Here’s a snapshot of what your day-to-day might include:

• Managing and advising on a range of ER cases — grievances, disciplinaries, bullying, harassment, whistleblowing and more. Carrying out investigations that are thorough, balanced and evidence-based.
• Supporting clients through restructures, redundancies, consultation processes and other business change exercises. Advising on negotiated exits, supporting without-prejudice conversations and settlement agreement processes.
• Drafting high-quality ER documentation such as invite letters, outcome letters, and investigation reports.
• Developing, reviewing and updating handbooks, policies and employment contracts.
• Helping clients understand risk — what’s urgent, what’s important and what they need to think about.

About you: You’re an experienced Employee Relations professional who knows your stuff when it comes to employment law, policy development, and complex casework. You bring the perfect mix of technical expertise, commercial awareness, and empathy. You’ll need:

• Recent experience as ER/HR/People Partner, HR/People Business Partner, or People Advisor/Partner (where ER formed a core part of the role).
• Strong experience managing complex and various ER casework end-to-end.
• Experience drafting and updating policies, handbooks and employment contracts.
• Experience supporting negotiated exits and settlement agreements.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills — able to explain the complex simply.
• Highly organised, detail-oriented, and comfortable managing multiple priorities.
• Skilled in drafting, reviewing, and implementing policies, handbooks, and contracts.
• Confident supporting organisational change projects such as restructures and redundancies.
• Commercially minded and able to balance compliance with practical advice.
• Tech-savvy and comfortable using Microsoft Office and digital systems.
• Happy to travel occasionally and you hold a full UK driving licence.

Ideally, you’ll be CIPD Level 5 qualified (or equivalent), but what really matters to us is that you bring the practical experience and confidence to deliver great ER advice. Experience working in an HR consultancy would be a bonus.

The Perks: We might be biased, but we think this role is exciting, fun, challenging, and full of opportunities to grow. And because we like to look after our people, here’s what you can look forward to when you join us:

• Competitive salary (starting from £55,000 per annum FTE).
• 25 days’ annual leave to start, rising to 27 after one year and 29 after two years, plus bank holidays.
• Career qualifications supported and paid for where relevant with progression and development opportunities.
• Monthly homeworking allowance and all equipment provided.
• Flexible working patterns to make sure you have a good balance between your work and home life.
• Strong internal and external support and a friendly, collaborative team.
• Pension scheme options (including salary sacrifice) and 4% employer pension contributions, with a minimum of 4% employee contributions.
• Life assurance at four times basic salary.
• Shopping discounts platform, flu vaccinations and technology and cycle to work salary sacrifice schemes.
• Medicash health cash plan.
• Enhanced family leave.
• Access to a 24/7 employee assistance programme for emotional and practical support and unlimited remote GP appointments available 24/7.
• A range of other health and wellbeing benefits.
• A growing, progressive business with people at its heart.

Why join us? At Fitzgerald, we think one-size-fits-all doesn’t make anyone look good. Instead, we promise to make space for you to bring your whole self to work, not just your job title. Job titles change, after all. Working here, in time yours might too. We’re betting the future of our business on each of us, so we don’t just talk about development – we invest in it. Specifically, we invest in you.

So if you want to learn something new or deepen your expertise, you do the work and we’ll support you all the way. Because when you get better at what you do, so do we. And when life throws curveballs - which it always will - we’ll make sure you’ve got the flexibility and support you need. We understand that time to rest and recharge is important and we’ll make sure you get it, along with a work/life balance that always treats you like an adult (and trusts you accordingly).

Because we want everyone here to play a big part in what comes next for Fitzgerald, to build our future, be involved in decisions, and be valued for your input. We’re Fitzgerald. We do work that works for you.

How to apply: There are a few stages in our application process which help you get to know us as much as it helps us get to know you. This includes an initial screening stage (a quick call and written assessment), a virtual interview, psychometric testing and a concluding in-person meeting. If this sounds like your kind of place, APPLY NOW (you’ll be redirected to our careers site) — we can’t wait to hear from you.

We really want our workforce to be representative of all sections of society, so we actively encourage applications from people of all backgrounds.