Employee Relations (ER) Manager - Great Britain (GB)

With over 200 brands sold in nearly 180 countries, we’re the world’s leading premium drinks company. Bring your passion and use your curiosity as you explore, collaborate, and innovate to build brands consumers love. Together with passionate people from all over the world, you’ll test new ideas, learn and grow, and unlock a brighter, more exciting future. Join us to create a career worth celebrating.

About the Function

Our Human Resources (HR) team bring brilliant people together to help us continue building iconic brands. We harness the diverse talents of our people to help them excel. We champion an inclusive and collaborative culture, where all voices and perspectives are celebrated and valued. HR is at the heart of markets around the world, finding and developing talent that will unearth new ideas and inspire innovation.

Role Purpose

The Employee Relations Manager is accountable for delivering consistent, fair, and legally compliant employee relations support across Great Britain (England, Scotland, and Wales). The role enables a strong performance culture, leads GB Speak Up investigations, and manages ER matters for a predominantly field-based Sales and Quality Technical workforce. The role operates autonomously on standard and moderately complex matters and partners with the Global ER and Internal Legal Teams on complex, high-risk, or non-standard cases, in line with the governance and legal triage principles. Engagement with external legal advisors is managed exclusively through Global ER / Legal.

Key Responsibilities

• Employment Law, Policy & Governance: Apply global and GB-specific ER policies and guidance consistently across the GB organisation. Maintain strong, up-to-date knowledge of GB employment law and relevant case law, translating legal requirements into practical business guidance. Partner with Global ER/ Internal Legal Counsel on employment claims and pre-litigation matters, including case preparation and evidence management. Mitigate legal and reputational risk through early, well-governed ER interventions and appropriate escalation.
• Performance Enablement & Manager Coaching: Enable a consistent and commercially appropriate performance culture across GB, with specific focus on field-based Sales and Quality Technical populations. Coach and advise line managers on performance, capability, conduct, and attendance management. Provide expert guidance on GB performance management processes, including informal interventions and formal Performance Improvement Plans (PIPs), in line with Global and GB policies and templates. Ensure consistent handling of performance cases across geographically dispersed teams, with appropriate documentation, governance, and risk awareness. Partner with HR Business Partners to drive early intervention and build sustainable manager capability. Raise complex, high-risk, or precedent-setting performance cases to the Global ER team for alignment and guidance.
• Employee Relations & Health-Related Case Management: Manage ER aspects of disciplinary, grievance, conduct, absence, sickness, long-term ill health, and work-related accident cases. In sickness absence, ill-health, workplace accident, or health-related capability cases, engage the Global Occupational Health team to obtain expert advice on fitness for work, reasonable adjustments, return-to-work planning, and risk mitigation. Ensure health-related cases are managed in line with GB legal requirements (including Equality Act considerations), internal policy, and Occupational Health guidance.
• Speak Up Investigations: Lead and manage Speak Up investigations for GB, including cases arising within field-based and remote teams. Conduct investigations in standard and moderately complex cases, ensuring confidentiality, independence, and adherence to Speak Up protocols. Partner with the Global ER team on complex, sensitive, or high-risk Speak Up matters where escalation or shared ownership is required under the governance. Contribute to the sharing of Speak Up trends, insights, and takeaways with Global ER to support GB-wide consistency and continuous improvement.
• Policy Application, Change & Continuous Improvement: Operationalise global and GB-specific ER and performance enablement policies across office-based and field-based populations. Provide targeted feedback to Global ER on recurring issues, risk trends, and policy or guidance gaps identified within the GB workforce. Support implementation of GB policy and legislative changes in partnership with Global ER, including readiness and communication activity.
• Partnerships: Act as a trusted ER advisor to line managers, Sales and Technical leaders, and HR BPs. Provide pragmatic, commercially balanced advice aligned with customer-facing and regulated operating environments. Collaborate closely with the Global ER team to ensure insight sharing and strong ER governance.

Experience

• Employment Law Expertise: In-depth knowledge and application of employment law.
• Risk Management: Skilled in identifying issues and managing risks with commercial insight.
• Strategic Problem Solving: Ability to solve problems strategically for positive impact.
• Employee Relations Leadership: Proven track record in delivering effective employee relations strategies.
• Policy Development: Competent in drafting employment policies with global applicability.
• Change Management & Stakeholder Engagement: Demonstrated experience leading change initiatives and engaging partners effectively.
• Relationship Building: Excellent at influencing and building trusted relationships across all levels.
• Complex Investigations & Reporting: Experienced in conducting investigations and thematic data analysis.
• Business Insight & Adaptability: Strong business understanding; thrives in dynamic environments with an openness to innovation.

Working with Us

Flexibility is key to success. From part-time and compressed hours to different locations our people work flexibly in ways to suit them. Talk to us about what flexibility means to you and we’ll work together so that you’re supported from day one. We recognise and value performance, offering our people a highly competitive Rewards and Benefits package including:

• Contemporary work life balance policies and wellbeing activities
• On-site gym or subsidised gym membership
• Contributory pension scheme
• Comprehensive health insurance for you and your family
• On-site nursery or vouchers
• Annual bonus of circa 15% of your base salary (dependent on performance)
• Share options
• 28 days’ vacation per annum

Our purpose is to celebrate life, every day, everywhere. And creating an inclusive culture, where everyone feels valued and that they can belong, is a crucial part of this. We embrace diversity in the broadest possible sense. This means that you’ll be welcomed and celebrated for who you are just by being you. You’ll be part of and help build and champion an inclusive culture that celebrates people of different gender, ethnicity, ability, age, sexual orientation, social class, educational backgrounds, experiences and more. Our ambition is to create the best performing, most trusted and respected consumer products companies in the world. Join us and help transform our business as we take our brands to the next level and build new ones as part of shaping the next generation of celebrations for consumers around the world!

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