HR Advisor

HR Advisor required on a 6 month contract; working Monday - Friday, 9am-5pm - on a hybrid basis. The purpose of this role is to provide proactive, practical, and consistent support and advice on HR policy, procedure, best practice, and legislation and all other matters relating to employment at this institution.

The postholder will be responsible for managing employee relations cases, working closely to support the HR Business Partners for their client groups and will support monthly payroll reconciliation activity. They will support individuals with the aim of helping to ensure that the experience of working there is a good one. The post holder is responsible for being a positive role model to others within the team and across the organisation both with respect to the HR profession and the company’s behaviours and values. In addition, the post holder will coordinate updates to the HR policies.

Role and Responsibilities

• Supporting the HR Business Partnering Team and wider HR Function:
• Support HR Business Partners to deliver customer led initiatives to support the needs of the business.
• Analyse data to proactively identify trends and issues and work with HR colleagues and client groups to address these.
• Support various activities and projects throughout the year including the performance review process, audits and delivery of the staff survey action plans.
• Employee relations:
• Provide supportive, pragmatic, and consistent advice and guidance in line with policies and procedures regarding people related issues.
• Manage own caseload so that issues are dealt with in a timely and professional manner.
• Build a strong relationship with the HR Business Partners.
• Main duties include:
• Escalate complex cases to HR Business Partners when risk levels increase.
• Support line managers during formal hearings and appeal meetings.
• Draft formal outcome letters and meeting minutes to legal standards.
• Maintain confidentiality of all case files and sensitive employee data.
• Policy and Advice:
• Monitor legislative changes to keep HR policies legally compliant.
• Coordinate policy review schedules across the wider HR team.
• Simplify complex policies into user-friendly toolkits for line managers.
• Ensure consistent application of policy across all organisational directorates.
• Payroll and Reward:
• Reconcile monthly payroll data against HR system changes accurately.
• Resolve payroll queries from employees and external payroll providers.
• Process contractual changes including promotions, hours changes, and allowances.
• Audit monthly submissions to minimise salary overpayments and errors.

Person Specification

Essential Experience and Knowledge:

• Managing employee relations cases from end-to-end independently.
• Applying UK employment law practically within a workplace setting.
• Analysing workforce metrics to identify trends like high absence.
• Reconciling payroll data or working closely with payroll systems.

Essential Skills and Behaviours:

• Communicating with empathy while maintaining professional boundaries.
• Influencing line managers to adopt best practice HR procedures.
• Organising high workloads with conflicting deadlines and priorities.
• Upholding organisational values through inclusive and ethical behaviour.

Essential criteria:

• CIPD Level 3 or demonstrable equivalent experience.
• Experience of managing disciplinary, grievance, attendance and performance employee relations cases.
• Confident and articulate communicator, able to build rapport and trust with people at all levels.
• Experience using initiative in problem solving and decision making on issues with some degree of complexity.
• Proven ability to manage own time and prioritise work.
• Experience of HR systems and reporting, including MS Office products.
• Experience of updating HR policies.

Desirable criteria:

• Experience of Workday.