Junior People Partner in Essex

This is an excellent opportunity for an HR professional looking to broaden their experience and develop their partnering capability within a fast-paced FMCG environment. Working closely with the Lead People Partner, you will play a key role in supporting managers, driving people initiatives and helping create a high-performance culture where employees can thrive. If you enjoy building relationships, solving problems, coaching managers and making a tangible impact on business performance, we'd love to hear from you.

Role Objective

• Support managers across Operations and Support Functions to understand people priorities and translate business needs into practical people actions.
• Provide first-line advice and guidance on people matters, policies and procedures.
• Build effective working relationships with managers and employees across the business.
• Support consistent and commercially aligned decision-making across your stakeholder groups.
• Identify opportunities to improve people practices, engagement and operational effectiveness.
• Support the management of employee relations matters including absence, conduct, performance, capability and grievance cases.
• Assist managers in handling people issues fairly, consistently and in line with company policy.
• Escalate complex or high-risk matters appropriately while maintaining ownership of routine casework.
• Coach managers to improve confidence and capability in day-to-day people management.
• Ensure accurate documentation and effective case management throughout the employee lifecycle.
• Coordinate recruitment processes from advertising through to onboarding.
• Support managers with workforce planning and recruitment activity.
• Manage candidate communications and recruitment administration to deliver a positive candidate experience.
• Coordinate onboarding and probation processes to support successful integration of new employees.
• Identify opportunities to improve attraction, onboarding and retention outcomes.
• Support managers with performance management processes and development planning activities.
• Monitor absence trends and support attendance management processes.
• Assist with return-to-work discussions and follow-up actions where required.
• Help managers maintain clear performance expectations and development objectives.
• Support interventions that improve capability, engagement and retention.
• Prepare and analyse people data including absence, turnover, employee relations, recruitment and training metrics.
• Identify trends, risks and opportunities to support informed decision-making.
• Assist with the development of meaningful management reporting.
• Contribute to the review and improvement of People policies, processes and templates.
• Support People projects and wider organisational initiatives as required.

Candidate Description

• Passionate about people and developing a career in People Partnering.
• Commercially aware and interested in understanding how effective people practices drive business performance.
• Strong relationship builder with the ability to establish credibility with managers and employees.
• Confident communicator who can explain information clearly and professionally.
• Organised and able to manage multiple priorities in a fast-paced environment.
• Proactive, resilient and solutions-focused.
• Comfortable handling sensitive information with professionalism and discretion.
• Curious, adaptable and committed to continuous learning and development.

Qualifications

• Previous experience within a generalist HR or People role.
• Working knowledge of UK employment law and HR best practice.
• Experience supporting employee relations, absence management, recruitment and core HR processes.
• Ability to build effective relationships across different levels of an organisation.
• Experience using HR systems, reporting tools and Microsoft Office applications.
• CIPD qualification or working toward CIPD accreditation desirable.
• Manufacturing, FMCG or operational environment experience would be advantageous but is not essential.

What We Can Offer You: Competitive Salary