HR Advisor in Knutsford

One of the world's biggest Media Organisations is looking for a HR advisor with a strong ER background and experience from a large matrix organisation.

Department Overview: The team provides commercially focused solutions to people issues across all TT Games (approx. 400 employees over 2 separate studios).

Primary Purpose of the Job: The People & Culture Advisor is responsible for partnering with managers and employees across TT, with a particular emphasis on employee relations and health and wellbeing. This includes providing advice and support on employee relations, compliance, and handling health and wellbeing issues, as well as signposting and referring to support partners as needed. The role will have business partnering responsibility, focusing on manager and employee support for a defined department or population of approximately 100 employees.

Key Responsibilities:

• Business Partnering and Employee Relations: Develops and maintains a solid understanding of the assigned team to provide commercially-focused guidance to managers on employee relations matters including conduct, capability, grievances, flexible working, and leaves of absence.
• Builds strong relationships, particularly focusing on the lead and people manager tier within that population.
• Supports managers in running grievance and disciplinary investigations, capability hearings, PIPs, and flexible working requests, coaching and upskilling line managers as needed.
• Provides guidance and manages the processes for Flexible Working and oversees the coordination and communication of various leave entitlements requests (maternity, paternity, parental, and emergency leave), ensuring timely responses and compliance with company policy and statutory requirements.
• Keeps abreast of legislative and industry trends to ensure HR procedures and policies are created, updated, and communicated effectively to all employees.
• Partners with UK Legal to ensure employment contract templates are always up to date.
• Manages LTS and Occupational Health cases, including liaison with H&S, CoEs, and external partners as needed.
• Highlights trends in wellbeing issues and suggests and organises proactive wellbeing solutions.
• Advises line managers on dealing with persistent short-term absence and long-term sickness cases.
• Analyses absence reports and communicates high absence levels/trends to the appropriate line managers, managing any follow-up and supporting managers to improve their team's attendance rates.

General:

• Works on the full range of health and wellbeing initiatives and benefits, liaising directly with CoE wellness and benefits colleagues where needed.
• Develops and maintains close working relationships across the matrix, with business leaders, in-house employment lawyers, UK HR colleagues, CoEs, etc.
• Continuously reviews and puts forward recommendations for improvement of HR services and processes.
• Works with managers to identify and meet training needs on an as-required basis.
• Participates in and takes ownership of a range of HR projects as required.

Knowledge / Skills / Abilities:

• HR generalist with demonstrable experience of providing commercially focused guidance on a diverse range of employee relations matters, including supporting disciplinary and capability hearings.
• Educated to degree level or equivalent experience, with part or full CIPD postgraduate qualification desirable.
• Experienced and confident in handling employee relations matters and line manager support.
• Proven experience in devising and delivering coaching at first line manager/team lead level.

Skills and Abilities:

• Able to thrive in a high volume, fast-paced, demanding environment.
• Computer literate - confident and experienced with full working knowledge of Microsoft Office, particularly Excel (e.g., v Lookups).
• Able to develop and maintain strong working relationships with key business stakeholders.
• Demonstrates sound judgement in knowing when to escalate issues to colleagues.
• Strong influencing and negotiation skills.
• Confident presenter with excellent presentation and training skills.
• Numerical skills and analytical ability to analyse data and convert it into concise reports.
• Meticulous attention to detail, including proofing.
• Ability to take initiative using own discretion and skills, working with limited supervision while contributing effectively to the wider HR team.
• Excellent organisational and follow-up skills; ability to prioritise and manage time effectively.
• Professional, diplomatic, and confident with good social skills to deal with all levels of staff in organisations with diverse cultures and experience of HR.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills; confident communicating at all levels within the organisation.
• Patient, calm, and unflappable nature with flexibility in approach to workload.
• Must be discreet, diplomatic, and treat all information within the department and business as strictly confidential - strong working knowledge of GDPR and confidentiality requirements with sensitive data.