We have an opportunity for a HR Adviser to join our client’s fantastic HR Team of professionals who are enthusiastic, responsive, solution focused and work collaboratively.

You will have involvement, provide guidance and advice on the full employee journey, and so you’re our ideal candidate if you also have excellent communication and interpersonal skills, high levels of organisational skills with the ability to effectively manage your time, have a professional attitude and excellent attention to detail and accuracy.

This is an exciting time to join our team of HR Adviser’s as we embark on a bespoke advisory programme to enhance our engagement with key stakeholders across the Company to make a difference. We are currently operating a hybrid-model of working. However, the successful candidate would be expected to work part of the week at the Pontypridd base.

We offer a number of employee benefits including a generous pension scheme and flexibility in working arrangements.

You will work as part of the central HR Adviser Team to provide a highly efficient and timely customer focused service, providing generalist advice across the full employee life-cycle.

Key responsibilities

General:

• Review and analyse quantitative and qualitative data (including colleague feedback) to produce reports and make recommendations for the development of evidence-based activities when considering absence management, health and well-being.
• To work in partnership with the Early Intervention Team to ensure the delivery of a whole-company approach and continuing alignment of student and colleague well-being and associated policies and initiatives.
• Create and evaluate ongoing annual well-being events and health promotion programmes for colleagues; including undertaking associated administration, acting as the first point of contact for queries and collating and analysing feedback for relevant committees on the impact of delivery.
• To build on existing partnerships and establish new links with other organisations, exploring opportunities for collaboration on activities focused on wellbeing and health. 
• To engage with local and national businesses, to create an updated list of colleague benefits and discounts, specifically those linked to promoting Health and Wellbeing.
• To support HR Colleagues and managers by advising on appropriate wellbeing initiatives or signposting to relevant sources/policies/support.
• Support wellbeing communications
• Ensuring colleague wellbeing intranet pages are kept up to date.
• Provide day to day operational and generalist HR advice, guidance and resolution on people policies and processes to specific areas within the business, covering the full employee lifecycle.
• Advise managers and staff on HR policies, procedures and practices ensuring compliance with employment legislation.
• To act in an equitable and inclusive manner ensuring at all times that you embody the Company’s core values, whilst promoting good relations and practices towards colleagues and stakeholders .

Recruitment:

• Advise and support managers on advertising approaches, with the aim of attracting the best candidate from a diverse field of applicants.
• Collaborate with Managers to ensure that job descriptions and person specifications are clear and legislatively compliant with the Equality Act and the Disability Confident Scheme.
• Engaging with ongoing recruitment development projects with the aim of improving applicant experience and attracting a diverse pool of applicants.
• Participate in job evaluation processes.
• Work closely and proactively with those with administrative responsibilities for people management activities, to ensure the smooth running of the onboarding of new starters, specifically relating to: o UK Visa and Immigration – helping to resolve queries relating to visa routes and engaging with the Home Office via the Support Management System to issue Certificates of Sponsorship.
• DBS Checks (Disclosure and Barring Service) – advising managers on the appropriate level of check for those posts working with children or vulnerable adults.

Employee Relations:

• Ensure legal compliance of continued right to work in the UK and advising managers through renewals, or in the absence of, termination of contract.
• Work with managers and employees to address issues at the earliest stage possible, aiming to prevent escalation and foster a positive work environment, through the encouragement of a culture of open dialogue and solutions focused problem solving.
• Provide advice and guidance to managers on effectively managing sickness and absence, including Occupational Health Referrals, Reasonable Adjustments Passport and Sickness Absence Reviews/Hearings.
• Advise on lower-level employment relations casework, providing specialist and risk-based advice to ensure a fair, consistent, equitable resolution in a timely manner. Casework to include grievance, absence management, capability, probation, disciplinary and termination (and extension) of fixed term contracts.
• To support and advise presenting managers at formal hearings/meetings.
• Review, maintain and update data relating to casework and support in the collation of data when required e.g. Freedom of Information requests.
• Foster effective working relationships with trade union colleagues, ensuring open communication to address issues and promote positive employment relations.
• To provide support to the Assistant HR Business Partner, HR Business Partners and Head of HR Operations and Employee relations with more complex employee relations case work, where required.
• To support the HR Business Partners with admin support on organisational change including, restructures, redundancy, redeployment activity within departments/Faculties as required.

Policies, Processes and information

• To contribute to the review and development of HR policies and procedures within the legal framework
• To support the Assistant HR Business Partner Relations in the review, update and development of guidance and frequently asked questions documents that align with current employment legislation, best practice, policies and procedures.
• To continuously reviewing processes seeking to streamline and automate, whilst meeting the needs of internal stakeholders and ensuring inclusive practices.
• Extracting, collating and analysing data from HR Systems and producing reports as required. Identify trends and apply proactive approach to address the issues, escalating as appropriate.
• To maintain and ensure that all HR Systems both paper based and electronic are updated accurately and stored in such a way that it complies with audit requirements, confidentiality and data protection requirements.

Collaborative working

• To develop and maintain professional and credible relationships with both internal and external customers, working within defined parameters but using initiative and exploring innovative solutions.
• To work proactively with the HR Assistants and Faculty/Departments to ensure continuous review of accuracy and consistency of data held on positions and postholders within the People Management system.

Person Specification

1. Level 5 Human Resources Management qualification or equivalent; or equivalent experience in a relevant HR role.
2. Associate CIPD Professional registration or willingness to work towards membership.
3. Experience in a generalist HR Advisor role, with experience of advising on sickness absence management and lower-level casework
4. Understanding of compliance matters i.e. UKVI, DBS, GDPR, Welsh Language

5. Have good knowledge of legislative requirements, including case law and how to use that when giving advice and guidance
6. Demonstrate positive values and commitment to inclusive practice and equity to all.
7. Be able to develop and maintain positive and effective working relationships, even where there are different views and approaches 8
8. An approach which provides support, guidance and coaching (as needed) to managers to enable them to fulfil their responsibilities for people management
9. Ability to prioritise workloads and meet deadlines
10. Excellent communication skills both verbal and written with a strong commitment to service delivery.
11. Excellent IT skills across the Microsoft Office Suite and experience of using HR Information Systems
12. The ability to speak and/or write in Welsh is desirable.