Senior Employee Relations Manager

High Profile Resourcing Ltd; Northampton; Hybrid; GBP 90,000 - 120,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Bonus

LTIP

Benefits

Job summary

High Profile Resourcing Ltd is partnering with a major UK&I consumer organisation to appoint a Senior (Head of) Employee Relations Manager. The role is remote with a minimum of one day a week in the head office in the Northern Home Counties, offering a strategic leadership remit across Employee and Industrial Relations.

You will lead development and delivery of an end-to-end ER strategy, inherit an established team, and shape a proactive, commercially-aware ER function across UK&I

Responsibilities

• Lead end-to-end Employee and Industrial Relations strategy aligned to the People Strategy.
• Inherit and develop an ER team, shaping capabilities technically and commercially.
• Advise senior leadership on employment policy, ER practice and risk management.
• Manage proactive trade union and Employee Forum relationships and escalated matters.

Job description

Senior Employee Relations Manager - UK&I

£(phone number removed) + bonus + LTIP + benefits

High-profile, multi-site consumer organisation

Location: Remote with minimum one day a week in head office (Northern Home Counties)

There are Employee Relations roles that manage complexity. And there are roles that give you the opportunity to change how an organisation manages its people.

This is the latter.

We are partnering with a major UK&I consumer organisation to appoint a Senior (Head of) Employee Relations Manager into a highly visible leadership role with a breadth of remit that would readily be recognised as Head of Employee Relations in many businesses.

This is not a turnaround and it is not a blank sheet of paper.

Over the last couple of years, a credible and respected Employee Relations function has been built and embedded across the organisation. A specialist team is in place, relationships have been established with operational and senior leadership teams, and ER has earned its position as an important business partner.

The opportunity now is to take that platform and determine what comes next.

For an ambitious ER leader, this offers a compelling combination: strategic ownership, operational complexity, Industrial Relations, leadership development, colleague engagement, employment policy and the opportunity to build an entirely new ER proposition for a significant wider business network.

You will operate at senior leadership level, but remain close enough to the organisation to understand what is really happening.

This is emphatically not a “that’s not my job” environment.

The mandate

You will lead the development and delivery of the organisation's end-to-end Employee and Industrial Relations strategy, ensuring it supports the wider People Strategy and responds to a rapidly changing external employment landscape.

You will inherit an established specialist team and a function with strong foundations. Your challenge will be to build on that success rather than unnecessarily reinvent it.

Developing that team, technically, commercially and as future talent for the wider People function will be an important part of your leadership contribution.

But this role extends considerably beyond leading an ER team.

Building genuine leadership capability

A significant priority will be continuing to shift appropriate people ownership back to line managers.

The ambition is not to create greater dependency on Employee Relations. It is to develop leaders who have the confidence, capability and judgement to manage their people well.

You will therefore shape the frameworks, tools, coaching and interventions that enable first- and second-line managers to deal effectively with everyday people matters such as absence, conduct, performance and capability.

Where specialist ER expertise is required, the function must provide high-quality, consistent and commercially pragmatic support. But equally, you will challenge unnecessary escalation and help leaders understand where accountability properly sits with them.

Ultimately, success means leaving behind better managers, not simply a busier ER function.

This reflects a central requirement of the formal mandate: developing line-manager understanding of employment law, policy and ER practice to improve consistency and ultimately increase manager accountability.

Employee & Industrial Relations

You will set the ER and IR agenda across a complex UK&I organisation encompassing multi-site operations, supply chain and Head Office populations.

You will provide leadership across trade union and employee forum relationships, ensuring the organisation takes a proactive rather than reactive approach to Industrial Relations.

With dedicated IR expertise within your team, you do not need to personally be the answer to every question. You do, however, need the technical credibility and experience to lead the agenda, challenge appropriately, anticipate risk and provide sound judgement when situations become complex.

You will also retain oversight of escalated and sensitive ER matters, including complex cases, litigation and Employment Tribunals, working effectively with both your internal specialists and external legal partners.

The formal remit includes responsibility for proactive trade union and Employee Forum relationships, as well as leadership of escalated complex cases and tribunals.

Creating something new

One of the most exciting dimensions of this appointment sits beyond the organisation's directly employed population.

The business operates alongside an extensive network of independently operated businesses, and there is now an opportunity to consider:

How can the ER capability and expertise that has been developed centrally be used to help that wider network become even better employers?

You will play a leading role in answering that question.

The opportunity is to create a practical, scalable and commercially relevant ER proposition and toolkit that provides meaningful support without creating inappropriate dependency.