Workforce Advisor

Lancashire Teaching Hospitals; Rishton; Hybrid; GBP 32,000 - 52,000; Full time

Job summary

Lancashire Teaching Hospitals is seeking a Workforce Advisor to provide specialist employee relations advice, coach managers and develop HR policies across a busy NHS environment. You will work on sickness absence management, disciplinary, grievances and workplace conflict, with emphasis on compassionate, just culture.

The role offers flexible working patterns with on-site attendance required part of the week, and opportunities for professional development and collaboration with Workforce

Qualifications

• Experience in employee relations case-work within HR.
• Strong knowledge of employment law and its application.
• Solid understanding of equality and diversity principles.
• Experience in policy development.

Responsibilities

• Act as point of contact for managers on terms, conditions and policies.
• Advise managers on employee relations cases including sickness absence, disciplinary, grievances and workplace conflict.
• Support recruitment processes and job evaluation as required.
• Propose changes to practice, policy development and ways of working.
• Provide information to support divisional workforce strategies and performance improvements.

Skills

Employee relations

Employment law

Equality & diversity

Policy development

HR case-work

Education

CIPD Level 5

ECDL IT skills

Continuing professional development

Degree or equivalent experience

Job description

Are you seeking to develop your HR career in a fast-paced environment? If so, we would love to hear from you.

As an award-winning teaching hospital, with a range of acute and specialist services, our workforce is diverse and aspires to achieve great things for our patients. Due to the size of the organisation and the variety of the services provided you will have the opportunity build your experience and have an impact on the services you support.

Our Workforce Advisors are focused on providing specialist employee relations advice, coaching managers and developing policies.

We support colleagues to work agilely, and many of the team split the week between working on site and working from home. Please note all staff are required to work on site at least 2 days a week and flexibility is required, subject to the needs of the service e.g. meeting that require attendance in person.

If this sounds like the role for you, please get in touch.

Main duties of the job

No two days are the same in this role. You will be providing advice about sickness absence management, disciplinary and grievance processes and best practice in managing people and teams. This could be over the phone, in online meetings, or face to face.

There will be days when you will deal with challenging and sensitive situations and other days when you will be able to celebrate success and share learning. Every contact you have can make a difference to someone else and high levels of compassion and professional judgement will be crucial.

You will play an important role in providing support and advice to service managers. You will be an advocate for colleagues ensuring policies and employment legislation is followed as well as championing a just culture approach to employee relations matters.

The ongoing learning and development of team members is very important to us and to support this we have weekly team sessions to ensure there is a regular opportunity to meet as a team, discuss learning from cases and have the opportunity for CPD.

Working for our organisation

The Workforce Team is based at Preston Business Centre, co-locating with other key teams such as Recruitment, Payroll and Temporary staffing, providing the opportunity for engagement and closer working relationships.

We employ over 10,000 staff across Royal Preston Hospital and Chorley and South Ribble Hospital and are committed to working in partnership to deliver seamless care to patients close to home.

As a teaching hospital we offer a wide range of development and training opportunities to colleagues in house.

Our purpose is to be recognised as the acute and specialised hospital services in Lancashire and South Cumbria, providing the highest standards of compassionate, safe care that gives our patients a positive experience, excelling in research, innovation and teaching, developing our staff to reach their potential, and improving the health and wellbeing of our diverse communities.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

• Act as point of contact for managers seeking advice on terms and conditions of employment and Workforce policies.
• Proactively support and advise managers on employee relations cases including sickness absence management, disciplinary, grievance, performance management and workplace conflict
• Participate in job matching and job evaluation; and support recruitment processes as required
• Make recommendations and proposals for changes to practice, policy
  development and ways of working.
• Provide information to managers and Workforce Business Partners to support the development of divisional workforce strategies and improvements in workforce performance metrics.

Person specification

Knowledge & Experience

Essential criteria

• Experience of working in HR undertaking employee relations case-work
• Thorough knowledge of employment law and its application
• Thorough knowledge of the principles of equality and diversity
• Experience in policy development

Desirable criteria

• Experience of working in HR in the NHS
• Knowledge of Agenda for Change terms and conditions of service
• Experience in undertaking job evaluation

Qualifications & Education

Essential criteria

• Good general education to degree equivalent level or equivalent experience
• CIPD level 5 and CIPD Associate Membership
• ECDL or equivalent IT skills
• Evidence of continuing professional development

Desirable criteria

• CIPD Level 7