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Senior People Specialist - Leave of Absence Specialist

The People Operations – Senior Specialist (LOA) is a critical role within the People Services team and is responsible for advising and empowering our people managers to manage all aspects of employee absence for UK, IRL and South Africa, including family leave, sickness absence management, proactive intervention ensuring effective return to work solutions, plans or resolution.

This role will provide expert advice and guidance for complex LOA cases providing case strategy and direction and requires strong expertise in HR policy interpretation and application, leave of absence processes, risk management and business process optimisation. Working closely with People Services Leaders and key internal stakeholders across HR, Payroll, and IT, the Senior Specialist supports the delivery of high-quality services by ensuring consistent, compliant, and efficient handling of HR processes. In addition, working in collaboration with our external partners in Occupational Health, Early Intervention and our Group Income Protection insurer. With a strong focus on stakeholder support, knowledge sharing, and operational excellence, this role is ideal for an experienced HR professional looking to make a meaningful impact in a dynamic and evolving shared services environment.

This is a remote role, however there may times that it may be necessary to visit the office when required.

• Manage Employee Absence Processes across Family Leave, Sickness Absence, Occupational Health, Early Intervention, and Group Income Protection referrals.
• Provide advice and support to employees and managers on all Leave of Absence processes, collaborating with wider HR teams and escalating complex cases when necessary.
• Provide subject matter expertise on complex medical related issues, ensuring alignment with policy and wellbeing/ Sickness absence practices, ensuring compliance with internal policies and relevant legislations.
• Case management including strategy, direction, risk assessment, action plans, case reviews and resolution for both our business and our people.
• Utilising the expertise of our external OH advisors, insurers and legal advisors.
• Ensure cases are documented thoroughly and accurately and actions and processes completed in a timely manner.
• Respond to queries promptly and in line with agreed Service Level Agreements (SLAs).
• Employee Support: Supporting employees through periods of absence:
• Providing advice on policy, return to work plans, referrals to OH, and potential reasonable adjustments
• Ensuring appropriate review meetings, consultation on case outcomes and resolutions.
• Issuing letters and documentation to ensure clarity, status updates, actions and outcomes.

• Serve as a key liaison between the LOA and ER teams to ensure seamless support and appropriate handovers in relation to absence management. .
• Ensure the Senior People Partner team are informed of complex cases, recommendations and decision making.
• Act as the escalation point for People Services teams pertaining to complex policy interpretation and best practices and assist in decision making prior to escalation to Team Lead or Manager.

• Establish robust LOA reporting and analytics to provide actional insights across Business Units.
• Highlight and report on related metrics

• Review relevant LOA policies and ensure they are up to date with relevant business and legislative changes.
• Work alongside the Team Lead and Manager to Ensure the company’s knowledge base is developed and maintained to support people managers and our people in understanding our policies, procedures, practices and expectations.
• Ensure appropriate resources are readily available and effective training is provided to the team. Implement, communicate and engage the People and Culture team on new policy development.
• HR Operations Systems and Process Improvement
• Work collaboratively with the People Services Team Lead and Manager to improve the LOA process design and automation including the configuration and transfer of data from Workday to downstream systems, including Payroll.
• Partner with People Services Team Lead and Manager to support the integration and delivery of key HR business processes, ensuring they are efficient, compliant, and consistently applied across the organisation.
• Drive continuous improvement and process optimisation in collaboration with key stakeholders, including Centres of Excellence (CoE), Business Unit HR (BUHR), IT, and Finance.
• Optimise the use of Workday through regular audits, ensuring data accuracy, quality, and system configurations that align with HR policies and processes.
• Support quality checking or People Services output, providing coach and feedback to team members alongside.
• Provide support and oversight of the team during People Services Team Lead absences.
• Ensure audit and SOx compliance by preparing and maintaining accurate records in accordance with audit controls.
• Complete and record audit activities on time and to standard.
• Contribute to continuous improvement initiatives across processes, systems, and service delivery.
• Provide proactive feedback and suggestions for operational improvements.
• Actively participate in projects aimed at enhancing HR services
• Stay current on legislation at local and regional levels, providing guidance and updates to relevant stakeholders on changes impacting absence management.

• Previous, demonstrable experience providing strong HR and Leaves of Absence Support.
• Self-confidence and sound judgement to recommend case strategy, direction and identify risk.
• Knowledge of basic employment law and HR/Payroll practices, combined with a practical, common sense, empathetic approach
• Resilience and tenacity to see things through to conclusion and manage complex and sensitive cases with integrity.
• Initiative and drive to continuously identify ‘better ways’ of working to improve efficiency
• Methodical and organized with the ability to meet deadlines and prioritise a busy and varied workload.
• Attention to detail, responsive, with a customer service-minded approach, is a must.
• Proactively identifies customer needs and takes responsibility to resolve customer concerns.
• Experience with cloud based HRIS systems (ideally Workday).

• Demonstrable experience of working in a HR Shared Services team specializing in Leaves of Absence.
• Experience of working with a ticket or case management system (e.g. ServiceNow)

Uniting the expertise and capabilities of Ashfield and Huntsworth Health, Inizio has just been launched to become THE strategic partner for health and life sciences companies. Unparalleled in scale and expertise, we connect a full suite of Advisory, Medical, Marketing/Communications, Patient and Stakeholder Engagement, and Biotech services to reimagine clients' business challenges into opportunities.

We are a team of 12,000 experts working together in 35 countries to create something extraordinary. We exist to solve health challenges and develop transformational ideas that positively impact human lives. Working at Inizio offers an opportunity to work for a game-changing company built with one goal. That is to redefine health and life sciences by empowering our people to inspire new possibilities that advance health and build brighter futures.

At Inizio, we value inclusivity, recognize the power of diversity and inspire the next generation of change-makers. We are an equal opportunities employer. We believe in creating a dynamic work environment that values diversity, equity and inclusion. We strive to recruit from a diverse slate of candidates and foster an environment that provides the right conditions for long-term success. We welcome all applications regardless of race, colour, religion or belief, gender, gender identity, age, national origin, marital status, military veteran status, genetic information, sexual orientation and physical or mental disability.

Don't meet every job requirement? That's okay! Our company is dedicated to building an inclusive and authentic workplace. If you're excited about this role, but your experience doesn't perfectly fit every qualification, we encourage you to apply anyway. You may be just the right person for this role or others.

United Kingdom (Remote)