Strategic Employee Relations Business Partner

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Date: 27 Jul 2026

Location: Gatwick, GB

Salary: £75,000 up to £80,000 dependent upon experience

Contract Type: FTC 2 years – Full-time

Security Level: BPSS

Location: Gatwick, Aviation House – min 2 days in the office per week or 8 days across the month.

Visa Restrictions: This position does not offer visa sponsorship

Closing Date: 16th August 2026

Interview Date: 2nd September 2026 – in person Gatwick - Aviation House.

We are the UK's aviation and aerospace regulator and recognised as a world leader in its field. Our activities are diverse, enabling the aviation industry to meet the highest safety standards, and we pride ourselves on our ability to adapt to the constantly evolving aviation environment.

The Role

The Strategic Employee Relations Business Partner is a newly created role within the CAA and has been designed to help shape and deliver our Employee Experience through our Employee Relations strategy across the organisation. It is intended to provide proactive, insight-led employee approach which drives a positive and values driven workplace culture, mitigates organisational risk and enables high performance.

Working closely with senior leaders, Strategic People Partners, and Centres of Excellence, the role moves beyond transactional case management to identify trends, influence organisational decisions, and embed effective, equitable, and consistent people practices. This role will hold direct line management responsibility for the ER Casework Manager and oversee their leadership of the People Consultants team.

Strategic ER Leadership

• Develop and implement a forward-looking employee relations strategy aligned to organisational priorities and culture.
• Provide expert ER insights to inform business transformation, organisational design, and workforce planning.
• Act as a trusted advisor and coach to senior leaders and Strategic People Partners on complex, high-risk, and sensitive people issues.

Capability Building

• Build ER capability across the business facing people teams, specifically the Strategic People Partners and the People Consultants in addition to line managers through coaching, training and guidance.
• Promote early intervention and informal resolution approaches.
• Build capability and confidence of line managers to manage employee relations situations focused on early intervention and building confidence.
• Enable a shift from reactive case management to proactive people management.

Complex Case Management & Risk Mitigation

• Lead on the advice for the most complex, high-impact employee relations cases (e.g. disciplinary, grievance, whistleblowing, capability exits & P and C employment tribunal lead).
• Provide guidance and quality assurance to Strategic People Partners and wider people teams on ER case handling.
• Ensure risks are proactively identified, escalated, and mitigated in line with legal and organisational requirements.
• Provide lessons learnt insights and action plans to leaders and management in relation to risk mitigation, culture change and operational improvement
• Analyse ER data and trends to identify systemic issues, root causes, and emerging risks generating recommendations for corporate and local action.
• Use insights to influence policy, leadership capability, and organisational interventions. Drive continuous improvement in ER processes, ensuring efficiency, consistency and high-quality outcomes.

Policy & Governance

• Overall accountability for Leading the development, review, and implementation of existing and new people policies and frameworks.
• Ensure policies align with employment legislation, best practice and organisational values.
• Ensure polices and processes are co-created with joint authors/owners
• Ensure people are accountable for timely policy work, helping to enable them on what good looks like and elevate risks to management where governance is not working or deliverables are not being realised.
• Promote equitable, inclusive, and consistent application of policies across the organisation.

Stakeholder Management & Influence

• Partner with senior leaders, Strategic People Partners, Legal, and reward…