Senior HR Advisor

About The Role

Senior HR Advisor

Salary:£38,937 The role also comes with either a company car or a £500 monthly car allowance, depending on preference. Full time, 36 hours per week, with 9 Day Fortnight.

Hybrid role:based from Tiverton or Bristol, with a combination of office working, site visits and working from home. On average, we would expect this to be around two days per week from home, with three days per week either in the office or out on site.

Phoenix Learning and Care operates schools and colleges, as well as care services for children and adults. The People we support are some of the most vulnerable in society, and often have not had the best start in life.

We are looking for an experienced Senior HR Advisor to join our People Services Team. This is one of two Senior HR Advisor roles reporting into the HR Manager and will provide high-quality, practical and timely HR support across Phoenix’s care and education settings.

The role is largely employee relations focused, so you will be confident managing a varied and busy caseload, including repetitive short-term absence, long-term absence, performance, disciplinary, grievance, investigations, hearings and appeals. Some cases will be extremely sensitive and may involve safeguarding concerns, so you will need to be able to handle information carefully, work with appropriate confidentiality and keep the needs of the People we support and Team Members firmly in mind.

As a trauma-informed organisation, we want our people practice to be supportive, reflective and fair, while still being able to address concerns directly when this is required. You will need to be comfortable making difficult decisions where they are needed, doing so in a compassionate, legally sound and trauma-informed way.

The main areas of travel are likely to be South Wales, Bristol and across to Newbury, with travel to other regions, including Birmingham and Manchester, as Phoenix continues to open and develop new sites. We aim to take a personal approach and meet face to face where this adds value, particularly for sensitive matters, while also balancing this with online meetings where they are appropriate and effective.

This role would suit someone who has a real passion for employee relations and already brings strong ER experience. Experience with in care, education or another regulated safeguarding environment would be ideal; however, we are open minded to candidates from other sectors where they can demonstrate significant employee relations experience and a genuine interest in developing their understanding of our sector.

• Managing a busy employee relations caseload, including repetitive short-term absence, long-term absence, performance, disciplinary, grievance, investigations, hearings and appeals.
• Supporting managers with absence management and probation processes, including cases involving occupational fitness, reasonable adjustments, return to work planning and, where appropriate, cases that may progress through to termination of employment.
• Working closely with the HR Manager and the second Senior HR Advisor to maintain a responsive and high-quality HR service.
• Coaching managers through sensitive people processes so they feel confident handling difficult conversations, making balanced decisions and keeping a compassionate, trauma-informed approach.
• Preparing clear documentation and supporting appropriate referrals, including occupational health and DBS referrals where required, ensuring concerns are factual, timely and handled with appropriate care.
• Supporting organisational change activity, including workforce planning, restructures and changes to ways of working, making sure people processes are fair, consultative and well communicated.
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