Employee Relations Specialist - FTC Maternity Cover

At Yeo Valley, we're about more than just making great food – we're here to Nurture & Nourish People & Planet by Making Great Food the Right Way. Forever. As a co-owned business, we invest in our people, encourage growth, and believe in doing things properly.

We aim to be a successful, visionary and purposeful food and farming business powered by people who feel inspired by our purpose and valued as co-owners.

As ER Specialist you will provide technical expertise to our site-based people managers at three of our production sites:
Crewkerne and Newton Abbot. You will interpret and apply Yeo Valley’s People Policies, providing sound advice and where required support or lead on more complex employee relations matters.

You will also support in ensuring that Yeo Valley’s ‘people policies’ are not only well maintained, but critically, align with Yeo Valley’s purpose to ‘nurture and nourish people and planet’ within our culture of co-ownership.

• Act as a point of contact and escalation for People Services Assistants, People Managers and People Partners, regarding the interpretation and application of People Policies.
• Works closely with our people managers to provide procedural advice and guidance, enabling them to resolve people challenges and employee relations cases whilst ensuring our co-owners are treated fairly, consistently and with our values in mind.
• Attends formal meetings to note take, provide HR Advice/guidance and ensure that case files are appropriately maintained with required systems.
• Has oversight of attendance management, ensuring compliance with the policy, escalating concerns where appropriate.
• Supports and coaches people managers in line with Yeo Valley’s Supporting your Performance at Work Policy, ensuring robust management of performance improvement processes.
• Ensures that People Policies are both maintained, reflecting the most up to date legislative requirements, but also reviews availability and content ongoing to ensure that policies provide an appropriate framework – and align to YV purpose to ‘nurture and nourish people & planet’ and culture of co-ownership.
• Works with both People Services & People Partners to review case logs and individual case management information (for respective functions/departments), ensuring fairness and consistency in application (across all departments/functions), and to undertake analysis of people activities – making recommendations for coaching/training opportunities to improve overall line manager capability.
• Acts as a data expert, working with both People Services, IT and stakeholders, to build a deep understanding of people data, analytics and metrics required by key stakeholders and create bespoke reports and dashboards.
• Where appropriate, leads workshops/training with People Managers to upskill and provide information on new toolkits/procedures.

• A fantastic team player
• Proactive in approach, identifying opportunities for improvement
• Demonstrable and relevant experience working in a similar ER Specialist/HR Advisor role
• Has an in-depth and up to date working knowledge of UK employment law
• Is analytical with an exceptional degree of accuracy and proven attention to detail when working with data
• Is great at producing reports and confidence in working with data, figures, systems, and spreadsheets
• Has a strong technical knowledge of HRIS systems. Advanced level of MS Office, particularly Excel, Word, and Power Point

• Employee Relations knowledge
• Experience of providing best practice advice, using internal policies

• CIPD – level 5
• Policy creation
• FMCG/Manufacturing background

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