Employee Relations Advisor

Discipline: Education
Job type: Permanent
Contact email: mathure.ragunathan@blackstone-recruitment.co.uk
Job ref: J6712
Startdate: 08/05/2025

Job Title: Employee Relations Advisor

Location: UK-Remote

Overview:

Employee Relations Advisor

Location: Home based (with one day per week to central office) Some travel to the Central Office Services will also be required

Salary:  £36,000 - £40,000 dependent upon relevant experience

Hours:  40 hrs per week

The Group 

The Group is one of the largest providers of SEND educational and care services in the country, supporting over 1,200 children, young people and adults, and employing over 1,500 staff spread across 27 services around England.  

We’re currently looking for an Employee Relations Advisor to work within the Employee Relations team, support the delivery of an effective and efficient Employee Relations Service across the Group.

The Role: 

Effective and fair management of Employee Relations is an essential part of our commitment to providing quality provision and to the overall Engagement and Wellbeing of our Teams. Due to our exciting and continuing growth we are expanding the employee relations team.

Reporting to our Employee Relations Partner and working collaboratively with the Regional HR Business Partners, you will advise and support our Service Leadership teams with people management issues such as unplanned absence, probation, grievance, disciplinary and capability.

Additionally, you will support investigating managers to ensure investigations are robust and carried out in a timely manner, supporting regional HR Administrators to ensure hearing documents (letters, papers for hearing, guidance for Chair) are produced to the appropriate standard.

The role will also give you the opportunity to guide, coach and train line managers in the development of their people management skills.

 In collaboration with the wider HR teams, you will also play a key role in the development and maintenance of HR policies, procedures and toolkits and provide support on the delivery of ER projects.

Please note that duties will vary and you will be expected to contribute to the overall aims of the team when required. Please see the link below for our full job description: 

Responsibilities:

Experience: 

Successful candidates need to demonstrate: 

  • CIPD level 5 qualified or equivalent
  • Demonstrable experience of management of ER cases in a complex environment.
  • Up to date knowledge of UK employment law, relevant case law and decisions
  • High attention to detail and levels of accuracy
  • Effective interpersonal skills – both written and verbal
  • Ability to coach line managers to enable them to effectively deal with their ER issues
  • Ability to build effective and positive relationships with managers across the Group and with external parties such as union representatives 
  • An understanding of legislative and regulatory frameworks for education and care environments would be an advantage although not essential

Whilst the role is home based, candidates will need the ability to travel regularly to our Central office in Twigworth, Gloucester (once a week), as well as being able to attend our services as and when needed to support ER processes and the development of positive relationships with Service leadership. Whilst driving is not essential and travel can be expensed for public transport, please bear in mind our services are countrywide and some are semi-rural locations.

Qualifications:

Be part of our successful team and also benefit from a generous package that includes:

  • Life assurance
  • Enhanced Pension scheme
  • Enhanced annual leave
  • Perkbox - offering retail and other discounts, access to car lease scheme and bike to work scheme
  • Employee assistance programme
  • Fully funded training and qualifications
  • Free membership to our Health cash back plan - Claim back money on services such as dental, optical, physio and many more.

Successful applicants will be subject to pre-employment safeguarding checks including an enhanced disclosure and barring service (DBS) check.

The post is exempt from the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 and the Group is therefore permitted to ask job applicants to declare all convictions and cautions (including those which are "spent" unless they are "protected" under the DBS filtering rules) in order to assess their suitability to work with children.

The Group is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of the children and young adults in our care and is a disability confident and equal opportunities employer.