Hours: Full-time, 39 hours a week

Contract Type: Permanent

Reporting to: Colleague Relations Specialist

Location: Hybrid role, flexible office days

About the role

The role is to provide initial advice and guidance on colleague relations matters to managers and answer queries from colleagues and other teams. The advice will be given across a range of people topics and therefore sensitivity, along with knowing when to escalate or pass on to a Colleague Relations Advisor.

Basic employment law knowledge is not essential but experience or first level of CIPD qualification is desirable whilst excellent listening and people skills are essential.

This role is rewarding and challenging, with high volumes of cases and a fast pace. You will be joining a team who are energetic and focused on achieving the highest standards and exceeding our consumers’ expectations.

Key Responsibilities

• Provide timely, initial (first-line) colleague relations advice to our Retail Stores and Support Office line managers, particularly on people policies, procedures, and terms and conditions of employment. This will be mainly telephone-based and in written format but could also be face-to-face where required.
• Support the People Assistants to manage the Colleague Relations inbox as part of the wider team ensuring case allocation and timely responses to emails.
• Be responsible for managing the less complex long-term cases with support from Colleague Relations Advisors.
• Ensure the automated processes are working correctly and test out new functionality.
• Responsible for your own colleague relations cases which will be supported and mentored through a Colleague Relations Advisor / Senior Colleague Relations Advisor.
• Ability to understand when to take responsibility to resolve issues and when to escalate to Colleague Relations Advisor, People Business Partner(s), or line manager etc.
• Ensure that you always work within the boundaries of current employment legislation and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) when handling colleague data and throughout the activities or projects you are involved in.
• Work closely with the People Specialist for Risk and Compliance to support reporting requirements for cases and tribunals.
• Provide advice and guidance on people issues to promote best practices and minimise risk to our Retail Stores and Support Office which helps to deliver our People strategy and enhance our overall performance.
• Support hearings and meetings as a note-taker on occasion.
• Check and advise on basic letters for individual colleague relation cases.
• Create new and maintain all cases onto HEAT (case management system) ensuring records are up to date and documented accurately in real-time.
• Responsible for ensuring you are up to date with all employment legislation changes and ensuring relevant legal compliance in all HR activities.
• Role model effective working relationships across the wider People team and business.
• To work within the values and behaviours of the Company and display high standards of integrity and professionalism towards colleagues and all stakeholders.
• Consistently meet the Service Level Expectations directly linked within the Colleague Relations team and proactively communicate when there may be unexpected delays with all stakeholders.
• Work closely with your peers to ensure a seamless delivery of service by understanding their roles/challenges and responding to these by working together to deliver improvements.
• Input into HR reporting/management information as required.
• Opportunity to be involved in project work as required.

About You

• Basic knowledge of UK employment law is essential.
• CIPD level 3 qualified or working towards qualification.
• PC literate (Word processing, spreadsheets, databases).
• Strong collaborative team player.
• Excellent organisational skills and attention to detail.
• Strong communication and interpersonal skills.
• Able to show initiative.
• Ability to time manage.
• Ability to work under pressure and to deadlines.
• Good problem-solving skills and diplomacy.
• Flexible, pragmatic, and commercial approach.
• Sound administrative and IT skills.
• Self-motivation and enthusiasm.

If this sounds like you, we would love to speak further. Please click to apply or register your interest.

Pets just see people. They aren’t biased and they don’t discriminate. We take our inspiration from pets, and we value and respect difference in all its forms. Our aim is to reflect the diversity of the communities we operate in, and every colleague can help us achieve this. We encourage our people to be themselves so even if your skills and experience don’t perfectly align, if you think you can make a unique contribution through your values and behaviours, we want to hear from you.

About Us:

“We put pets first” is our number one value at Pets at Home. Every colleague has a part to play to ensure that we deliver this value every day. Our love and understanding of pets led us to develop our long-term goal of improving the life of every pet in the UK. This covers not only the pets in our care, the pets of owners that use our products and services but also the pets that we can help through our charity work and through educating and advocating for change in society and the wider pet care and veterinary industry.

We have an ambitious plan, to become “The Best Pet Care Business in the world” and a key part of delivering this will be through customer engagement in our brand and its continued evolution.

ey part of delivering this will be through customer engagement in our brand and its continued evolution.