Job Title: Employee Relations Care Advisor  

Starting: ASAP

Duration: 4 months and could be longer   

Hours: Monday to Friday, 9 – 5.30  

Location: Croydon, South London 

Band: 5 

Pay:  £14.64ph – £18.01ph PAYE 

£16.41ph - £20.19ph PAYE Inclusive of Holiday Pay 

Job Summary: 

The Employee Relations Advisor will provide first line Human Resources advice and support to Trust employees and managers, in accordance with the Trust’s policies and procedures and good employment practices. 

Duties:

• To provide first line advice and guidance to managers on managing short term and long term sickness absence in accordance with the Trust’s Sickness and Attendance Management Policy, following the process through from beginning to end, including holding and supporting managers with termination hearings
• To communicate complex/ sensitive information relating to ill health retirement and redeployment processes (both permanent and temporary redeployment)
• To support management and employees with these processes recognising the sensitive and complex nature of cases that often result in these actions
• To assist managers to reduce sickness absence through active management; supporting and advising Managers in conducting all short and long term sickness review meetings for designated department, including offering advice and support on complex and sensitive cases
• Supporting with appeals as and when required, overseen by the ER Manager as needed
• Supporting the individuals in a compassionate and dignified way during what is often a difficult period of time for them
• Supporting the Senior ER Advisors and ER Manager to collate any case material needed for appeals raised against stage three hearings, and attend to support the manager during these hearings
• To use ESR sickness data when managing short and long term sickness cases, to be able to provide information to staff and managers when approaching half or nil pay
• To monitor and ensure long term sickness absence cases which go beyond 12 months absence pay is reinstated at half 
• To identify potential hot spot areas of concern across the directorates and work in partnership with the HR Business Partnering team, Occupational Health and Staff Health and Wellbeing leads to identify and implement interventions that may be appropriate to address local issues in a multidisciplinary team way
• Interpret and advise managers on Trust policies to ensure compliance, whilst offering general HR advice to all Trust staff
• To take a leading HR role on Flexible Working applications and appeals, supporting managers to review the particular impacts any flexible working application may have to both the individual and the service
• Ensure advice is provided to enable Managers to make appropriate decisions when

considering refusal of applications

• Regularly run reports from ESR on the number of flexible working requests that are being made and identify areas where there are outliers
• To take a leading role on any cases that are needed where an individual’s professional registration (ie pin number) has expired and not been renewed meaning individual is unable to legally work in the role they are employed to complete
• Update the ESR case management systems and trackers to ensure that ER cases are accessible and up to date for accurate reporting.
• Provide advice and first level support to managers and staff on aspects of employee relations including DBS, Professional Registration, conduct issues and other matters, whilst keeping the relevant Senior ER Advisor updated, escalating to the ER Manager or Head of Strategic ER where necessary
• Provide advice, coaching and guidance to managers to support them to undertake successful informal resolution meetings
• Support the ER Administrators with the collation of Freedom of Information (FOI) requests for information, liaising with directorate managers as required to ensure information provided is accurate and in a timely manner, recognising the sensitive and confidential nature of information held by the HR team
• Dealing with general enquiries and recording and relaying accurate messages. Ensure all
• correspondence is accurate, and ensure incoming post, queries, and complaints are dealt with in a timely manner (for the HR and ER team) supporting the ER Administrators as needed
• To be confident running reports and analysing complex and highly sensitive data relating to

individuals employment, spotting trends and patterns to identify potential interventions and

• improvements needed
• Submit monthly reports to the payroll liaison team with details of open-ended long-term sickness cases, in order to help minimise any incorrect overpayments
• Monitoring the return to half pay of long term (over 12 months absent) employees
• Work with managers to ensure accurate reporting of information onto the e-rostering system. 

Essential Experience: 

• Experience working as a employee relations care advisor of an NHS Trust 
• Experience working on a band 5 level 
• At least 2 years NHS experience 
• Able to advise managers on complex ER queries 
• Dealing with long term sickness, redundancy and dismissal cases 

Desirable Experience: 

• Good knowledge of employment law 
• CIPD qualified 
• Having managed a team 
• Understanding the current financial restraints that the NHS is experiencing 
• Knowledge of Agenda for Change regulations 
• Experience using ESR 
• Smart card holder 
• Experience using e-DBS

Person Specification: 

• Excellent communication skills both over the phone, via email and face to face
• Excellent attention to detail
• Ability to deal with very sensitive information 
• Motivated and enthusiastic team player 
• Ability to act on own initiative 
• Excellent interpersonal skills
• Excellent knowledge of patient confidentiality