HR Manager

Salary: £45,000 per annum

Location: Stevenage and working across all sites

Hours: 37 hours per week

Job Type: Permanent

About the Role

This is a broad, hands-on generalist HR management role in a medium-sized organisation with approximately 600 staff and annual turnover of £35 million. The postholder will lead and deliver a high-quality, pragmatic and customer-focused HR service across the full employee lifecycle, from attraction and recruitment through onboarding, engagement, employee relations, payroll and benefits, performance support and organisational change, through to exit and offboarding. The role will work closely with managers across the organisation to ensure people practices are legally compliant, operationally effective and aligned to organisational values and objectives.

Reports to: Head of HR

Direct reports: May include HR Coordinator and 3 HR Officers

About the Organisation

The College operates across three main campuses in Stevenage and Hitchin, employing over 650 staff. With a turnover of £30m, the college provides learning opportunities to over 10,000 students each year from study programmes for 16-18 year olds and apprenticeships through to adult provision locally, regionally and nationally. We were judged Good by Ofsted at our last inspection in December 2023, with outstanding features.

Key relationships: line managers, employees, payroll provider, recruitment agencies and external advisers

Roles and Responsibilities

• Provide a comprehensive generalist HR service across the full employee lifecycle, ensuring a professional, responsive and solutions-focused service to managers and employees.
• Support workforce planning and attraction activity, including role design, job descriptions, advertising, agency liaison and candidate management.
• Manage and oversee end-to-end recruitment and selection processes, ensuring fair, inclusive and effective hiring practices.
• Support the onboarding and induction processes, ensuring a positive new starter experience and completion of all pre-employment checks, contracts and documentation.
• Act as a trusted adviser to managers on employee relations matters, including absence, performance, conduct, grievance, disciplinary, capability and flexible working issues.
• Lead or support formal employee relations casework, ensuring compliance with internal policy, employment legislation and relevant codes of practice.
• Develop, review and implement HR policies, procedures and guidance to support legal compliance, consistency and good people practice.
• Maintain accurate and secure employee records and HR systems, ensuring data integrity, confidentiality and reporting capability.
• Oversee payroll inputs and checks, working with payroll colleagues or external providers to ensure accurate and timely processing of pay, contractual changes and statutory payments.
• Administer and review employee benefits arrangements, supporting employee understanding and ensuring effective operation of benefit schemes.
• Support pay and reward activity, including salary benchmarking, pay review processes and advice on contractual terms and conditions.
• Monitor HR KPI’s and management information, providing insight on areas such as turnover, absence, vacancies, employee relations trends and recruitment performance.
• Support employee engagement initiatives, wellbeing activity and organisational culture development to improve retention and employee experience.
• Coach and support managers to build capability and confidence in people management and the consistent application of policy and procedure.
• Contribute to organisational change activity such as restructures, consultation, TUPE-related support where relevant, and change communications.
• Manage probation, performance review and development processes, working with managers to support high standards and timely interventions where needed.
• Oversee leaving processes, including resignation administration, exit interviews, final payroll notifications and the identification of retention themes.
• Work collaboratively with managers to improve people processes, identify risks and support delivery of organisational objectives.
• Keep up to date with employment law, HR best practice and implement these.