Linklaters
Senior HR Advisor, Business Teams, UK - 12 month FTC
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About us
Linklaters is a global law firm, providing legal services in 20 countries and through 30 offices. Linklaters is a people business. Being best in class in the eyes of our clients means that our people must be exceptional. We look not only for brilliant minds, but for people who will thrive in our environment: people who love working collaboratively and demonstrate the innovative, efficient, agile, entrepreneurial, and responsible mind-set we aim to bring to every interaction. Ours is an environment of outperformance. We achieve this not with targets and incentives, but by fostering a positive, supportive, fair, and open atmosphere. We respect and value difference but insist on inclusivity. We celebrate all aspects of diversity and challenge any form of bias. This is vital to our ability to work as one team, with a common goal.
The Team
The HR Team supporting Business Teams sits within the broader People function and plays a central role in ensuring the firm’s people priorities are strategically aligned, consistently delivered and directly responsive to the needs of the business. The team takes the lead for all business-facing HR matters across assigned functions and geographies, ensuring that the firm's people agenda – spanning talent management, performance, workforce planning, organisational design, employee relations and culture – is both commercially grounded and aligned with the firm’s global people strategy. The team operates across a global remit, taking accountability for the strategic direction of HR support for their client groups across all jurisdictions, whilst maintaining direct responsibility for HR delivery in the UK. The team partners closely with the Business Team Chiefs, functional leadership teams, HR Advisors, HR Centres of Excellence and regional HR colleagues to provide pragmatic, insight-led HR support that enables the firms functions to perform effectively across all markets globally.
The role
The Senior HR Advisor sits within the HR Team supporting Business Teams and plays a key role in ensuring consistent and high-quality delivery of day-to-day HR activity. The role works in close partnership with the Senior HR Managers to focus on strategic priorities and complex people matters.
The role is offered on a 12 month fixed term basis, and is primarily UK-focused owning the day-to-day delivery of HR advisory support for UK Business Teams across the full employee lifecycle. Whilst the role operates predominantly in the UK, there will be occasional opportunities to support on global activity, for example, contributing to the annual year end compensation process or other firmwide HR cycles that require co-ordinated cross-regional input.
The role works with all of the Senior HR Managers and liaises regularly with the HR Centres of Excellence and Shared Service Centre (LGS) ensuring a smooth, high-quality HR service while focusing on value-adding tasks.
Key responsibilities
Day-to-Day HR support
- Act as first point of contact for managers and employees within UK business teams on a broad range of day-to-day HR matters, providing timely, accurate and pragmatic advice.
- Support Senior HR Managers in delivering against the UK people plans, taking ownership of defined actions and ensuring progress is maintained across the full breadth of operational HR activity.
- Liaise with HR Centres of Excellence and LGS to ensure lifecycle processes are administered accurately, efficiently and in line with firm policies and processes.
- Build effective working relationships with managers, developing a sound understanding of their teams, priorities and people challenges.
- Escalate complex, sensitive or high-risk matters to Senior HR Managers as appropriate, providing clear context and relevant background to facilitate swift and informed decision making.
- Attend relevant team meetings and stakeholder forums as appropriate to maintain visibility and understanding of business activity and people related developments.
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Employee Relations & Risk Management
- Provide first-line support and guidance to managers on routine employee relation matters, including absence management, grievances, disciplinaries, performance issues within UK business teams, ensuring fair process and policy compliance.
- Assist with preparation and documentation of formal HR processes, and maintain accurate and thorough case records.
- Support Senior HR Managers on more complex and high-risk ER matters.
- Ensure adherence to HR policies and procedures across assigned functions, and contribute to the refinement of policies impacting business teams.
Talent Management, Performance & Development
- Support delivery of performance management cycle for UK business teams, including co-ordinating objective-setting, mid-year and year-end review processes and calibration meetings.
- Provide guidance to managers on use of performance management tools and frameworks, ensuring consistent application across functions.
- Assist Senior HR Managers in preparing for talent reviews and succession planning discussions, including compiling relevant data, talent profiles and supporting documentation.
- Co-ordinate and track development actions arising from talent reviews, working with Centres of Excellence to facilitate delivery.
- Flag emerging performance concerns and support managers in addressing these in a constructive and timely manner.
Reward & Compensation Processes
- Support the delivery of UK aspects of annual compensation review cycle, working closely with Senior HR Managers and Centres of Excellence to ensure timely and accurate data preparation, manager guidance and process co-ordination.
- Where required, provide support on global compensation review activity, assisting with data collation, cross-regional co-ordination and liaison with regional HR colleagues.
- Respond to manager and employee queries on reward-related matters escalating complex issues as appropriate.
Resourcing & Workforce Activity
- Support Senior HR Managers in monitoring resource levels and workforce activity in UK business teams, identifying gaps and flagging concerns in a timely manner.
- Liaise with the Talent Acquisition team on co-ordination of hiring activity for business teams roles.
- Assist with co-ordination of internal moves, working with Senior HR Managers, Centres of Excellence, LGS and regional colleagues to ensure smooth transitions.
HR Data Insights, Projects & Continuous Improvement
- Support Senior HR Managers in analysing people data to diagnose issues, identify trends and underpin evidence-based recommendations to leadership.
- Gather feedback from Business Teams Chiefs and functional leaders to continuously improve HR processes, tools and service delivery.
- Contribute to firmwide HR projects, particularly those affecting Business Teams functions, as directed by the Director of Performance & Rewards and Business Teams HR.
Your experience
You will have:
- Proven experience in an HR Advisor or similar HR generalist role, in a complex fast-paced organisation with a solid track record of delivering high-quality HR support across a broad range of people matters.
- Good working knowledge of UK HR best practice, with experience of applying this in an ER / advisory context.
- Experience supporting the delivery of HR processes across the employee lifecycle including performance management and reward cycles.
- Demonstrated ability to build effective working relationships with managers and employees, providing clear and pragmatic guidance in a professional environment.
- Experience working with a matrixed or complex organisational structure, including liaising with Centres of Excellence and specialist HR teams.
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Qualifications
- Ideally educated to degree level or equivalent.
- A relevant professional qualification in reward or HR (e.g. CIPD, WorldatWork certification) is desirable but not essential.
Additional skills
You will also have:
- Attention to detail and process rigour: methodical and thorough in managing HR processes, documentation and data with strong commitment to accuracy and compliance
- Clear and confident communication: able to communicate effectively both verbally and in writing with managers, employees and HR colleagues at varying levels of seniority.
- Sound judgment: able to recognise when matters require escalation and to handle sensitive information with discretion and professionalism
- Collaborative working style: effective team player who works constructively to delivery joined-up outcomes
- Analytical & data literacy: Comfortable in interpreting and working with HR data and management information to identify trends, measure impact and support evidence-based recommendations; able to present data insights in a way that is meaningful and actionable
What sets us apart
At Linklaters:
- We offer a truly global work experience and the opportunity to be involved in strategic projects that drive innovation and shape the future of our business
- We belong to a firm that embodies its corporate social, environment, and governance responsibility commitments
- We remain focused on talent and having the best people which will result in a diverse workforce
- Having got the best people, we want them to feel included, valued and respected so they can perform at their best
- We advocate speak-up culture to empower our people in sharing their voices and an open-door policy to ensure they are listened to
- We invest in custom-fit career paths for our people in line with their talents and aspirations
- We provide agile working solutions to meet the changing needs of our people and our business
- We are committed to people first relationships based on mutual trust, respect, and appreciation
- We support the health and wellbeing of our people, providing a safe space to talk about emotions and mental health with access to expert advice as needed
- We invest in developing leaders of the future who demonstrate emotional intelligence and a passion to discover, coach and develop the talents of others
Technical Skills
This list of duties and responsibilities above is not exhaustive. It is intended to describe the general content of, and requirements for, the performance of this job. As such, the role may also include the undertaking of additional tasks as required.
Application Policy
Applications and CVs (direct or via agency) are only accepted online via the portal. Queries related to our roles must be directed to the relevant recruitment team and not the partners, practices or stakeholders (lateralrecruitment@linklaters.com for legal roles or ukbtrecruitment@linklaters.com for business team roles).
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