Hi, Daniele.

I currently work in a senior role in HR in the NHS. If you are currently working as an HR Advisor (Band 5-6) you really should already be handling casework, so I assume you're actually working in an HR Administrator (Band 3-4) role covering the general inbox and phone line, answering basic queries and forwarding more complex ones to the team's advisors.

Having completed your Level 5 (congratulations!) you are certainly qualified to be getting more involved in casework and, given that most NHS Trusts do not have enough people to handle all of their cases, I imagine the team manager would be happy to have a new pair of hands to take on some of the work.

Without changing job, you are unlikely to be able to take on specific case handling duties yourself, but you can certainly get involved in things like scheduling hearings, note taking in investigation meetings and panel meetings, compiling and distributing investigation reports etc. This will give you more exposure to how case handling is done (both well and... not so well) to allow you the necessary learning that, when a vacancy arises for a more senior role with a focus on ER case management, you'll be ideally positioned to make the step up.

In reply to Robey:

Hi Robey, Thank you very for answering my question. I am a band 5 MedicalHR Advisor in my Trust but I am not involved in handling difficult cases, hearing or anything that ER Advisors they do. My role involves only advisory on the T&Cs of residential doctors contracts and re ruti g them into tgeir roles. This is why I am trying to find a route from what I do in Employees Relations. What I do is so specific for the NHS that I am unsure how I can transfer my skillls and qualifications in thie ER type of role not doing the actual job tgey do.

In reply to Robey:

And here’s me thinking employee relations was about preventing these sort of issues and improving the employee/employer relationship.

In reply to Robey:

I'd second Robey's suggestions about gaining exposure while working in your current role - if there's scope to do it, ask if part of your professional development can involve working with the ER team on case handling (not a secondment - more like shadowing over an agreed period) starting with something like acting as the notetaker for formal cases (this is beneficial to see how case hearings are handled in reality rather than theory, what role the different attendees play etc), and next, getting involved in the prep for cases - as Robey has outlined, it's far more than just scheduling hearings - the documentation prep and written correspondence is super-important in case handling. That's the formal casework bit of ER but an awful lot of ER advisory work is focused on pre-empting issues becoming formal - largely by working closely with line managers to support them maintain a good ER environment - you're already doing advisory work in your current role on Ts & Cs and recruitment practice, so it's an expansion of the range of advice you're able to offer into people management advice. hope this is useful

In reply to Daniele:

Ah, I see.

My role involves only advisory on the T&Cs of residential doctors contracts and re ruti g them into tgeir roles.

That does sound a bit like you're rather overpaid for the job you're doing. No reflection on you or your skills, but a bit odd that they'd leave you so under-employed and, yes, a bit hyperspecific. Do you report into the HR Operations side of things, or to the Recruitment & Resourcing side? I'm kind of guessing it's the latter from what you've said.

When I was looking after HR Operations in my Trust, we used to have staff from Resourcing join us for shadowing days on a fairly regular basis and, currently, three members of the Ops team used to be in Resourcing and moved across when a vacancy came up, having previously done shadowing. And I know at least one other who did a day's shadowing used it to help find themselves an ops job in another Trust.

With your CIPD 5 under your belt, now would seem like a good time to ask for the same kind of opportunity for you. Contact the Ops manager to see if it's something they would support and, if so, ask your manager if you can have a day or two in Ops to get some insight into their work. Obviously, a move into ops will need there to be a vacancy to move into, but with a little experience shadowing, your CIPD and your very valuable knowledge of medical TCS (don't under-rate that; it's super useful as most ops staff only deal with AfC 95% of the time) you should be a good candidate. You might have to drop down a Band to make the shift at first, into an Assistant role. But you might be lucky to move directly into an ER Advisor role.

In reply to David Perry:

Not really, David. In the NHS, we have L&OD specialists, wellbeing specialists, Freedom to Speak Up Guardians and HR Business Partners who mostly cover this kind of stuff. The smallest NHS Trusts are 5000 people and the largest comfortably over 15000, and HR operations teams are lucky to have ten people in them, of whom maybe 6 will be experts in case management. So the vast majority of the time is spent managing casework.

Of course, the good ER Advisors will also be relationship-building with managers in their business areas, trying to coach them in identifying and dealing with toxic behaviour and conflict resolution. But most of these managers are also clinicians who spend most of their time working with patients and what's left just trying to keep the shift rotas full, between vacancies and absences (holiday, training and sickness mean that the planning figure for absence in the NHS is 22% - that is, that any one employee will spend, on average, 22% of their paid working hours doing something other than their day job).

And when we do have a good manager, they're just getting the hang of it when someone promotes them.