Hi,
I work in HR since 2019 and o have worked in different areas of HR such as Employee Relations.
Currently I work as HR Advisor but I do general advice on T& C of contracts of rrsident doctors in my Trust not so much on Employee Relations per se. I just finished my CIPD Level 5 diploma course, and I was wondering how can I become a HR Advisor in Employee Relations as I don't have the experience in hearing or handling any cases as requested in most of the jobs from I can see. What would you advise me to do to get the experience needed to apply for jobs in future?
Thanks
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.
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.
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.
