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What 3 things should I do in my first few months as a Junior People Advisor to set me up for success?

Eddie

Hi Community,

I posted a few months ago as I left my role in recruitment and decided to full-time study for my L5 in People Management to help me move into HR and I was asking for advice. Those of you who commented where very helpful in giving me some perspective and hoping that you might be able to help here too.

I'm pleased to say that I completed my studies beg of April and within 6 weeks of me moving back to London I landed my 1st role in People as a Junior People Advisor. I'm beyond over the moon and I am LOVING it so far. We are a small HR team since going through a restructure and I am lucky to have such a supportive and caring Head of HR.

My question to all of you is given your experience and when looking back on your early careers knowing what you know now, what 3 things would you say I should do/be aware of that would better set me up for success? I know that the world is a different place to how it was 10 years ago and with that HR priorities have shifted, but I would welcome some of your ideas.

To be clear my role is a generalist role with a strong focus on ER. 

Looking forward to connecting with you and discussing this.

Eddie 

Parents
  • Congratulations Eddie! Some really good advice here for mindset and relationships.

    My very practical top tips would be:

    1. Always refer back to your company's policies. Some companies have quirks in their policies that mean you need to do things differently and where a policy goes beyond legal requirements, policy trumps legal!
    I made this mistake when starting a new role, carried on with the procedure as I knew it inside out in my own mind, and then realised the company had a few extra steps in their policy that I'd skipped. Luckily it didn't have a significant negative impact, just caused a few delays and frustrations, but no massive tribunal. Learned to always check the policy then!

    2. See if you can get access to some past ER cases from your company to understand what sort of line they usually take. Often ER cases come down to: a. what is in the policy and b. what the company has done in this situation before. You may look at a case and think there are grounds for disciplinary, then find out that five other people have done the same thing and not been held accountable. Better to find this out during the investigation rather than in a disciplinary hearing! Equally you may think something could be an informal chat, but where the company has previously gone formal you would need to be able to justify why you don't.
    You don't have to abide by previous cases all the time, but being conscious of the decisions made in them will mean you make conscious decisions to stick with them or not.
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  • Congratulations Eddie! Some really good advice here for mindset and relationships.

    My very practical top tips would be:

    1. Always refer back to your company's policies. Some companies have quirks in their policies that mean you need to do things differently and where a policy goes beyond legal requirements, policy trumps legal!
    I made this mistake when starting a new role, carried on with the procedure as I knew it inside out in my own mind, and then realised the company had a few extra steps in their policy that I'd skipped. Luckily it didn't have a significant negative impact, just caused a few delays and frustrations, but no massive tribunal. Learned to always check the policy then!

    2. See if you can get access to some past ER cases from your company to understand what sort of line they usually take. Often ER cases come down to: a. what is in the policy and b. what the company has done in this situation before. You may look at a case and think there are grounds for disciplinary, then find out that five other people have done the same thing and not been held accountable. Better to find this out during the investigation rather than in a disciplinary hearing! Equally you may think something could be an informal chat, but where the company has previously gone formal you would need to be able to justify why you don't.
    You don't have to abide by previous cases all the time, but being conscious of the decisions made in them will mean you make conscious decisions to stick with them or not.
Children
  • in reply to Sophie
    Hi Sophie, thanks for taking the time to respond to me. You raise some great points and actually one of the projects I am being tasked with for Q3 is to review and update all of our HR polices. It's a great opportunity for me to be able to have input into how we want to do things as a business.

    Your point around previous ER cases is great, and I am starting to look into past cases to see what the outcomes were. I know that ER can be quite a challenging area and can test you mentally, but I am looking forward to up-skilling in this area.

    Thanks,

    Eddie