We are seeking an HR Consultant with extensive Employee Relations experience to join our team.

As a professional HR Consultant, you will need to be a self-starter who can demonstrate comprehensive practical employee relations experience with a solution focused approach. You will take responsibility for handling a range of complex and sensitive employment issues, including disciplinary, grievance, and redundancy. You will work with a number of clients providing advice and support. Our clients are generally schools, academies, and the Local Authority, so there is a strong Education profile. Our clients will be looking to you to provide advice and support as they manage their internal ER issues. You must have the resilience and capability to manage your case load and prioritise your work whilst meeting our Service Level requirements that form our contract with our clients. In doing this you will need to apply your past experience, strong analytical thinking, and problem-solving skills to advise clients, who will not be HR practitioners. You will need to be able to rapidly build credibility with clients. You will generally be working independently acting on your own initiative, quickly analysing the facts and providing the client with a range of options for consideration along with the risks and pitfalls associated with these. You will be comfortable engaging in challenging conversations. Ideally you will have experience of working in a unionised environment.

Our team largely work remotely from home, but you will have access to an office to work from if necessary in Kings Hill, Kent. We utilise a desk booking system. Our teams are friendly, supportive, and committed to providing a high-quality service to our clients and we meet regularly on a virtual basis to share information and best practice. You will have a comprehensive and supportive Induction programme.

This role will also involve contributing to the development of new policies and procedures around casework, undertake investigations, run training sessions, and help our customers achieve organisational change. We also support the Local Authority with Headteacher recruitment.

Qualified to NVQ 5 within an HR Field or CIPD Advanced level, you’ve got proven experience at an HR management /consultant level, with a strong employee relations focus. Confident and articulate, you will be able to adapt your approach to meet customer needs and bring to the role real expertise for forging constructive client relationships. Crucially, you also demonstrate the analytical flair to understand and apply data and other information in a structured way, to develop practical, evidence-based solutions.

The ability to travel across a wide geographical area in a timely and flexible manner at various times of the day (and evening on occasions) is essential. You should note that public transport is rarely a viable option as your role will involve you travelling to venues in rural areas. The majority of our schools are based in Kent, but we also cover schools in Sussex and North London. The role will involve attending meetings in the customer location and this will mainly be in Kent.

What we can offer you in return:

Employee Assistance Programme.
Support Line Counselling.
Workplace Wellbeing Services.
Electric Car Scheme.
Minimum of 33 days holiday (inc.bank holidays).
Generous contributory pension scheme.
Employee shopping discount scheme.
Regular one-to-one meetings with your supervisor and have an on-going development plan.
We value different skillsets and recognise that career paths are fluid. Whether you aim to manage your own team of people or really hone your specialist skills and become an expert in your area, the opportunity to follow your career goals is available at Cantium.

We recognise that work isn't just somewhere you go for a set number of hours. Work is something we do. “Cantium Working” is our vision of the behaviours and attitudes inherent in ‘agile’ working. As a business we are committed to providing a flexible approach to when, where and how our staff work. Cantium working enables you to work in the way which best balances personal and work life – helping you achieve a great work life balance.

For further information please contact Jane Hall - Jane.Hall@cantium.solutions