Senior HR Advisor

Job description

We are looking to recruit a fixed-term Senior HR Advisor as part of our busy, quality-focussed HR team. This is an exciting and rewarding opportunity for the right individual to continue their HR career in a truly generalist role that provides exposure to all aspects of people management.

The fixed term period is expected to commence in either December 2025 or January 2026. If you are currently working as an experienced HR Advisor and are considering your next career move, we would like to hear from you

**Overall purpose of the role**

Our Human Resources team sits at the very heart of Audit Scotland. You will be joining five professionals helping around 340 colleagues across our organisation. Audit Scotland’s vision is to ensure that public money is well spent to meet the needs of Scotland's people. In 2024 we published a new People Strategy to support the delivery of our vision and launched our new values. Our values underpin all that we do: equality, integrity, independence, innovation and respect

This role helps our HR team to deliver an excellent generalist HR support service across Audit Scotland. As an experienced HR professional, you will play a large part across a variety of workstreams including, managing end-to-end recruitment campaigns, processing all payroll variables and contractual variations, providing advisory support as it relates to matters of policy, employment law and employee relations case management, workforce data analysis and HR systems administration. It is a varied role, with plenty of autonomy and excellent opportunity for career development.

**What you will be doing**

You will help Audit Scotland achieve their vision by:

- Delivering effective recruitment campaign management, ensuring recruiting managers are supported and meticulous adherence to our internal policies and procedures and employment good practice.
- Supporting all aspects of the employee lifecycle ensuring accurate and appropriate documentation and records. This includes appointments of new employees, employment changes, leaver processing, and monthly payroll variables.
- Providing effective advisory support to line managers on a range of issues, including employment law, policies, processes and employee relations case management.
- Annually reviewing and revising staff handbook policies in accordance with updated legislation and best practice guidance.
- Collating and analysing workforce data, producing KPIs for onward consideration by senior staff and identifying any courses of potential intervention. This will include data analysis for annual reports the HR team produce, such as the gender pay gap and equality reports.
- Coaching and mentoring junior members of the HR team, including reviewing work to ensure clerical and factual accuracy.
- Carrying out job evaluations for any new or re-evaluated existing roles to ensure our reward structure operates in an objective and fair manner.
- Support our Equality Network Groups and consider how our people initiatives may be improved by fostering a DEI-centric culture

**Knowledge and experience**
- You are an experienced HR Advisor, with strong planning skills and the ability to balance transactional HR work alongside project work.
- You are an effective team player and self-motivated with a passion for delivering a high-quality HR service,
- You will support the wider HR team and work in partnership with internal stakeholders, external consultants and employee union representatives, and are adept at effective relationship building and stakeholder engagement.
- You must be capable of managing and prioritising your workload, understanding when and where to seek additional support and approval.
- You have an eye for detail and enjoy the autonomy of planning and delivering your portfolio of work without the need for close management.

**Person specification - specific knowledge and experience**

**Essential**:

- You have proven experience of working in a generalist HR advisory role, managing the range of employee lifecycle events coupled with sound experience and knowledge of HR policies, systems and processes. (S/I)
- You are confident in providing advice and guidance to all levels of the organisation on employment-related matters, knowing when to seek support from more senior colleagues. (I)
- You must be capable of managing and prioritising your workload, as well as positively responding to change when reprioritisation needs to take place. (S/I)
- Good attention to detail and ability to calculate employee changes to salary or allowances. (S/A)
- Proficient with Microsoft Office (Outlook, Word and Excel). (S/I)
- A good standard of written English, with experience of writing reports or documents. (S/A/I)
- You are emotionally intelligent and can demonstrate strong empathy for others, effective communication, conflict resolution and interpersonal skills. (I)
- You are committed to continuous service improvement. You will also strive to improve yo