HR Policy Adviser

**Details**:
**Reference number**:

- 286762**Salary**:

- £30,317 - £36,606- National £30,317 to £32,803. London £33,827 to £36,606. For details of our pay on appointment policy, please see below under the heading ‘Salary’.- A Civil Service Pension with an average employer contribution of 27%**Job grade**:

- Higher Executive Officer**Contract type**:

- Permanent**Business area**:

- DEFRA - COO - Human Resources - Human Resources - Expert Services**Type of role**:

- Human Resources**Working pattern**:

- Flexible working, Full-time, Job share, Part-time**Number of jobs available**:

- 1Contents

Location

About the job

**Benefits**:
Things you need to know

Location
- Bristol, Leeds, London, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Reading, Worcester, YorkAbout the job

**Job summary**:
Do you want to work in the heart of HR? People Policy underpins both the employee lifecycle and the employment contract and is a critical player in the experience people who work for us have.

It’s an exciting time to join Defra’s HR Centre of Expertise. We are a small team of dedicated professionals who support both civil and public services across 6 organisations, c25,000 employees and 3 pay bargaining units, and we’re on a mission

Delivering against an ambitious and challenging people strategy, we are continually looking for smarter, innovative, and more streamlined ways of providing our corporate service, whilst managing the needs and expectations of our varied customer groups. This makes our team portfolio interesting, fast paced, and dynamic. This is an excellent opportunity to affect real change across a large group environment and you will need to be comfortable working in an agile way across the full policy portfolio with a matrix leadership team to support you.

You’ll have opportunities to support the research, development, and creation of policies across all our group organisations, work collaboratively with HR Business Partners and other expert service teams within our large HR department, and build your expert knowledge - continual professional development is important to us, and we’ll offer you this through CIPD and other capability building solutions.

**Job description**:
This role provides critical support to the Policy Specialists and senior leads across the full portfolio of policy work, and involves detailed research for policy development, preparation of communication materials, supporting procedures, project documents, and the provision of advice to our HRBP’s in both the resolution of complex queries and in the launch of new products.

With support, you will have the opportunity to take a lead on policy development and will be able to build your technical knowledge of policies across the employee lifecycle. You will also have opportunities to work with, and present to, a range of stakeholders across Defra group both within and external to HR.

This couldn’t be a better time to join Defra group HR as we work to respond to unprecedented change and make our contribution to the enhancement of the environment for the next generation, leaving it in a better state than we found it.

**You will**:

- Conduct research for specific areas of policy to support policy development and enable accurate and timely responses to complex queries
- Work collaboratively to influence customers and build strong partnerships internally and externally. Understand issues and provide effective responses that deliver priorities while seeking to maintain a positive reputation
- Write communication materials, policies and procedures and coordinate plans with stakeholders to deliver policy campaigns and launch
- Stay up to date with legislation, leading practice, and emerging Civil Service policy development to influence our team workflow
- Lead on the management and maintenance of our policy team inbox
- Focus on developing your understanding of employee well-being, equality, diversity, and inclusion to help you identify how we can bring these to life through our materials
- Provide administrative support across the team and the full policy portfolio
- Support senior policy leads in the data management of sensitive information linked to senior performance management
- Support the ongoing maintenance and innovation of our People Performance Hub

**Person specification**:
**Essential Criteria**:

- Excellent attention to detail and the ability to convey complex information clearly both orally and in writing
- Excellent writing skills
- Good data interpretation and analytical skills
- Some experience of Human Resources preferably with some exposure to policy development
- Used to working collaboratively across other teams and with a range of stakeholders
- Experience of working together to deliver team priorities
- Comfortable working in a complex, multi-organisation environment
- Able to manage your own workflow with support, and work independently

**Behaviours**:
We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selec