People Services Adviser

**Salary**: £35,608 - £37,694 with progression to £46,049 per annum pro rata

Newcastle University is a great place to work, with excellent benefits. We have a generous holiday package; plus the opportunity to buy more, great pension schemes and a number of health and wellbeing initiatives to support you.

Closing Date: 09 November 2025

**The Role**

We have an exciting opportunity to join our People Services team, providing business partnering support to the Faculty of Science, Agriculture and Engineering.

This is a broad and varied generalist role working in a busy, friendly team with brand new office space in the heart of our city. We are looking for someone who can demonstrate a solid grounding in employment law and experience of providing advice on a broad range of People issues including performance management and ER matters. Excellent communication skills are essential as is the ability to cope with and influence change. Previous experience of working in Higher Education is not essential.

The role is part time for 3 days per week (Wednesday - Friday), equivalent to 22.2 hours per week (60% FTE). You will work in close partnership with another Adviser who works Monday - Thursday.

We are committed to building and maintaining a fair and inclusive working environment and most of our colleagues work a blended pattern of both office-based and home working.

Interviews will be held on 18 November 2025.

**Key Accountabilities**
- Provide Employee Relations advice, coaching and support to managers to ensure a positive Employee Relations environment is developed and maintained (e.g. disciplinary/grievance handling, severance etc.)
- Advise and coach managers on dealing with performance management issues
- Support managers with a range of People Services processes, such as reorganisations, contract changes, redundancy consultation process, TUPE, flexible working requests, etc.
- Coach line managers through a job analysis process to ensure that jobs are formulated to meet the needs of the organisation, accurately describe the job and undertake job evaluation (HAY)
- Advise and support managers dealing with sickness absence, including advising on sickness monitoring, referrals to Occupational Health and assisting managers as appropriate with managing outcomes. Facilitating meetings and ensuring reasonable adjustments are implemented to enable colleagues to return to work
- Working with managers to ensure the University attracts, recruits and retains the best talent in line with equal opportunities legislation.
- Contribute to updating employment policies in line with changing needs and legislative requirements
- Provide management information to managers and leaders in order to contribute to business decisions
- Support and work alongside colleagues in People Services to provide a coordinated and efficient service in line with operational and People Services objectives
- To be involved in the design and delivery of training and development activities relating to employment legislation and good practice, working with colleagues in Organisational Development
- Act as project team member/leader for projects in order to contribute to the People Services strategy. To act as a coordinator and People Services contact for major University Committees, for example, Joint Union Negotiating Committee
- To be involved in negotiations with trades unions on matters affecting the contracts of employment and conditions of service for colleagues
- Maintain a working knowledge of key immigration issues in order to provide support to colleagues dealing with complex immigration queries and to advise management on key considerations in relation to their recruitment and retention strategies

**The Person (Essential)**

**Knowledge, Skills and Experience**
- Substantial People Services experience across a range of People Services (HR) activities
- People Services experience in a large, complex organisation at a similar level
- Experience of supporting managers with performance and capability issues
- Comprehensive knowledge of employment legislation
- Well-developed influencing, facilitation and negotiating skills
- Experience of dealing with complex employee relations issues
- Evidence of excellent organisational skills with the ability to plan, prioritise and deliver across a range of work activities and juggle a busy workload
- Ability to develop effective and sustainable partnerships with trade unions

**Attributes and Behaviour**
- Excellent communicator, both verbal and written, with a diverse audience
- Excellent team player with experience of working in a collegiate way with colleagues at all levels across the organisation
- Ability to influence and persuade to gain support
- Promotes inclusivity and has a good understanding of equality, diversity and inclusion
- Creative, solution-orientated approach to issue resolution
- Resilience and sensitivity when dealing with complex people matters

**Qualifications**
- CIPD qualifi