HR Policy Advisor

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 will have opportunities to research, develop and create policies across all our group organisations, work collaboratively with HR Business Partners and other expert service teams within our 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. You will lead specific policy research, development and end-to-end implementation across Defra group as well as own a programme of policy maintenance. You will also support a range of team activities which may include operational performance management, and you'll offer advice to a range of other HR teams from complex casework to query teams. You will also be fundamental to our stakeholder engagement plan working with Trade Unions, organisational people teams, other government departments and third-party providers to develop engaging materials that support our ambition of self-service. This is a critical role, offering you development in deep subject matter and visibility at a senior level as you use your excellent presentation (verbal and written) skills to engage your customers and help them drive their people strategies. 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. Your role will include:

• working collaboratively to influence customers and build strong partnerships internally and externally
• understanding complex issues and providing effective responses that deliver priorities while seeking to maintain a positive reputation
• managing specific policy projects and identifying delivery risks
• working across multiple organisations to deliver harmonised outcomes, deal with issues, enhance the service and ensure appropriate allocation of time and effort
• advising and influencing on policies and practices to influence compliance with policy, legislation, and best practice ways of working
• researching, developing, and producing policies and associated materials to agreed quality standards in support of business priorities and with your leading practice recommendations to ensure information, evidence and Defra group interests are accurately and effectively managed
• staying up to date with legislation, leading practice, and emerging Civil Service policy development to influence our team workflow
• teaching policy developments to other HR stakeholders to ensure and enable accurate and timely responses to complex queries and operating challenges in the business
• leading communication materials and engagement plans for your workstream to deliver policy campaigns and launch new practices
• developing your understanding of employee well-being, equality, diversity, and inclusion to help you identify how we can bring these to life through our policy development and working practices
  
  Disability Confident
About Disability Confident A Disability Confident employer will generally offer an interview to any applicant that declares they have a disability and meets the minimum criteria for the job as defined by the employer. It is important to note that in certain recruitment situations such as high-volume, seasonal and high-peak times, the employer may wish to limit the overall numbers of interviews offered to both disabled people and non-disabled people. For more details please go to Disability Confident.