Job description
South Western Railway is committed to equal opportunities employment, and your application will be reviewed by the hiring panel with personal information removed. In order to assist this process please ensure that any attachments such as CV's or covering letter have personal details removed (this includes your name, address and email address). Any other attachments such as professional qualifications can be left unedited. Applications not following this guidance may be rejected.
Main Purpose
To provide comprehensive support and guidance in accordance with Company policy and procedures, conditions of service, collective agreements and management information.
Responsible for completing contractual and compliance paperwork and facilitating processes between the HR Team and Payroll at all stages of the employee life cycle.
Principal Accountabilities
- Complete starters, leavers and internal transfer staff change processes using the HR system and ensuring that the relevant staff changes correspondence is sent out accordingly. This will include accountability for processing information on redeployment, retirement, ill health, secondment, fixed term contracts and career breaks and death in service.
- Accountability for answering a range of employee lifecycle queries submitted by post, email and phone including annual and extended leave entitlements, attendance management, changes to terms and conditions of employment and lifestyle event changes.
- Accountability for issuing resignation and retirement acceptance paperwork and the recovery of leaver Company ID and travel passes.
- Ensure that employee records and associated filing is kept up to date.
- Ensure that management teams adhere to statutory ‘right to work' and eligibility checking requirements as and when required.
- Responsible for Company Attendance Procedure weekly reporting and to provide guidance and support with any escalated formal attendance related case management. This will also include responsibility for processing ‘100% attendance' and AWOL queries in accordance with Company procedure. Provide support to HR Business Partners with maternity, paternity, adoption, parental and flexible working related processes.
- Monitor employee dates for returning from extended leave (e.g. maternity, adoption, paternity, parental leave and career breaks) with responsibility for completing the relevant staff change process.
- Monitor and maintain fixed term contract, secondment and casual working expiry dates
- Ensure that management teams adhere to the ‘Authority to Recruit' process when submitting their recruitment needs including checking the relevant level of authority, headcount budgets, cost centres, job titles, work patterns and any employment related enhancements).
- Responsibility for processing pension related documentation including requests for pension estimates, submitting preserved benefits and payment of benefit forms to the pension provider and maintaining pension scheme rules.
- Ensure that leaver processes are completed including the checking of employee records for GDPR purposes prior to archiving.
- Act as signatory for responding to reference requests for ex-employees whereby there are formally agreed arrangements in place for the providing of information.
- Take ownership for processing subject access requests in accordance with the relevant Company policy and procedure.
- Assisting the HR Services team in maintaining the shared email inbox, answering first contact queries in a timely fashion and escalating any complex issues to the relevant team member or manager for resolution.
- Provide minute taking support to Managers as required, when conducting formal meetings and to ensure adherence to Company and statutory people management procedures.
- Perform ad-hoc or project related tasks as and when required by the HR Services Management Team.
Minimum Requirements
- Proven experience of working in a fast paced and challenging office environment.
- Previous experience of working in a HR team would be an advantage.
- Possess a flexible approach in ensuring customer needs are met.
- Preparedness to travel across the South Western Railway network to attend meetings as and when required.
- Demonstrate strong time management, communication and interpersonal skills.
- Conscientious with an attention to detail particularly in relation to producing formal documentation in a variety of context.
- Strong time management skills with a proven ability to prioritise workload and meet targets.
- Must demonstrate a willingness to learn new systems, skills and behaviours and to acquire job related formal qualifications as and when required.
- Experience in appropriate IT packages including Microsoft Word, Excell and PowerPoint.
- A working knowledge of Lotus Notes would be an advantage.
- Familiarity with talent management systems or HR databases would be desirable but not essential.
- Qualified or part qualified training in people management or development would be an advantage.
Working Pattern
Working an average of 37 hours per week
Office hours
Please note this is a fixed-term contract until 26th April 2024
In return we offer a competitive salary and a variety of valuable benefits including free duty and leisure travel on SWR services for employee, free leisure travel for spouse/partner and dependants (criteria dependant) , 75% discount on many other train operating companies, a range of retail benefits and an excellent pension scheme.
At SWR we believe our people are our greatest asset.
Our vision is to recruit and retain the best talent from the most diverse pool of candidates across our regions.
We are committed to establishing a sense of inclusion for all and to value each person for the unique contribution they bring.