Head of Employee Relations Hybrid / Full time / 37.50 hours per week Some travel required to our offices in London and Northampton Salary £doe plus car allowance Closing Date: 5th December 2025 Purpose of Role: To lead the strategic development and operational delivery of employment relations across Bright Horizons. Responsible for delivering a high impact, ER service through expert guidance, policy innovation, and operational excellence whilst mitigating risk, and empowering managers to lead inclusively and effectively. This is a high-profile role and is pivotal in ensuring timely and insightful interactions while driving leadership capability to foster a high performance, ensuring alignment with our HEART values and safeguarding commitments. The role also includes direct line management of the HR Advisors and partnering with the HR Business Partners ensuring consistent, expert support across all employee relations matters. Key Tasks and Responsibilities: Strategic Leadership: Develop and implement a forward-thinking employment relations strategy aligned with organisational values and objectives. Employee Relations Advisory: Provide subject matter expert guidance on complex employee relations issues including grievances, disciplinaries, and disputes. Collaborate with business stakeholders, inhouse counsel (when required) and external third parties on conciliation, mediation, and dispute resolution to mitigate risk and embed learnings. Responsible for ACAS preclaims and ET claims and agreed financial parameters. Suitability Capability Govern the end-to-end suitability and health declaration process, integrating with SME and external providers to ensure a robust, fair, and compliant process. Policy and Process Development: Develop and maintain forward thinking HR policies and procedures and draft and update employment contracts, and handbooks ensuring legal compliance while enhancing operational excellence. Monitor legal developments and best practice trends to inform continuous policy improvement. Represent HR on the Policy Advisory Group. Review and maintain content on Bright Flex as user friendly, informative and engaging. Operational Excellence: Champion ongoing enhancement of internal workflows and standardisation of tools and templates to enable best in class delivery and maximise operational efficiency. Ensure seamless case management and vendor partnership excellence. Compliance and Risk Management: Ensure adherence to employment law and mitigate legal risks through proactive case management and training. Change Management: Support stakeholders with organisational change initiatives including restructures, divestments, acquisitions, and workforce transitions. Project lead on all HR due diligence Data and Insights: Monitor ER trends, analyse data, and report on key metrics to inform decision-making. Identify trends and carry out deep dive analysis into root causes and influence continuous improvements and operational efficiency. Systems and Processes: Lead cross-functional business process reviews impacting HR systems and policies (e.g., Payroll, Safeguarding, Convercent, Whistleblowing). Recommend system enhancements aligned with HR strategy and service delivery goals. Team Leadership: Lead and develop a high-performing employment relations and employee suitability team, ensuring professional development, and fostering a culture of excellence and collaboration. Build Manager Capability: Empower managers with the necessary tools and training to lead effectively and uphold our values. Conduct post-case reviews to extract lessons learned and inform future strategy. Responsible For: Contributing to shape and drive the People Strategy to meet the organisational strategic objectives. Acting as a subject matter expert and trusted advisor to business leaders. Collaborating with business leaders and SMEs on suitability and safeguarding matters. Leading and developing the ER Advisor team. Conducting internal quality reviews to ensure SLA and KPI compliance. Essential Experience: Proven experience in a senior ER or HR role managing high-volume, complex employee relations caseloads. Strong knowledge of policy development, and UK Employment Law and legislative compliance. Excellent interpersonal, negotiation, and conflict resolution skills. Demonstrated ability to lead and coach teams in a fast-paced, service-oriented environment. Advanced proficiency in Microsoft Office Suite (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook). Demonstratable excellence in decision-making, prioritisation, and time management skills. Education Relevant Degree in HR Management CIPD L7 Desirable Experience: Working in childcare or early years settings or in sectors with high regulatory / safeguarding requirements. Demonstratable experience of having set up or transformed an existing ER function. Bright Horizons are committed to creating inclusive environments where everyone has a sense of belonging and has the opportunity to contribute and thrive in meaningful and impactful ways. We are an inclusive employer and welcome people from all ages and backgrounds to apply. We will consider reasonable adjustments required by applicants. Please note, due to our sector all roles are subject to an Enhanced DBS. We look forward to receiving your application! If you experience any problems, please email europe.recruitment@brighthorizons.com and we will be happy to help. At Bright Horizons, our culture is built on our commitment to Keeping Everyone Safe and providing world-class care and education, delivered by a world-class workforce. We believe our people’s potential is endless and with this in mind, we aspire to create an environment where our colleagues can thrive and accomplish the things they thought impossible. Bright Horizons has been recognised as a Great Place to Work by our employees and the Great Place to Work Institute for the last 13 years. We care passionately about what we do, and our HEART values and principles help us support one another in the work that we do each day. These are quite literally at the HEART of our organisation’s ethos and culture as it helps us to provide a working environment that supports professionalism, growth and diversity. We are passionate about our people’s ongoing learning and development. Our learning and leading with HEART framework supports each Bright Horizons colleague on the first steps of their leadership journey, whether that includes our 'World-Class Welcome' induction or our extensive ongoing training programme. Either way we want you to feel valued and invested in! Celebrating in the accomplishments of our people is an essential part of our culture. We believe in the power of “thank you” and throughout the year, in ways big and small, formal and informal, we show our appreciation for employees at all levels. We have many ways to acknowledge and celebrate our people, including our very popular “employee appreciation month”. This is a chance for everyone to share their gratitude to one another, across the whole company. Whether it is a “thank you” placed on our website, a chocolate pizza, team lunch or an ice cream van visit, it is our way of showing each other we care and appreciate everything we do. Each year, we have our annual 'Awards of Excellence' events; whether you are an award winner or cheering on a fellow team member, these formal award occasions are opportunities to come together and celebrate one another. By creating this account you acknowledge that Bright Horizons will collect, store and process any of your personal data provided in respect of your application and employment in accordance with our Employee Privacy Notice. https://www.brighthorizons.co.uk/statutory-information/privacy-notice-employees.