Employee Relations Manager

Overview

In this role you will lead Kainos’ Employee Relations team, shaping a modern, employee-focused ER service. You’ll work with senior stakeholders and the People Team to deliver consistent guidance, manage complex casework, and drive continuous improvement. You will champion data-driven processes and scalable solutions to enhance the employee experience. This is a key leadership position with impact on policy, reporting, and service excellence.

Responsibilities

• Lead and develop the Employee Relations team with clear priorities and growth opportunities
• Oversee a consistent, responsive ER service across the organization
• Guide on complex or sensitive ER matters, ensuring fairness and compliance
• Partner with managers and People Partners to provide practical, balanced advice
• Support managers to resolve workplace issues constructively and timely
• Drive continuous improvement of ER processes, tooling, and user experience
• Lead improvement projects to strengthen ER capability, policy, reporting and service impact
• Champion technology, data and automation to simplify processes and scale the ER service
• Identify insights from ER activity to enhance guidance, policies, and support
• Maintain up-to-date knowledge of employment law and best practices
• Collaborate across the People Team to support wider priorities
• Manage case documentation, investigations, outcomes, and follow-up actions

Key requirements

• Significant hands-on Employee Relations experience including complex and sensitive casework
• Experience leading and developing an ER/HR advisory or People team
• Experience advising senior leaders (Exco/C-suite) with balanced judgement and risk awareness
• Litigation experience with strong employment law knowledge
• Experience as an ER Manager, ER Lead, People Partner or similar with substantial ER responsibility
• Strong stakeholder management and ability to challenge and influence at all levels
• Experience leading continuous improvement and using tech/data to improve services
• Structured, evidence-led approach to case management, documentation, reporting, and decision making
• Experience supporting ER matters across multiple jurisdictions with specialist input when needed
• Excellent leadership, coaching, communication and collaboration skills
• Proven experience advising on complex organizational change initiatives

• leadership
• communication
• stakeholder management
• Workday
• Jira
• Microsoft 365

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