Salary: Competitive per annum
Hours: 37.5 per week, Monday to Friday
Location: Hybrid, 3 days a week in our VHQ, Crawley
Contract: Permanent
Closing Date: 8th May 2025
At Virgin Atlantic, we are dedicated to aligning our People strategy with business outcomes through data-driven insights and critical thinking. We are looking for a strategic and analytical leader to join our People Relations team as the Senior Manager – Employee Relations Change & Projects. This role is crucial in leading complex HR and employee relations change programmes and projects, ensuring compliance, and driving effective outcomes.
As the Senior Manager – Employee Relations Change, you will lead the planning, execution, and governance of organisation-wide HR and employee related change programmes and projects. You will provide expert advice and oversight, acting as a trusted advisor to senior leaders and ensuring fair, compliant, and low-risk outcomes. This role also involves shaping the employee relations change strategy and embedding diversity, equity, and inclusion in all change activities.
Where You Fit In: This role reports to the Head of People Relations and Inclusion and sits within the People Relations directorate. You will work closely with senior leadership, People Partners, HR Centres of Excellence, Legal, trade unions and operational areas to manage and deliver effective change programmes and employee related projects.
- Lead the planning, execution, and governance of organisation-wide HR and employee relations change programmes (e.g., restructuring, TUPE, redundancy, consultation).
- Manage the end-to-end delivery of complex ER projects.
- Provide expert legal and employee relations advice to senior leaders, ensuring fair, compliant, and low-risk outcomes.
- Define and develop employee relations change frameworks, policies, and processes that reduce risk, increase consistency, and improve the colleague experience.
- Partner with subject matter experts, legal, and people teams to ensure alignment and compliance.
- Capture lessons learned from projects to improve future delivery and upskill People team members and leaders in employee relations change projects.
- Evaluate and continuously improve employee relations change management processes, leveraging people analytics and case data to inform decision-making.
- Act as a senior-level subject matter expert in employee relations and UK employment law, providing high-quality advice on complex issues.
- Champion diversity, equity, and inclusion through all change activities, ensuring inclusive consultation and equitable impact assessments.
- Ensure all employee relations change activity is compliant with employment law and internal policies, maintaining robust documentation and supporting audit-readiness.
- CIPD qualified (Level 7 or equivalent legal qualification), with extensive knowledge of employee relations and employment law best practices working in complex, matrixed environments and managing competing priorities.
- Proven experience leading and managing complex employee relations issues within large-scale change programmes with strong project management skills with experience in managing and delivering HR change projects end-to-end.
- Experience working effectively with VPs, Heads of Operational areas, trade unions, and committee representatives. With demonstrable communication and stakeholder management skills experience influencing senior leaders.
- Strong coaching and advisory capability across all levels of leadership to simplify complex problems and solutions into succinct presentations and narratives.
- Effective use of judgement and resourceful problem-solving to view decisions objectively, carefully, and accurately to weigh conflicting data points/perspectives to achieve an optimal outcome utilising data-driven decision-making and risk assessment.
- Aviation sector and unionised environment experience desirable.
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Our customers come from all walks of life and so do our colleagues. That’s why we’re proud to be an equal opportunity employer and actively encourage applications from all backgrounds. At Virgin Atlantic, we believe everyone can take on the world - no matter your age, gender, gender identity, gender expression, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disabilities, religion, or beliefs. We celebrate difference and everything that makes our colleagues unique by upholding an inclusive environment in which we can all thrive. So that everyone at Virgin Atlantic can be themselves and know they belong.
To make your journey with us accessible and individual to you, we encourage you to let us know if you’d like a little extra help with your application, or if you have any individual requirements at any stage along your recruitment journey. We are here to support you, so please reach out to our team, ([email protected]) feeling confident that we’ve got your individual considerations covered.