Change your career, change lives
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About the Role
The role will sit within the customer-facing People Services (HR) Hub, part of the University’s People Services function. Our purpose is to deliver the operational People Services support, guidance and first line advice for OU colleagues with a focus on delivering value, efficiency, and a positive customer experience. Within this role, you will be focussed on delivering first stage administrative support and process guidance on a range of policies and procedures covering the full employee lifecycle. You will collaborate with your Hub colleagues to ensure the effective delivery of a high-quality service to our customers across the University. You will also gain specific insight and awareness into customer business areas.
Key Responsibilities
- Respond to emails and telephone calls to provide professional, confidential, high-quality process advice and guidance to university colleagues across the full employee lifecycle and range of People policies.
- Provide high quality administrative support on a range of people lifecycle processes. For example, general maintenance and updating of People Services systems; updating employee records, preparing and issuing contractual paperwork; updating of trackers/spreadsheets, and other administrative work as required.
- Proactively identify specialist guidance requirements through service interactions and effectively escalate to the appropriate team within People Services, in line with the agreed service framework.
- Work as a team to achieve agreed service levels and key performance indicators. Provide support to colleagues in navigating the People Services intranet pages and promoting self service.
- Work collaboratively with the People Services Systems Team to resolve People Services system based issues and ensure that it remains up to date with accurate data.
- Collaborate on continuous service improvements through identifying and sharing gaps within process guidance and making recommendations to People Services Team Managers as appropriate.
- Take personal responsibility in continually developing skills and knowledge to maintain and improve personal performance in the spirit of continuous improvement.
About You
Essential:
- Strong administrative experience with an understanding of data protection and sensitive data handling protocols.
- Possess strong analytical and problem-solving skills.
- Ability to work independently but also as part of a team, with a willingness to collaborate with and support colleagues.
- Strong organisation and time management skills with the ability to deal with high volume work.
- Excellent verbal and written communication skills.
- Experience of working with multiple People Services (HR) systems and of Microsoft programmes (i.e. Excel, Word, MS Teams).
- A strong commitment to excellence in working with a diverse population.
- A strong record of research and/or knowledge exchange that is commensurate to the position.
Desirable:
- Experience of working in an operational HR shared services environment.
- CIPD qualification.
Support with your application
If you have any questions, or need support or adjustments relating to your application, the recruitment process, or the role, please contact us on 01908 541111 or email careers@open.ac.uk quoting the advert reference number.
What's in it for you?
At The Open University, we offer a range of benefits to recognise and reward great work, alongside policies and flexible working that contribute towards a great work life balance. Get all the details of what benefits we offer by visiting our Staff Benefits page (clicking this link will open a new window).
Flexible working
We are open to discussions about flexible working. Whether it’s a job share, part time, compressed hours or another working arrangement. Please reach out to us to discuss what works best for you.
It is anticipated that a hybrid working pattern can be adopted for this role, where the successful candidate can work from home and the office. However, as this role is contractually aligned to our Milton Keynes office it is expected that some attendance in the office will be required when necessary and in response to business needs. We’d expect this to be on average once per month.
Next steps in the Recruitment process
We anticipate that interviews for this role will be taking place online via Microsoft Teams during the week commencing 15th December 2025.
Early closing date notification
We may close this job advert earlier than the published closing date where a satisfactory number of applications are received. We would therefore encourage early applications.
How to apply
To apply for this role please submit the following documents:
- CV
- A personal statement of up to 1000 words. You should set out in your statement why you are interested in the role and provide examples of where your skills and experience meet the essential requirments for this role as detailed in the job description.
You can view your progress and application communications when you are logged into our recruitment system. Please check your spam/junk folders if you do not receive associated email updates.
