HR Generalist job description

Human resources — HR Generalist
Handles day-to-day HR cases, hiring and policy questions unaided.

REQUIRED SKILLS
Talent Acquisition
- Job Requisition and Role Scoping — You can push back when a hiring manager asks for a role that does not match the need, the level or the budget, and agree a revised brief before anything is advertised.
- Candidate Sourcing and Screening — You can fill hard-to-hire roles by choosing the right sourcing channels, and spot when screening criteria are shutting out capable candidates for no job-related reason.
- Structured Interview Design — You can sit on an interview panel, ask the agreed questions as written, and score answers against the guide with notes that back up each score.
- Offer Management and Pre-Employment Checks — You can handle a counter-offer or negotiation within the approved range, and decide what to do when a check comes back with a problem, taking advice where needed.
- New Hire Onboarding Delivery — You can adapt onboarding for roles or locations that do not fit the standard plan, and check in with new hires during their first weeks to catch problems early.

Employee Relations
- Employee Relations Case Handling — You can manage sensitive or disputed cases directly, keep both sides informed and treated fairly, and know when a case needs to move to a formal process.
- Workplace Investigation Conduct — You can take accurate notes in an investigation meeting and keep the evidence file complete and confidential.
- Disciplinary and Grievance Procedure Management — You can take notes at a formal hearing and tell the manager what the procedure requires at the next step.
- Employment Law Application — You can answer everyday questions on contracts, leave and working time correctly for the places you cover, and recognise when a question is beyond you.
- Absence and Leave Management — You can spot absence patterns that need action, advise the manager on the next step, and handle long-term cases fairly, bringing in occupational health where needed.

HR Operations
- HR Records and HRIS Administration — You can manage access, retention periods and audit trails in the HR system so personal data is seen only by the people who should see it.
- Payroll Input and Benefits Administration — You can reconcile payroll against HR records, trace the cause when someone is paid wrongly, and get it corrected quickly.
- HR Policy Writing and Maintenance — You can update a policy for a small change in law or practice, and check the new wording with a senior colleague before it is published.
- People Data Reporting and Analytics — You can produce regular reports on hiring, absence and turnover that leaders read, and explain what changed since the last one.
- HR Compliance and Audit Readiness — You can run routine compliance checks on HR records, chase the gaps, and keep evidence in a form an auditor can check.

Performance & Growth
- Performance Review Cycle Administration — You can prepare calibration data, facilitate a calibration meeting, and follow up on reviews that are disputed or look inconsistent.
- Manager Coaching on People Issues — You can talk a manager through a routine people issue, such as a first conversation about lateness, and help them plan what to say.
- Learning Needs Analysis — You can run a simple needs survey for a team, separate real skills gaps from nice-to-haves, and suggest a suitable option for each gap.
- Compensation Benchmarking and Pay Banding — You can match roles to benchmark data, check where an offer or pay rise sits in its band, and flag anything outside the range.

People Strategy
- Workforce Planning — You can keep an accurate record of headcount, open roles and planned leavers for the teams you support.
- Organisational Design and Change — You can update organisation charts and role records accurately once a change is approved.
- Employee Engagement Measurement — You can run a survey or pulse check for a group of teams and summarise the results clearly for their managers.

Delivery
- Project Management — You can organise a small piece of work into steps, put them in a sensible order, and finish it by the date you agreed, raising problems before they cause a delay.
- Planning & Estimation — You can estimate your own work with reasonable accuracy and keep a steady enough pace that other people can plan around you.
- Ownership & Accountability — You can pick up a problem that has no obvious owner and make yourself accountable for it, including the parts nobody enjoys.
- Quality Focus — You can define what good enough means for a project, put checks in place to show it has been met, and hold work back when it falls short.

Craft
- Problem Solving — You can break a large, ambiguous problem into manageable pieces, weigh the options against evidence, and explain the tradeoff you chose.
- Domain Expertise — You can work confidently with the tools and methods your team uses daily, and you can explain how your work serves the team's goals.
- Continuous Learning — You can pick up an unfamiliar area fast enough to be useful in it, and you turn what you learned into something others can reuse.

Communication
- Communication — You can explain a complex topic to people with very different backgrounds, adjusting the detail to the audience without talking down to them.
- Collaboration — You can build working relationships beyond your own team and get things done through people who do not report to you.
- Writing & Documentation — You can write for a defined audience, whether a proposal, a policy, a report, or a decision record, and make the reasoning as clear as the conclusion.
- Stakeholder Management — You can identify who is affected by your work and keep them updated at a level of detail and a frequency that suits them.

Leadership
- Leadership — You can spot a problem and propose a way forward unprompted, and you take a small leading role such as running a working group.
- Mentoring — You can help someone new settle into your team's work, answer their questions patiently, and give feedback specific enough to act on.
- Strategic Thinking — You can connect your team's work to its goals and question a task that does not appear to serve them.