About Us
Happy Days is one of the largest providers of nursery and preschool care in the South/South West. We're committed to and passionate about delivering quality childcare and early years learning. We underpin our unique approach to nursery and pre-school care by constant reference to the best international research, backed up by over 30 years in the sector.
Happy Days is enjoying a period of sustained growth and will continue to expand throughout the South/South West. We have 24 nurseries and counting and aim to add 8 sites per annum for the foreseeable future. Although we are growing, we remain small enough that everyone is involved and makes a noticeable impact. We enjoy autonomy and our approach is personable, supportive, proactive and collaborative. Above everything, we care.We care about each other, we care about developing our people and we care about providing the highest quality childcare service to our customers.
Happy Days is the perfect fit if you....
- Enjoy a collaborative culture.
- Are committed to going the extra mile.
- Are passionate about delivering outstanding service.
- Explore, produce and embrace new ideas.
The Role
As the Senior HRBP you will initially have a strong bias towards operational HR, with a medium-term opportunity to potentially develop into a Head of People role and taking a more strategic view. You will also support day to day line management of a HR Business Partner and HR Advisor.
Reporting to the Operations Director, you will deliver sector best practice and be motivated to use your knowledge, insight and skill to help us motivate and retain an engaged workforce.
Operational HR
- Oversee and support operational HR Delivery including day to day employee queries and ER support. Manage own ER caseload and hold responsibility for more complex cases supporting the HR team as a point of escalation and guidance.
- Collaborate with the Senior Management team to review existing people practices, proposing and implementing improvements that enhance people, nursery and company performance.
- Advise, coach and support management to effectively manage performance, development and wellbeing in line with, policy and best practice. Identify, design and deliver people initiatives that improve effectiveness.
- Develop a HR reporting framework and dashboard and seek to implement tools and systems which drive efficiency across the business and create capacity for others to add value.
- Create opportunities and ways to up-skill and develop line managers to improve capability and optimise team, nursery and company performance.
- Execute the performance and pay review process, ensuring a fair and consistent process for all and ways to improve this to optimise participation and engagement
- Support new nursery openings from a people perspective, supporting a smooth integration into the business
Skills, Knowledge & Experience
- Demonstrable HR Business partnering experience in a multisite environment
- Commercial acumen with a passion for continuous improvement and experience in supporting business-wide people initiatives at a senior level
- Strong generalist HR content knowledge across employee relations, reward, employee engagement, talent / succession and performance management - knows what good looks like and latest trends
- Substantial experience of complex employee relations cases with the ability to identify business risks before providing recommendations?
- Experience of coaching and upskilling people managers with varying levels of experience and capability
- Confident and driven with the credibility and commercial awareness to advise and influence at a senior level. Values-led and loyal with the ability to instil confidence in others.
- A proactive and collaborative relationship-builder able to quickly establish and maintain positive working relationships with strong communication skills (both verbal and written)
- Solution oriented with innovative problem solving that enables pace and shows good business acumen ?
- Strong analytical skills. Able to analyse data from multiple points translating this into compelling business data to support sound business decisions.
- Superb attention to detail, right first time approach with the ability to ensure seamless HR delivery
- Excellent organisational and project management skills. Good report writing skills and confidence presenting across all levels.
- A self-starter, comfortable using their initiative and working autonomously.
- Sound understanding of HR technology and how this can be utilised to improve performance, process and engagement ?
- Experience of managing a team advantageous
Our teams, whether in our nurseries or our support centre SHINE, they ensure we are delivering outstanding childcare to every child in our settings every day, this helps to make Happy Days a great place to work. By ensuring we are always recruiting, retaining and promoting a diverse mix of colleagues, who are representative of the communities within which our nurseries sits gives us the best opportunity to continue to deliver outstanding childcare.
"Happy Days Nurseries are committed to the safety and wellbeing of the children in our care, as such the successful post holder will be required to undergo a robust vetting process, including an enhanced DBS Check and Reference History Checks"