Junior HR Business Partner Review

In my role I: • Work closely with the Business Partner to build relationships which enable me to influence and support managers to ensure they take ownership and accountability for the performance and development of their team members • Drive and embed succession planning in conjunction with Area Operations Managers and General Managers in my business area, working with the Business Partner to spot gaps, trends and resolutions • Coach and develop top talent to support succession into General Management roles • Work closely with stakeholders to understand their resourcing requirements and in conjunction with the Resourcing Advisor co-ordinate recruitment activity • Collate data and provide insight to support the Business Partner and leaders with their decision making process • Maintain the people dashboard for my channel to drive the People Strategy through the agreed People Plan • Support probationary review meetings with new joiners in conjunction with line managers offering support and advice where necessary • Conduct exit interviews with employees leaving the business, analyse the data and share relevant trends and work with managers on actions • Work in collaboration with Shared Services, Training and Development and other Business Partnering teams to enable the effective delivery of the People Strategy • Provide advice to line managers and employees on Company policy and contractual terms as well as working collaboratively with the Employee Relations team as and when necessary

During the process of my apprenticeship I have secured two promotions due to my growing knowledge and developing skills. I have managed to progress from a specialist role within the HR team to a generalist role where I am now able to advise on a board range of HR queries. I am also now a competent coach and have worked with several up and coming managers to help their development.

I feel that the learnings i have taken from the programme have been invaluable. I intially felt like the workshops could have been run better, and the communication with the provider was at times quite slow. This included a delay in getting early assignments back, however, this improved over time. Throughout my programme, the support I received from the apprenticeship team within Marston's has been brilliant.

This could have been better, although towards the end it did feel like improvements were being made. As per my previous comment, at the start of my journey communications were slow and the workshops weren't of a standard that i felt was good enough for level 5 learning. However, this did improve greatly by the time i got towards the end of my programme.

The support in place at Marston's is excellent. The apprenticeship team are readily available and easy to get hold of. Whenever i have had concerns they've always listened, taken on board feedback and acted on it. The support i received from my line manager has also been brilliant, she has allowed to me to get involved in a number of different projects etc in order to further my learning, and allowed me to manage my diary to fit in my 20% learning time.

This was very mixed. In the early days the support was quite limited as i believe they were under-resourced and quite stretched. However, as i progressed through my programme, this did improve and i built a better relationship with my contact and was able to get support reasonably quiclly when i needed it.

i am definitely able to do a much better job having gone through this qualification. The theory provided has been great and i can really see it playing out in my role now. i am able to refer back to my learnings in new situations that i come across. this said, a lot of the learning i have done had been off my own back, at times the resources provided were quite limited and not always the clearest.

Yes. There are some social activities through the year, such as quiz nights, race days etc. There are also sports teams across the business (i, however, am not sporty so don't utilise these!). I am also allowed to attend professional networking events that i feel will be of benefit either to myself or my wider team. There is also a lot of community and volunteer work that goes on in Marston's both at our head office and across all of the pubs. We're a very community focussed business.

Yes

During the 7 years i have now worked for Marston's i feel they have supported me continually with my personal and professional development. I have now completed two level 5 qualifications as well as had several job promotions. As a female who has also had maternity leave during those 7 years, i felt well supported and no prejudice during that time. The culture and way of working at Marston's is brilliant and i feel i would struggle to find that anywhere else. I do believe we don't always pay the most competitive rates, but for me i'm happier on less pay than at a competitor as i have a brilliant work life balance and great support from my employer.

We are such a people focussed company here, all that any hiring manager wants to see if the 'real you'. At Marston's there is a great family feel, something that you only really sense once you are here. If applying to work here, your skills and experience will of course be important, but make sure you let them know a bit about you and show them what you are about.