HR Advisor Review

HR Advisor, supporting HR Business Partners with anything that they are working on. Day to day I am attending meetings with stakeholders, working on spreadsheets, assisting people with enquiries, helping to analyse people data etc. I also work on projects, for example in learning & development to help with new joiners or early talent. I am given lots of responsibility and able to contribute ideas and feedback to the team where things can be improved or need to be done differently.

I am learning new skills everyday. There is a lot of stakeholder engagement and stakeholder management in this role, from people within my close team to the business area we support and wider stakeholders such as our shared services teams. I am a lot more confident about working with data now and have gained a lot of HR specific knowledge, so feel more confident advising the business area and also with interpreting our business policies and processes in my advice as well.

I enjoy the work that I do - there is a lot of variety in my role and I get a lot of opportunities to apply my learning from the apprenticeship. The learning I’m doing on the apprenticeship encourages me to reflect on how I can apply my new knowledge, and it also encourages wider learning. All of the learning I am doing helps me to be better at my role, and my role is challenging enough that I feel I am being stretched every day.

The programme is structured into core phases and each of these feels very relevant to the learning I am doing on the job in my role. The systems that we use to log everything we are doing helps to keep organised and adds a good structure - we always know which phase we are in and how we can apply learning in that phase. Sometimes there are issues with the system which we need to get sorted, but the issues are always sorted eventually.

My employer is really supportive about my wider learning, although sometimes because my role is so busy it can mean that it’s hard to prioritise and get everything done in my hours. Whenever I speak up and say I’m feeling too stretched or it’s getting too much, I do get the support I need. It does rely on me to speak up and say when I am struggling, otherwise things will get busy. Overall though, i feel extremely supported.

The training provider is very supportive and we have someone who is there to answer all of our questions. Sometimes the assignment briefs are unclear and it can be challenging to interpret these, so it can take a little while to get the answers we need. We do always tend to get clarity in the end though. We have regular 1:1s with our training provider and these are helpful for reviewing and discussing our progress.

Definitely - outside of just what I’m learning on the programme, it’s helped me to be aware of my wider learning and sharing resources has helped me to gain so much wider knowledge. The modules are all very relevant and link to my job well. My academic work also links in to my job which means I have the opportunity to explore what I’m doing at work in a deeper way. I feel like the skills I am getting are very practical to my career.

Yes there’s absolutely loads going on at work! There are lots of groups to join and we have our own internal social media app where people can connect on personal subjects as well as work ones. There are lots of opportunities for volunteering, and different speakers are invited into the company for extra learning as well. We also have team away days where we can focus on team building and this has a strong social aspect to it as well.

Yes

There’s so much you can do at BT, it’s such a huge organisation and you can cover such a variety of roles. Everyone is extremely friendly and there are so many people that I get to learn from every day. It’s very flexible and the company is very supportive of personal development. It’s also really exciting - there is so much happening here that allows me to learn every single day. It’s a great company if you want breadth and variety in your role.

Be yourself. Let your personality shine through. “Personal” is one of our values and BT really lives its values every day. Show that you’ve thought about our values and how you live them in your everyday too. Also show a keenness to learn, adapt and be challenged. BT can be a challenging place to work; there is still so much further we have to go as a company and we know that, so someone who can live up to the challenges and see them as opportunities will thrive here.