Senior HR Manager, Germany

Opportunity

Based in one of our German offices, the Senior HR Manager will play an essential role in providing frontline HR advice and support to Senior Leadership and the wider talent community. This person will have responsibility for a variety of employee lifecycle activities and help ensure that the HR operations and processes are seamlessly run; as well as working on different local and regional strategic projects and initiatives.

This role will also work closely with the Regional HR team based in London to ensure alignment across Europe and the wider firm as well as the HRIS & Systems team, also based in London to ensure all data is accurate and up to date. They will be an integral part of a collegiate, ambitious, and highly professional regional People team.

Our work with People team

To meet our clients’ needs, it is essential that we recruit, retain and develop world-class advisors.  Brunswick’s global people team is designed to equip the business with the talent, skills as well as advisory and strategic support it needs to grow. This is a fast-paced environment with a dynamic team, which provides high quality HR and Recruitment advice and operational day-to-day service interfacing effectively with professionals across all levels, as well as driving innovation for the firm’s People strategy.

A small function in a growing, entrepreneurial business, members of Brunswick’s People team need excellent communication, professional interpersonal skills, be committed, agile and self-starting, whilst maintaining the highest standards of professional delivery.

Key Responsibilities

Advisory, Business Partnering and Employee Relations

• Act as a trusted advisor to leadership, locally and regionally on all people related topics. Effectively mitigating risk and ensuring the business provides the highest possible quality experience to colleagues of all levels
• Partner with colleagues to provide guidance, coaching and support on all HR matters including developing our people, identifying new talent and working with the Regional and Global People team on the firm’s people strategy.
• Focus on developing and supporting colleagues across offices by reviewing mentoring relationships; actively promoting and supporting continuous feedback mechanisms within the Germany offices. Act as a sounding board/point of contact for careers advice and development opportunities.
• Play an active role supporting the German Resourcing Team – helping to ensure work is allocated to colleagues fairly and with development goals in mind; and reviewing workloads across the office to identify any issues.
• Be proactive in making suggestions for ways to develop and support colleagues particularly around wellbeing and welfare; as well as highlighting any potential people issues (individual and more broadly) to senior management and providing advice on how to respond to issues.

• Communicate regularly and effectively to build strong relationships with colleagues and to help build an inclusive culture.

• Manage any Employee Relations issues, including performance management, terminations, conduct and sickness cases, supporting both employees and Mentors/Managers

Employee lifecycle processes

• Ensure all new joiners receive a successful onboarding experience.
• Lead HR Inductions with all new joiners.
• Act as first point of contact and/or escalation point for any HR queries.
• Manage all family leave processes such as maternity, paternity, adoption and parental leave.
• Overseeing reintegration of employees returning from family leave, secondments, or long-term absence.
• Work with HR Assistants locally and in London to ensure data for Germany is up to date and accurate.
• Manage all local contracts for new hires and any updates/addendums to contracts.
• Drafting other employee correspondence and communication
• Handle all departures and exit paperwork.

Learning and Development

• Work with leadership and Global L&D colleagues to help roll out relevant training for the German offices.
• Conduct Training Needs Analysis for the office, identifying learning needs, working with L&D colleagues to find relevant providers (internal or external), promoting training opportunities, monitoring attendance, collecting feedback on programmes.
• Actively champion and support any cross-office learning opportunities – help co-ordinate delegates/speakers for regional programmes including Finance Talking, Women’s Career Development Programme, Regional and Global Inductions and Core Skills programmes

Performance, Remuneration & Benefits

In collaboration with the HRD, Europe and IMEA:

• Help support the annual appraisal, remuneration and promotion process. This includes overseeing and ensuring all appraisals are completed on time; supporting Mentors and Managers in drafting appraisals and having appraisal conversations and making sure that objectives are captured.
• Attending local calibration meetings and capturing key feedback and outcomes.
• Keeping all remuneration and promotion regional documentation up to date and ensuring changes are captured in the appraisal system.
• Ensure accurate submission of promotions across both regions and advising Mentors/Managers on the promotion criteria and process.
• Work with HRD on salary benchmarking exercise, through external suppliers.
• Dealing with any queries around the appraisal system, supporting with using the system and guidance on setting objectives.

HR Projects and Initiatives

• Contributing ideas and supporting Brunswick Inclusion & Diversity strategy for German offices.
• Review policies in conjunction with Regional HR team.
• Keep up to date with any relevant legal updates in Germany.
• When appropriate taking a lead on running regional HR projects and initiatives

Recruitment

• Providing input on and managing recruitment processes in partnership with senior local stakeholders and our global recruitment team
• Manage the hiring of interns for German offices
• Look at ways to promote Brunswick and identify diverse candidate pools within Germany to support our DEI goals.

Knowledge, Skills, and Competencies

• Demonstrable experience working as a Senior HR Manager, in an advisory capacity, working with all levels of employees and senior management, specifically from a global professional services or client-facing environment
• Experience advising and influencing senior leaders in a Partnership structure
• Solution-orientated with an ability to own complex issues and manage them through to completion.
• A self-starter with the ability to work within a team-based environment and on your own as required
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills with outstanding attention to detail and accuracy
• Fluent in English, both written and spoken
• Excellent interpersonal skills and able to communicate effectively, both verbally and in writing, with a wide range of people at all levels,
• Proven experience in a fast-paced, dynamic, professional environment with a large and highly variable workload
• Excellent organisational skills and the ability to plan and prioritise own workload to meet tight deadlines, as well as forward-plan and project manage tasks against longer timelines
• Excellent interpersonal and presentation skills, with ability to build warm and highly professional relationships quickly and with ease
• A robust, patient, can-do attitude; willing to offer support readily and to think “beyond the brief” to offer solutions
• Comfortable working in a fluid and fast paced environment.
• Self-confident and proactive in providing regular communication and updates; keeping the relevant colleagues informed
• Experience with MS Office including Excel and Word
• Knowledge of HR systems (desirable: Sage People)

Our Commitment to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

Maintaining and strengthening a diverse workforce and inclusive workplace are pillars of Brunswick’s culture and key to our future success. Valuing and supporting every colleague as an individual while helping them reach their full potential is essential to attracting and developing our greatest strength – our people. By embracing our differences and diverse perspectives we create richer experiences within our firm and enhance the quality of the ideas and advice that we deliver to our clients.

Brunswick is an equal opportunities employer and our Equal Opportunities Policy is available on request.

About Brunswick Group

Brunswick is a critical issues firm. We advise the world’s leading companies on how to navigate the critical issues they face and engage with their key stakeholders.

Our purpose is to help our clients play their role in the world more successfully. We help the leaders of the world’s great value-creating organizations operate successfully across the increasingly complex and fast-changing arenas of finance, politics and society at large.

Brunswick is one firm globally, operating as a single profit centre. This allows us to respond seamlessly and effectively to clients’ needs wherever they are in the world.

Background

Founded in London in 1987, Brunswick’s global partnership has grown organically to 27 offices in 18 countries. We began as a M&A and financial communications firm and, over time, expanded our capabilities to provide expert advice to our clients on a range of business-critical issues. We invested in new offices, sector teams and practice groups including investor engagement; shareholder activism; governance; regulatory and public affairs, including geopolitical; crisis; litigation; social issues including climate change and diversity, equity and inclusion; cybersecurity, data and privacy; employee engagement; digital communications; opinion research and analysis and creative services.