HR Assistant

Lewis Silkin works with leading businesses to protect and enhance their most important assets - their ideas, their people, their brand and their future. We call it: Ideas. People. Possibilities.

With offices in London, Oxford, Cardiff, Belfast, Dublin and Hong Kong, we are recognised by clients and industry alike as being distinct for our unique culture, market-leading practice areas, sector focused approach and for providing solutions to complex, multijurisdictional business challenges, with a pragmatic and human touch. We have two things at our core: people — both ours and our clients’— and a focus on creative, tech and innovative businesses.

Our culture is encapsulated by an ethos of bravery and kindness, guided by our values of Integrity, Clarity, Unity and Excellence (our ‘I-CUE’). We aim to provide a supportive environment for our people, clients and wider community and embrace diversity & inclusion, ensuring people are able to bring their full selves to work.

The HR team consists of 16 members, the majority of whom are based in our London office.  This role will report into the Divisional HR Manager(s). All members of the HR team work closely together to support staff across the firm covering resourcing, reward, learning & development and employee relations. This role also provides the opportunity to work with the wider HR team on a regular basis. 

Objective:

Working closely with the HR Managers and Officers this role will support the day-to-day delivery of HR processes and departmental administration, proactively prompting other members of the team when action is required in their client groups.

This is a generalist role that offers exposure to HR information systems, employee relations‚ L&D‚ recruitment‚ compensation & benefits and operational HR. 

Alongside the HR Managers/Officers, this role will act as the first point of contact for all general departmental queries.  Specific duties include but are not limited to the following:

HR Administration

Payroll and benefits

• Provide support to HR Officer on the monthly payroll submission
• Ensure all payroll information is processed and entered onto the HRIS in an accurate and timely manner
• Liaise on occasion with outsourced payroll provider to deal with any payroll queries and input into payroll where necessary (e.g. where HR Officer is out of the office)
• Ensure all employee benefit information is inputted into the HRIS in an accurate and timely manner
• Provide guidance to staff regarding firm’s benefits package

HR Systems and Management Information

• Maintaining the HRIS (Cascade) and ensuring information is inputted accurately and in a timely manner, including amendments to staff details (including changes to salary, hours, personal details etc.)
• Working closely with HR Officers to action regular HR management reports as appropriate

Recruitment

• Liaising with recruiting managers, recruitment agencies and candidates to arrange and facilitate interviews when required
• Administering tests for candidates when necessary
• Co-ordinating the management of candidate applications via the firm’s recruitment portal “Allhires”
• Updating the firm’s intranet/recruitment Portal with vacancy information
• Preparation of all paperwork including offer letters and contracts via our onboarding portal, new joiner details and leaver paperwork
• Liaise with relevant departments to ensure IT equipment and accounts are set up accordingly
• Arranging bespoke inductions for all employees,  contractors and partners with key stakeholders and support functions
•  Facilitating new joiner ‘welcome to the firm’ induction meeting and conducting 6-week catch-ups
• Arrange leaver details and manage the exit interview process, including recording outputs from these meetings; and feeding information into the payroll as appropriate.
• Preparation of contractual change paperwork as and when required (e.g change in hours, role, location, promotion)

Compliance

• Ensure fully compliant right to work checks are facilitated accordingly for all employees, contractors and partners
• Ensure essential compliance training is undertaken by all new joiners, e.g. Anti-Money Laundering, Data Protection and Security and provide regular reports to the Risk Department
• Ensure SRA documentation for senior new joiners and partners (where required) is completed and authorised in a timely manner
• Manage the Irish practicing certificate renewal for our Ireland office and Irish qualified lawyers and provide support on the wider SRA annual practicing certificate renewals

Operational Support

• Provide day-to-day HR guidance on policies, procedures and processes.
• Diarise and send probationary review reminders to line managers and divisional HR representatives and ensure meetings have been held and associate paperwork is completed
• Provide support for the annual long service award process
• Manage client contact and PRIME work experience programmes, in line with social mobility initiatives and provide ad hoc support with the general work placement programme and wider CSR goals
• Maintain the firm’s partner list liaising directly with Receptio
• Managing and maintaining the team intranet pages including benefits, policies, reward etc.

Cyclical Projects

• Provide support to HR team during peak times on core processes including salary review, appraisals, trainee recruitment assessment days, apprenticeship schemes etc.

Person Specification

The successful candidate must have a professional manner and first class communication skills.  They must be highly organised, able to demonstrate a proactive approach to their work and be able to work on their own initiative.  They must enjoy working in a busy, fast paced team environment and have a flexible nature, and a co-operative and willing attitude.

Experience

• Educated to degree level or equivalent by experience
• Experience of working in a team environment

Skills/Abilities

• Confident communication skills and a professional demeanour
• High degree of numeracy
• Curious mind-set and problem solving skills
• Very strong attention to detail and excellent administration skills
• Strong organisational skills and the ability to work quickly under pressure
• Able to prioritise competing and varied demands
• Flexibility to work some overtime on occasion
• Understands confidentiality of sensitive personal data to be preserved at all times
• Customer focused with the ability to communicate at all levels
• Awareness of, and interest in the activities of a busy HR function

Technical Skills

• Strong knowledge of IT systems (must be proficient in Excel and MS Word
• Experience of working with HR databases (ideally Cascade) and document management systems (Netdocs) is preferable although full training will be given.

At Lewis Silkin our ethos is simple. We strive to do the best for our clients, our people and the communities in which we operate. We recognise that an inclusive workplace allows for all kinds of ideas and thoughts, a variety of points of view that can trigger discussions or deliver innovative results, and a wide range of versatile skills and expertise. We are proud of the diversity within Lewis Silkin and of our culture that allows people to be themselves at work, ensuring we provide the best possible service to our clients. We are committed to finding the right person for this role and are open to discussing flexible working patterns and office location.