HR and Operations Coordinator

Key Details

Job Title: HR and Operations Coordinator (UK)

Department: Operations

Reporting to: Head of Operations

Salary: £30,000-£34,000 FTE per annum (£18,000-£20,400 pro rata)

Location: Remote-first / hybrid (UK) – This means mostly home-working with a requirement to travel to Penryn, UK or other areas of the UK up to once per quarter (travel and accommodation is funded by Cool Earth)

Essential Purpose of Role: To support the Head of Operations with HR, Operations and Administration, predominantly in the UK but also supporting the global team where required.

Contract Type: Part-time (3 days per week), permanent. Other flexible working requests considered.

Applications for this role will be reviewed on an on-going basis. We reserve the right to close the role if we find a suitable applicant.

About Cool Earth

Cool Earth is a climate charity that protects the rainforest by supporting the people who live there. We have been working alongside local and Indigenous rainforest communities for over 15 years in the three largest and most important rainforests in the world, the Amazon, The Congo Rainforest and the Papua New Guinea Rainforest. Indigenous and local communities have been protecting the rainforest for thousands of years, but unfortunately are now facing a humanitarian crisis, lacking necessities like safe drinking water, infrastructure, healthcare, and stable incomes.

This makes rainforest communities vulnerable to exploitation by illegal loggers and extractive industries, who pressure them to sell their land. Once these industries take over, Indigenous peoples are displaced, losing their ancestral homes, culture, and traditional ways of life, and the rainforest is destroyed. Without these forests to regulate the earth’s temperature the climate crisis will only worsen. So what do we do to help?

By working in collaboration with these communities we help support their livelihoods, improve health, sanitation and education and provide tech to help monitor their rainforest. Our main programme involves giving direct unconditional cash to rainforest communities so that they can decide how best to use it in order to improve their quality of life. Rainforest communities can only defend their land from illegal loggers and greedy land grabbers when they themselves are resilient and strong. We help them get to that point.

About the role

To apply for this role, please visit our Careers page: https://www.coolearth.org/work-with-us/

We are seeking an experienced, confident and friendly HR and administration expert to support the Head of Operations with fostering a high performing team and ensuring a happy and healthy work environment where everyone can be their most productive selves.

This is a new and varied role that is responsible for all things HR and encompasses wider operational and administrative duties. It will focus on maintaining a high-quality, personable HR function and an efficient office function to support the UK team. It is a great opportunity for someone who is passionate about people, loves to keep themselves and others organised, and who wants to make a significant impact in a growing organisation.

You will be expected to provide hands-on HR support and advice to managers and employees in the UK team and lead on coordinating our recruitment. You will also have the opportunity to support the Head of Operations on projects related to EDI, learning & development, data protection, safeguarding and more, making sure every part of the employee life-cycle is second to none and ensuring a positive company culture throughout a period of organisational change and growth.

The successful candidate will be comfortable taking a more holistic approach to people, going above and beyond traditional HR functions and striving to help create an inclusive and employee-centric workplace where individuals can thrive.

What you’ll do

Key responsibilities for the role are to support the Head of Operations with the following areas:

• Employee Relations and HR: Act as the first point of contact for all employee relations in the UK, providing effective, timely, and professional HR and employment law advice and guidance.
• Support Management through HR Processes: Lead on supporting senior leadership and line managers through disciplinary, grievance, redundancy, or restructuring processes and procedures.
• Recruitment Coordination: Coordinate the recruitment process for the UK, including job adverts, communication with applicants, interviews, contracts, induction, and onboarding.
• Policy Review and Compliance: Review and update the UK staff handbook of policies to ensure clarity and legal compliance, in collaboration with the Head of Operations.
• Learning and Development: Develop and implement learning and development initiatives and identify organisation-wide training needs.
• Wellbeing and Benefits Coordination: Coordinate UK employee benefits and assist with regular employee engagement surveys to continually improve the employee experience.
• Performance Management: Support the performance review process for the UK team and assist line managers in addressing performance management issues.
• HR and Operations Administration: Maintain UK personnel files, assist with HR system administration, co-manage the UK HR mailbox, and perform general HR and administration duties for the global HR/Operations team when required.
• Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) Initiatives: Work with colleagues to improve EDI initiatives and ensure safeguarding policies are implemented and aligned with international best practices.
• Global Coordination and Compliance: Collaborate with global HR and Operations colleagues to ensure policy and process changes are globally considerate and locally appropriate.

For a full job description and to apply, please visit our Careers page: https://www.coolearth.org/work-with-us/

Who you are

You will have the following essential skills and abilities:

• Up to date knowledge of UK employment law and recruitment best practices in the UK
• A qualification in human resources or relevant experience working in a HR role
• Ability to confidently manage and advise on employee relations issues, including performance management, disciplinary and grievance procedures, redundancy and restructuring
• Strong verbal and written communication skills
• Experience coordinating a recruitment process, including attending interviews
• Experience in negotiation and conflict resolution
• Excellent interpersonal skills and a natural ability to build strong working relationships with colleagues across different roles, teams, countries and cultures
• A creative problem-solver, able to analyse needs and provide solutions
• Ability to absorb new concepts and information quickly, and to act with initiative and imagination
• A passion for learning and development and ensuring this is reflected across the team
• Genuine interest in and commitment to the humanitarian and environmental principles of Cool Earth
• A commitment to EDI (equity, diversity and inclusion) and Safeguarding
• Alignment with Cool Earth values of “smart”, “driven”, “open” and “locally-led”

For a full person specification of essential and desirable skills and abilities, please visit our Careers page: https://www.coolearth.org/work-with-us/

Cool Earth is committed to building an inclusive, diverse and equitable workplace and ensuring our application process is accessible for all.If you have any questions or concerns about this, please feel free to get in touch with us at [email protected]