Senior Officer- Employee Relations (UAE Nationals only)

SUMMARY OF FUNCTIONS:

Senior Officer, Employee Relations focuses on fostering positive relationships between the university administration and its employees, ensuring compliance with relevant labor laws and regulations, and addressing any employee-related issues or concerns. Manage personnel affairs and handle employee issues and conflicts that might occur during daily work in alignment with HR policies.  Ensure the accurate and timely inputs of payroll data to secure seamless and on-time processing of compensation and benefits to all AU employees in coordination with internal stakeholders.

ESSENTIAL DUTIES & RESPONSIBILITIES: 

• Serve as the first contact point with employees for HR-related inquiries.
• Maintain effective employee relations policies and practices, ensuring that employees are treated fairly and impartially within AU policies, ensuring that employees fulfil their obligation under the terms and conditions of service.
• Engage in regular communications with employees, receive and address HR inquiries and grievances, and suggest corrective measures in order to ensure smooth operations and enhance employee morale.
• Keep oversight of record of employee’ escalated issues and conflicts and ensure proper disciplinary action is recommended and taken upon committed violations
• Compile payroll data, validate and ensure a high level of accuracy, quality and promptness in all payroll input and calculations, and ensure that payroll is processed on time.
• Process of transactional data (Non- Recurring Payroll elements) i.e. processing of employee’s bonuses and non-recurring allowances and benefits such as joining advance, children education benefit, annual ticket allowance, etc.
• Verify attendance, hours worked, and pay adjustments, and post information onto designated records
• Maintain compensation databases and ensures employment records are properly maintained in the system.
• Track various service requests of employee and the implementation of the approved decision, including but not limited to extended medical leave, loan requests and other ad-hoc requests to process these requests in a timely manner.
• Maintain the health insurance process; provide guidance, support, and advice to employees including overall complaints such as delayed approvals, declined claims or medical requests and claims payment issues.

• Manage health insurance policy including analysis to policy performance, revision of financial transactions; Debit and Credit notes, and management of.
• Manage employee engagement and employee well-being programs and budgets to include managing social events, initiating special employee discounts and offers, proposing market and industry trends in engagement and welfare, etc.
• Manage off-boarding process including release of related letters/notices, conducting exit interviews for departing employees and ensuring accurate and timely preparation of all administrative details related to employees’ end of service.
• Conduct trend analysis on exit interviews and capture statistics to be used to initiate retention strategies.
• Develop and improve HR metrics reporting including absenteeism, automation, engagement levels (Survey based), HR requests failures/successes, etc.
• Prepare a variety of scheduled and ad hoc reports for analysis and decision making by management.
• Develop and maintain effective and engaging communications, including up to date of HR portal, announcements, memos, and other relevant materials related to employee-related matters.
• Conduct benchmarks and recommend improvements to HR policies and execute the implementation of procedures and controls covering all areas of HR Operations so that all relevant procedural/legislative requirements are fulfilled while delivering a quality, cost-effective service.
• Conduct technical analysis of the HR proposals submitted by the vendors to ensure the scope of work addresses AU requirements such as engagement surveys, HR system enhancement proposals, health/life insurance proposals and renewals, etc.
• Perform other related duties as assigned.

QUALIFICATIONS & EXPERIENCE:

• A bachelor’s degree in HR Management, Accounting, or another relevant discipline is required. A Master’s degree is preferred.
• A minimum of 5 years of relevant HR experience, with at least 3 years spent in the Employee Relations or as HR generalist.
• Experience in a higher education setting preferred.

KNOWLEDGE & SKILLS:

• Fluency in written and spoken English is essential.
• Knowledge of Arabic is an advantage but not a requirement.
• Knowledge of UAE Federal Laws / Labor Laws.
• Practical experience with payroll systems, practices, and procedures.
• A high degree of computer literacy; working knowledge of an ERP system such as SAP or other systems is desirable.
• Strong HRMS technical skills as demonstrated by the ability to generate and analyse various reports using Excel and other reporting tools.
• Strong verbal and written communication skills and a demonstrated competency to interact with people at all levels of the organization.
• Highly developed organizational skills are required.
• Ability to maintain and manage information of a confidential or sensitive nature.
• Accuracy and attention to details.

WORKING CONDITIONS:

• Work is normally performed in a typical interior/office work environment.
• No or very limited physical effort is required.
• No or very limited exposure to physical risk.

SUPERVISION:

Reports to: Head of HR Operations

Subordinates: N/A