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Join Us

HR Volunteer

Hours
2 days per week (9:30am-5:00pm, flexible)
Responsible to
People Coordinator
Ideal time commitment
6 months minimum
Team
People Team
Location
Old Street, London
Closing date
Benefits
Travel and lunch expenses covered

The work our HR team delivers is fast-paced, varied and responsive for the two charities within the Group. The team ensures that all staff are comprehensively inducted and are offered development to help staff to do their jobs to their best of their abilities and that the office is a warm, welcoming and inclusive environment for everyone who comes through HBF’s doors. Now that we have moved into our new Trauma Centre as of October 2024, and appointed our first Director of People in November 2024 we are also focussed on ensuring that whole team is supported to work together even more effectively to deliver for our Survivors.

This is an exciting time for a HR Volunteer who will support the Director of People and the Senior Operations and HR Coordinator with the roll-out of the charity’s HR plan and the operationalisation of the interventions beneath it.

Key responsibilities

Project Work

We’ll expect our volunteer to support with one or more the key infrastructure projects:

  • Supporting with actions following our staff engagement survey
  • Supporting with deploying actions from our EDIB Working Group Action Plan
  • Supporting with the introduction of engagement and wellbeing initiatives
  • Supporting with the review of our employment policies and contracts to ensure that that we are compliant with employment law legislation

Other tasks and activities

In addition to the above, you will also get the opportunity to support with the day-to-day running of a busy HR function through:

  • Ensuring effective onboarding processes for new starters
  • Ensuring we are complaint with safer recruitment obligations such as DBS checks  
  • Carrying out research tasks as required by the People Coordinator
  • Supporting with other administrative HR tasks as required.

Skills and experience needed

  • Punctual, reliable and self-motivated with a positive, ’can-do’ attitude;
  • Excellent organisational skills and good attention to detail;
  • Some experience of administration skills and/or research
  • Good communication skills, both verbal and written;
  • Experience of working with word processing, database, and spreadsheet computer programs;
  • Understanding of, and commitment to, the objectives of the Helen Bamber Foundation;
  • A demonstrable empathy for our vulnerable clients, including asylum seekers, refugees and survivors of torture and trafficking;

What you will get out of your time with us

  • An understanding of how our staff contribute to the wellbeing of our clients and how the HR team is pivotal to our staff team’s success;
  • A better understanding of HR best practice within the not-for-profit sector;
  • Practical understanding of usage of administrative skills and developing an ability to balance competing priorities in a work setting;
  • Supporting key HR projects at a pivotal time in an organisation’s history;
  • Experience of writing engaging communications; and
  • Potentially the opportunity to contribute to Board level papers for our Board of Trustees or our People and Governance Committee.

 

Equal Opportunities

Our commitment to principles of equity, diversity and inclusion is an integral part of our approach to our clients, our volunteers and our staff, and we are an equal opportunities and Living Wage employer. We are committed to attracting and recruiting diverse candidates because we are keen to make sure that all our staff, trustees, volunteers and ambassadors reflect the communities we serve and the wider community we work in.

We genuinely welcome and encourage applications from a range of backgrounds, especially people of colour, people with disabilities, people from low socio-economic backgrounds, refugees, stateless people and others with lived experience of forced migration or trauma.

Statement on artificial intelligence (AI) and recruitment

At the Helen Bamber Foundation / Asylum Aid we don’t make decisions based on artificial intelligence (AI). We have a human approach to hiring and all applications are reviewed and assessed by our team. Similarly, what we are most interested in hearing about is your individual motivation, experience, skills and values. AI doesn’t know about you or what motivates you – we want to hear from you.

AI may be a helpful tool, but typically leads to generic answers repeated by multiple candidates, not stand out applications. Please make sure that your responses reflect your own thoughts and experiences.

Download full job description here.

​To apply, please add your details and upload your CV and cover letter and CV, and press submit to answer some short questions.

The personal information that you provide to us this application will be stored on our database. We will process the personal information that we collect (apart from equal opportunities data) for the purposes of the charity’s legitimate interests, as follows: (1) to assess your application to work for the charity; (2) to organise interviews, or other recruitment activities; (3) for the purpose of communicating with you about your application; (4) to provide a record of our recruitment process for audit purposes and to respond to queries. We will only retain your personal information in our own database for as long as necessary in order to fulfil the purposes for which we need it, as described above. You have the right to access, correct or delete a copy of the data we hold about you at any time. If you would like to do any of these things, or if you have any concerns, please contact jobs@helenbamber.org.

Application form