Alternatively, Grant Thornton

At Grant Thornton we do things differently - looking to the future, driving ambitious growth and pioneering positive change in our industry. Providing audit, tax and advisory services, we empower clients through strategic insight, curiosity, and genuine partnership. And we empower our people with real opportunity, an inclusive culture and work life balance. A true alternative.

With over 5,000 people in the UK, and a presence in 150 global markets, we're on an ambitious journey, from great to exceptional, and we need the best people to help us achieve our potential. And with that comes the opportunity to help redefine what our industry looks like, and what you want from your career.

Job Description:

NEW GROUND WON’T BREAK ITSELF.

Every day our teams help people in businesses and communities to do what is right and achieve their goals.

About the role

The Support Desk Executive is the expert behind our people services support model. Working alongside our Claude agent, which handles routine queries as the first point of contact, you will resolve the complex, contractual and sensitive questions that need human judgement. You will apply sound judgement to policy, contractual and process questions, underpinned by knowledge of Grant Thornton UK LLP structures, systems and ways of working. You will also help improve the quality of the guidance colleagues receive, whether it comes from you or from the agent. 

Advisory and guidance  

• Complex query resolution: Take people escalated queries, resolving them fully and applying judgement rather than simply signposting. This means understanding not just what a policy says, but how it applies to a particular situation. 

• Policy interpretation and application: Read across the firm’s people policies and apply them to real situations, including the grey areas where more than one policy is in play or the answer is not immediately obvious. 

• Contractual guidance: Advise on the practical effect of contractual terms, such as notice periods, working patterns and changes to terms, and explain what can and cannot be changed and how. 

• Working with colleagues across People and Culture: Work closely with the People and Culture centres of excellence and HR business partners, involving them early on complex or sensitive cases, sharing what you learn from queries, and making sure our people get a joined-up, consistent outcome. 

• People manager support: Help people managers understand their responsibilities and build confidence in completing tasks themselves through self-service. 

• Holiday, leaver and pay queries: Handle the more complex queries on holiday entitlement, the leaver process and pay, recognising where a query has a contractual or compliance dimension that needs care. 

• Employee Experience and Wellbeing: Provide informed, sensitive support across the firm’s employee experience and wellbeing touchpoints. 

Working with AI and improving the service

• Quality assurance: Review the agent’s responses regularly, checking them for accuracy and consistency with current policy. 

• Gaps and errors: Identify and flag where answers are wrong, unclear or missing, and work with policy owners to correct the underlying guidance. 

• Content currency: Help keep the guidance the agent draws on accurate, up to date and owned. 

• Feedback loop: Use trends in queries and escalations to identify opportunities to simplify processes and shift more routine questions to self-service. 

Systems, data and process  

Apply technical knowledge of the firm's people systems to keep data accurate, investigate where transactions have gone wrong, and help the wider team work more effectively. This part of the role calls for an understanding of how the systems fit together, not just how to complete individual tasks.

• Understand how data connects - Recognise how people data flows through systems and the impact when something changes. 
• Investigate and fix issues - Identify and resolve transactions that haven’t worked as expected, getting to the root cause. 
• Take an end to end view - Understand how processes fit together so you can diagnose issues in context rather than in isolation   
• Reporting and integrations - Produce and interpret reporting, and understand how data integrates between systems, including the impact when something changes upstream.  
• Optimisation and the feedback loop - Identify opportunities to improve and simplify processes and feed these back through the process feedback loop so the team continually improves.  

Knowing you’re right for us

Joining us as a Support Desk Executive, the minimum criteria you’ll need is  

• Strong working knowledge of HR policy, contractual terms and people processes 

• Background and experience in HR administration, including people transactions and data 

• Experience advising managers and employees on complex people queries 

• Confident user of Workday, with the ability to investigate and correct transactions 

• Hands-on experience of AI tools in an HR or support setting and keen to help test, challenge and improve them 

• High attention to detail and a focus on data quality 

• Clear written and verbal communication 

• Ability to manage a varied workload and prioritise effectively 

It would be great if you had some of the following skills, but don’t worry if you don’t tick every box, we’ll help you develop along the way.  

• CIPD qualification, or working towards one 

• Experience of reporting, integrations or process improvement 

• Experience working across a multi-location or shared services team 

• Experience in a professional services environment 

Knowing we’re right for you

Embracing uniqueness, the culture at Grant Thornton thrives on the contributions of all our people, we never settle for what is easy, we look beyond to deliver the right thing, for everyone.  Building an inclusive culture, where we value difference and respect our colleagues helps our people to perform at the best of their ability and realise their potential.

Our open and accessible culture means you’ll interact with leaders who are interested in you and everything you bring to our firm. The things that set you apart, we value them. That’s why we give you the freedom to bring your whole self to work and pursue your passions inside and outside of work.

We’re also committed to supporting you through different life stages, with a range of family friendly and wider leave policies. You can find full details of our reward, benefits and leave policies on our website: Reward and benefits.

Beyond the job 

Life is more than work. The things you do, and the people you’re with outside of work matter, that’s why we’re happy to look at flexible working options for all our roles, and we’ll always do our best to keep your work and life in balance.

The impact you can make here will go far beyond your day job. From secondments, to fundraising for local charities, or investing in entrepreneurs in the developing world, you’ll be giving back to society. It’s that drive to do the right thing that runs through our every move, grounded in our firm’s values – purposefully driven, actively curious and candid but kind.

We’re looking for people who want to contribute, spark fresh ideas and go beyond expectations. People who want to be able to proudly do what’s right, for the firm, our clients, our people and themselves. It’s how it should be.

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