Junior HR business partner

Closing date for applications: 4th August 2025

Salary: Up to £40,000 dependent on experience and location (+bonus +benefits)

Location: This role can be based at our London office, or at any of our national offices in Sheffield, Edinburgh, Newcastle, or Bristol, with a blend of in-office (3 days) and home working (2 days) per week.

Ready to take the next step in your HR career? Join a publishing powerhouse and support the teams bringing award-winning books to life.

Hachette UK is a creative powerhouse and the UK's second largest book publishing group. Our mission is to make it easy for everyone to discover new worlds of ideas, learning, entertainment and opportunity.

We're made up of 11 autonomous publishing divisions and over 60 imprints with a rich and diverse history and an incredible range of authors. We're also the market leader in e-books and publish a range of bestsellers in audio format, the fastest growing part of our business.


What you'll be doing

As a junior HR business partner for a range of Hachette UK’s divisions, you will work closely with the senior HR business partner to drive improvements in management capability, ensure a fair and consistent approach to employee relations and deliver continual improvement of the HR offering. You will also support the senior HR business partner with implementing a wide range of HR solutions that support business objectives.

The HR team are responsible for delivering the people vision of the company working in collaboration with the business to provide strategic talent solutions that add value to Hachette UK and its people. This is an exciting position working across multiple divisions within Hachette UK and will play a crucial role in supporting our managers across all levels whilst supporting and developing the HR assistant and senior HR officer.

We’re looking for a HR advisor who is ready for their next step up into business partnering, working in a supportive and collaborative environment!


Who we are looking for

Personal attributes/skills

• Adaptable and able to take both a strategic and ‘hands-on’ approach
• Credible and proactive professional with excellent judgment and the ability to instil confidence in others
• Great communicator, both written and oral, with the ability to clearly present information to others
• Proactive, solutions focused, and a pragmatic problem solver
• Well networked with great interpersonal skills and capable of easily and naturally building relationships
• Analytical skills including the ability to quickly and accurately assimilate information from complex verbal and numerical data
• Ability to prioritise and handle ever changing and conflicting workload priorities
• Ability to think innovatively and generate ideas and solutions offering a range of options
• The ability to build trusted and positive relationships with staff at all levels
• Accurate and exacting standards
• High level of resilience with the ability to read people and adapt approach accordingly
• Take pride in providing a first-class customer service to senior leaders and managers across our business
• Tactful, diplomatic and approachable

Experience/knowledge

• Currently working as an advisor looking for the next step in their role
• Experience of working with and building rapport and strong relationships with very senior managers
• Experience of managing a team- ability to prioritise, set a clear direction and be a role model within the function and the team that aligns with our culture and goals
• Proven experience of managing complex employee relations issues, restructures, advising on organisational design and talent management processes
• Strong understanding of employment legislation

What we offer

Our staff are our greatest asset, and our benefits reflect this:

• 28 annual leave days per year, increases to 29 days after 2 years' service and goes up to 30 days after 5 years' (+ bank holidays)
• Private medical insurance
• Generous pension schemes
• Rent deposit loans
• 2 community days per year
• Summer hours (finishing at 1pm on Fridays during the summer months)
• Retail discounts through Hachette rewards
• Cycle to Work scheme
• Eye care vouchers
• Wide-ranging training library
• Development programmes (including mentoring)
• Up to 70% off book purchases
• A charity bookshelf
• 12 Staff-led employee networks that are voluntary, including Gender Balance, Thrive, Pride, All Together, Wellbeing and religious networks
• Season ticket loans
• And much more!

Our commitment

The Book Trade Charity offers financial support to people looking to enter the book trade but who may struggle to afford the costs of attending interviews and undertaking junior roles. For more information visit www.booktradeentrysupport.org

Hachette employs people on the basis of their abilities. We aim to attract and develop talent from a base as broad as the world of readers we want to reach, with a wide and representative range of age, faith, disability, race, gender, sexuality and socio-economic, regional and cultural backgrounds. If you are shortlisted and need us to make any adjustments to help you attend for interview, please let us know.

Please state in your application that you found this role through Creative Access.