People Professional Level 5 Apprenticeship - UCB

Cogent Ssc Limited

Slough (SL1 3WE)

Closes in 27 days (Monday 14 July 2025)

Posted on 16 June 2025

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Summary

An ideal opportunity for an enthusiastic individual to gain experience in a HR department as a start to their HR career. The HR Apprentice will support and learn from a busy HR department. The apprentice will support an efficient HR administrative service for the HR team and our 700 UK employees, whilst gaining experience of a wide variety of HR.

Wage

£19,300 a year

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Annual salary review with set salary increments based on performance.

Training course
People professional (level 5)
Hours
Monday to Friday, 09:00 - 17:00 with one hour unpaid lunch break. Flexible hours / working - UCB offer core hours 10.00am - 4.00pm with the remainder of the working day made up to suit the individual.

37 hours 30 minutes a week

Start date

Monday 1 September 2025

Duration

2 years

Positions available

1

Work

Most of your apprenticeship is spent working. You’ll learn on the job by getting hands-on experience.

What you'll do at work

An ideal opportunity for an enthusiastic individual to gain experience in a HR department as a start to their HR career.

The HR Apprentice will support and learn from a busy HR department, which consists of:

  • A Team of 4 Generalist Business Partners
  • An Operational team of 5 responsible for the employee life cycle, pay and benefits
  • A Recruitment team of 5

The apprentice will support an efficient HR administrative service for the HR Team and our  700 UK employees, whilst gaining experience of a wide variety of HR processes.

Duties will include:

  • Monitoring and responding to first level employee queries though the on-line portal ‘HR Answers’
  • Coordination of the starters and leavers process, including reference checking, reporting and communicating with other relevant departments
  • Setting up and manage arrangements for all new hire inductions including slide preparations, collating induction packs, arranging catering
  • Managing all aspects of training: including booking trainers, candidate registration, meeting invitations, distribution of pre-work, booking rooms and catering
  • Support the relocation process for internal transfers and new recruits, through arranging temporary accommodation, and tracking financial spend and reporting to Finance for tax purposes
  • Arranging and collating exit interviews and reporting on trends/ analysis
  • Maintaining complete and accurate employee files – electronic and hard copy
  • Processing all Purchase Orders and invoice processing in SAP to ensure department spend is managed effectively

Where you'll work

216 Bath Road
Slough
SL1 3WE

Training

Apprenticeships include time away from working for specialist training. You’ll study to gain professional knowledge and skills.

College or training organisation

BPP PROFESSIONAL EDUCATION LIMITED

Your training course

People professional (level 5)

Understanding apprenticeship levels (opens in new tab)

What you'll learn

Course contents
  • Communicate information through appropriate channels to enable key stakeholders to understand what is required.
  • Build and manage multiple and diverse stakeholder's relationships.
  • Advise on application of policy, regulation, and law for HR issues.
  • Use data and metrics to mitigate areas of risk and highlight opportunities.
  • Negotiate with and influence stakeholders to support achievement of business and organisation objectives.
  • Present insight and conclusions on workforce issues or people process failures.
  • Enable stakeholders to deliver people solutions. e.g., through negotiation, providing guidance.
  • Lead and improve people capability within the business.
  • Manage and deliver people related business and change projects.
  • Handle and process people data according to legislative requirements.
  • Embed organisational people policy to promote a diverse and inclusive culture with stakeholders.
  • Analyse financial implications of people solutions ensuring value for money.
  • Support the delivery of people strategies using technology and innovation in accordance with regulations and policies.
  • Make decisions on people policy and issues raised, escalating concerns outside own area of responsibility.
  • Use prioritisation tools e.g., priority matrix to manage workload, and deliver against business objectives.
  • Challenge matters which conflict with ethical values or legislation.
  • Contribute to the development of people policies and procedures or people initiatives.
  • Interpret people and management data, from both internal and external sources to identify trends.
  • Educate and support stakeholders to deal with wellbeing issues.
  • Benchmark to improve people policies and procedures, or people initiatives.
  • Communicate information through appropriate channels to enable key stakeholders to understand what is required.
  • Build and manage multiple and diverse stakeholder's relationships.
  • Advise on application of policy, regulation, and law for HR issues.
  • Use data and metrics to mitigate areas of risk and highlight opportunities.
  • Negotiate with and influence stakeholders to support achievement of business and organisation objectives.
  • Present insight and conclusions on workforce issues or people process failures.
  • Enable stakeholders to deliver people solutions. e.g., through negotiation, providing guidance.
  • Lead and improve people capability within the business.
  • Manage and deliver people related business and change projects.
  • Handle and process people data according to legislative requirements.
  • Embed organisational people policy to promote a diverse and inclusive culture with stakeholders.
  • Analyse financial implications of people solutions ensuring value for money.
  • Support the delivery of people strategies using technology and innovation in accordance with regulations and policies.
  • Make decisions on people policy and issues raised, escalating concerns outside own area of responsibility.
  • Use prioritisation tools e.g., priority matrix to manage workload, and deliver against business objectives.
  • Challenge matters which conflict with ethical values or legislation.
  • Contribute to the development of people policies and procedures or people initiatives.
  • Interpret people and management data, from both internal and external sources to identify trends.
  • Educate and support stakeholders to deal with wellbeing issues.
  • Benchmark to improve people policies and procedures, or people initiatives.

Your training plan

  • People Professional Level 5 (Higher national diploma) Apprenticeship Standard
  • A blend of online learning and day release 

Requirements

Essential qualifications

GCSE in:

Minimum of 5 (grade 4/C or above)

Let the company know about other relevant qualifications and industry experience you have. They can adjust the apprenticeship to reflect what you already know.

Skills

  • Communication skills
  • IT skills
  • Attention to detail
  • Customer care skills
  • Presentation skills
  • Administrative skills
  • Number skills
  • Analytical skills
  • Logical
  • Initiative

Other requirements

Please ensure that you currently live within or can relocate to a commutable distance of the site

About this company

As the specialists in skills for science and technology, our purpose is to make sure your business; your people and our industry are future ready. We are a not-for-profit charitable organisation with a family of commercially focused companies committed to supporting the skills, needs and ambitions across the UK science and technology sector.

https://cogentskills.com/vacancies/ (opens in new tab)

Disability Confident

Disability Confident

A fair proportion of interviews for this apprenticeship will be offered to applicants with a disability or long-term health condition. This includes non-visible disabilities and conditions.

You can choose to be considered for an interview under the Disability Confident scheme. You’ll need to meet the essential requirements to be considered for an interview.

After this apprenticeship

  • Upon successful completion of the apprenticeship you will be eligible to apply for other positions within the business
  • The training will expose the apprentice to a wide range of skills and competencies which would make them well placed for further study or suitable for many job opportunities in the life sciences sector

Ask a question

The contact for this apprenticeship is:

Cogent Ssc Limited

Tom Bretherton

thomas.bretherton@cogentskills.com

The reference code for this apprenticeship is VAC1000326284.

Apply now

Closes in 27 days (Monday 14 July 2025)

When you apply, you’ll be asked to sign in with a GOV.UK One Login. You can create one at the same time as applying for this apprenticeship.

After signing in, you’ll apply for this apprenticeship on the company's website.