HR officer

HR officers look after the rules governing how an organisation treats the people who work for it, and they are usually the first person told when something has gone wrong. Contracts, pay changes, sickness, grievances, disciplinary meetings and leavers all arrive at the same desk. People argue about whether HR is on the employee's side or the employer's. In practice it is on the side of doing things properly, which irritates both of them from time to time.

What the job actually involves

Issue contracts and check right to work documents before anyone starts.
Take the first call when someone raises a grievance, and write down what was said accurately.
Sit in disciplinary and capability meetings and make sure the process is actually followed.
Advise managers who want a shortcut, and explain what the shortcut would cost later.
Run absence, holiday and family leave cases, including the ones nobody wants to touch.
Keep personnel records secure and release only what the person asking is entitled to see.
Support pay reviews, restructures and redundancy consultation.
Notice patterns in why people leave, and tell someone who can do something about it.

On a normal day

A manager asks you to dismiss someone by Friday, and you explain why that date is not available.
Somebody knocks, closes your door, and tells you something about a colleague you now cannot unhear.
You check a clause against the current rules before answering a question you could have guessed at.
You write up a meeting the same afternoon, because notes made a week later are worth very little.
You take a call from someone in tears about a rota and spend the first two minutes only listening.

What it is actually like

Reading about a job only gets you so far. Career Lab drops you into one real situation from it: Advise Steve who wants someone gone by Friday. Steve runs the warehouse late shift. He has come to your desk wanting Jodie dismissed by Friday. Nothing about her performance has ever been written down.

You respond to the situation, then see what the work asked of you and what your choices changed.

Try being a hr officer

Pay and hours

Starting: £24,000 a year
Typical: £32,000 a year
Experienced: £40,000 a year

Source: National Careers Service, median is the midpoint of the published band, checked 2026-07-29.

Usually 38 to 40 hours a week, regular pattern.

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Skills that matter

Confidentiality. You hold information about people's health, money and mistakes, and one repeated sentence at lunch ends your usefulness in that building for good.
Knowing the process. Fairness in employment is mostly procedural, so knowing which step comes next is what protects both the employee and the organisation.
Difficult conversations. Nobody arrives at your desk happy, and the skill is staying warm and clear while telling someone an answer they will not like.
Accurate written records. Months later, the only version of events that counts is the one written at the time, and vague notes help nobody involved.
Fairness under pressure. A senior manager wanting a quick outcome is the most common way a process goes wrong, and holding the line is the actual job.
Employment law basics. Notice, discrimination, working time and family leave rules are legal duties, and getting them wrong is a claim rather than a telling off.
Judgement about when to escalate. Some disclosures are yours to handle and some belong with a manager, safeguarding or the police, and the cost of guessing is high.

How people get in

Apprenticeship (Level 3). The HR support apprenticeship is the standard route in from school or college, covering contracts, records and the basics of employment law on the job. Usually 18 months to 2 years.
Apprenticeship (Level 5). The people professional standard is the next step up, aimed at advisers handling their own casework, and carries recognised professional membership. Usually 2 years.
College course (Level 3). Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development courses start with the Foundation Certificate in People Practice, the usual first qualification for people changing career. Usually 6 to 12 months.
University (Degree). Any subject is accepted, and human resources, business and psychology degrees are common. Some employers run graduate HR schemes with rotations across specialisms. Usually 3 years.

Experience that helps

Any job where you handled personal information carefully, kept a rota fair or listened to somebody complain without joining in is worth talking about. Retail supervision, care work, customer service and student union or committee roles all count. Employers are looking for discretion and a steady manner more than a subject background, and they will usually ask for an example of a time you kept something confidential when it would have been easier not to.

Who employs hr officers

In-house HR teams at medium and large employers
NHS trusts, councils and central government
Schools, colleges and universities
Charities and housing associations
HR outsourcing firms and employment law consultancies
Small businesses where one person covers the whole function

Where the work happens

An office or hybrid desk job with a door that gets closed a lot. Expect a lot of email, a lot of forms and meetings that were calm on the invitation and are not in the room. Hours are usually regular, though a grievance, an investigation or a redundancy consultation compresses a fortnight into a few days. In smaller organisations you are the whole HR function, which means more variety and less backup.

Where it leads

HR adviser, then HR manager with responsibility for a site or a division.
Specialise in employee relations, reward, or learning and development.
HR business partner, working alongside one part of the business on its people plan.
Head of people or HR director in a larger organisation.
Move into employment law, occupational health liaison or independent HR consultancy for small firms.

Common questions

Is HR there to protect the employee or the employer?

Neither, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something. HR is employed by the organisation and paid to make sure it meets its legal and contractual duties. In most cases that lines up with treating people fairly, because unfair treatment is what produces claims. Where it does not line up, an HR officer's job is to say so early rather than to pick a side quietly.

Can you get into HR without a degree?

Yes, easily. The HR support apprenticeship at Level 3 takes people straight from school or college, and the CIPD Foundation Certificate is a well-trodden route for people changing career later. Administrators inside an organisation move into HR regularly. A degree helps at graduate scheme level and matters much less after your first two years of casework.

How much of the job is difficult conversations?

More than the job adverts suggest, and it comes in waves. A quiet month is contracts, references and policy updates. A bad month is an investigation, a long-term sickness case and a manager who has already said something they should not have. If the idea of telling a senior person no makes you feel ill, this is worth testing before committing.

What is the difference between HR and recruitment?

Recruitment is finding and hiring people, often from an agency and often paid on commission. HR looks after them once they are in, which means contracts, pay, absence, conduct and exits. Plenty of people do both in a small company, and moving from recruitment into HR is a common career step because the interviewing skills carry across.

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