Personnel/human resources officers help to make an organisation’s human resource – its employees – as effective as possible. This may be through direct support for the employee or by providing specialist knowledge for managerial use.

Around 15,000 personnel officers (including managers) are employed in local government throughout UK. They are employed in all types of local authorities. The many aspects of personnel means there are numerous titles for its practitioners including industrial relations officers, staffing and development officers, employee relations officers as well as personnel officers.

Work Environment

The work can be conducted in a variety of settings including offices, and other workplaces within the local authority. Most of the work however is done locally in an office environment.

Daily Activities

The work is extremely varied and broad ranging. Some of the main areas of work include:

• ensuring employee welfare, for example implementing health and safety legislation, developing approaches to issues such as stress, smoking and violence at work
• writing job advertisements, answering questions from applicants, drawing up short-lists, organising and sitting on interview panels
• ensuring that employees have the required skills and are placed in the right grade with a competitive salary (ie job evaluation)
• maintaining personnel files and records
• coordinating appraisal systems
• conducting training courses; overseeing the training of some council workers and advising on training matters
• consulting with and talking to trade unions on employment issues. Regular meetings take place with unions to discuss matters such as safety, working conditions and pay
• drawing up plans to relocate staff where a department closes or will oversee offers of early retirement, voluntary redundancy or even, in the last resort, forced redundancy
• assisting with the drafting of the framework within which employees work. Where breaches of discipline occur, it is their job to deal with them directly or to advise departmental managers how to proceed.
• assisting to set and monitor employment policy throughout the authority. It is also within their remit to ensure that council employees reflect a proper ethnic mix of the local area. This balancing extends to employing representative numbers of disabled people.

Skills & Interests

Personnel practitioners should understand and get on well with all types of people and be able to win their trust and respect. They should have patience, tact, organising ability and be able to make impartial decisions.

They need analytical and problem solving skills to help them to create policies, plan and forecast future skills needs. Finally, it is important that personnel officers can see things from the employer’s as well as the employee’s perspective. They must be able to keep confidences, and are often required to work on confidential matters.

Entry Requirements

The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) is the professional body for those involved in this work. There are no minimum entry requirements. In practice, however, most people enter with degrees or HNDs and then undertake the CIPD’s qualifications.

Many people start their careers by working on administrative aspects of personnel work and progress by studying part-time for professional qualifications. CIPD’s Professional Qualification Scheme (PQS) comprises three parts: Core Management; Core Personnel and Development; and Specialist and Generalist Personnel and Development.

An alternative route is to join another department. You might become an administrator in the education department or an engineer in the highways department and move into a personnel role.

The CIPD’s foundation qualification, the Certificate in Personnel Practice (CPP), and the Professional Qualification Scheme (PQS) are both open-access courses.

The CPP is available part-time or by open learning and usually takes a year to complete. Other CIPD qualifications include Certifivates in Training Practice (CTP) and Recruitment and Selection (CRS). The PQS is available full-time, part-time and by open learning. Part-time study for this will take about three years.

SVQ/NVQs in Personnel Support Level 3, Personnel Management Level 4 and Personnel Strategy Level 5 are also available.

An Apprenticeship in personnel support is available. Sometimes an Apprenticeship in Business Administration can also offer a route into personnel work.

Estimated salary range

£17,000 - £24,000 depending on responsibility and size of the council.

Please note that salary information is a guide only and there may be local agreements in place. For further information about salaries for particular positions, please contact your local council directly.

Future prospects & opportunities

Once qualified, it is fairly easy to transfer skills within local authorities to more senior posts such as principal personnel officer, and promotion to chief officer is possible.

All local authorities throughout the UK employ personnel (or human resources) officers which further increases the prospects/opportunities for those who choose this career area.

Related Occupations