People Services Specialist

Location: Edinburgh

Job Title

Department

Human Resources-BG-UK

Overview of Department

The people team develops the capabilities, culture and experiences that create a human and commercial edge for Baillie Gifford. We exist to make the firm the world’s most distinctive place to grow a career, investing in our people with the same long-term conviction as our portfolios and continually reimagining how work is done to outpace the industry.

The team supports the full people lifecycle, including people operations, people partnering, leadership, learning and capability development, attraction and resourcing, organisational culture, reward, wellbeing and the end-to-end people experience.

Through this work, we ensure that people and performance are deeply connected and that our colleagues are equipped to deliver long-term value for clients.

Purpose of Role

Our People Services team brings our people strategy to life through the day-to-day moments that matter, resolving colleague queries and delivering the core operational processes that support people throughout their time at the firm.

Supporting around 1,550 colleagues across 11 countries, the team combines responsive support, specialist expertise, sound judgement and strong controls to deliver a seamless, reliable people experience.

As a People Services Specialist, you'll take ownership of complex, sensitive and non-standard operational work across the employee lifecycle, providing trusted advice and ensuring issues are resolved effectively and with care.

You'll also play an important role in transforming how People Services works as we move towards simpler, more connected and increasingly digital services. Drawing on your operational expertise, you'll challenge existing ways of working, identify root causes of problems and work with colleagues across People Operations to design, test and embed better solutions. You'll help us deliver an excellent service today while fundamentally improving how we operate for the future.

Responsibilities

• Service delivery and operational expertise
• Takes ownership of complex, sensitive or specialist operational work and queries across the employee lifecycle, ensuring high-quality service and effective resolution.
• Advises on the operational delivery of complex people processes and business changes, helping design practical, well-controlled approaches across processes, data and systems.
• Provides deeper expertise in one or more specialist areas such as payroll, benefits, right to work, visas, organisational data or regulated processes, applying sound judgement and resolving exceptions.
• Acts as a trusted face of the People team, providing knowledgeable, accessible and human support to colleagues and managers.
• Service quality, risk and resilience
• Maintains the integrity of critical people data, investigating and resolving complex or recurring issues across systems, workflows and organisational structures.
• Supports audit, risk and compliance activity, investigating exceptions and addressing control or process weaknesses.
• Coordinates the resolution of complex operational incidents and service failures, involving the right stakeholders and embedding lessons learned.
• Strengthens service quality and resilience by identifying recurring issues, improving documentation and building cross-cover for critical activities.
• Insight and transformation
• Uses service data, feedback and operational experience to identify recurring problems, understand root causes and prioritise meaningful improvements.
• Challenges existing processes end to end, identifying opportunities to remove unnecessary complexity, manual effort, handoffs and risk.
• Works with People Product and People Technology colleagues to shape, test and embed improved processes, digital workflows, self-service, automation and AI-enabled solutions.
• Supports the adoption of new ways of working, helping ensure improvements deliver better outcomes for colleagues and the team.

Team development

Builds team capability by sharing specialist expertise, coaching others, improving guidance and embedding consistent standards and ways of working.