People Assistant

Location: Holborn, London 

Working pattern:  Full time, Hybrid working (3 days office, 2 days flex) 

Build your HR career across one of the UK's leading communications groups! 

About Us 

Accordience Group is the parent company of four specialist communications agencies - Grayling, Citigate Dewe Rogerson (CDR), Red Consultancy, and Cirkle - operating across 30+ offices worldwide. 

We’re looking for an organised, proactive and people-focused individual to join our People Team. This is an exciting opportunity to build your HR career while supporting colleagues across these agencies, with opportunities to collaborate on wider Accordience projects.  

Grayling has been recognised as one of The Times and Sunday Times Best Places to Work 2026 and this recognition reflects the culture our people have helped build together across. A culture grounded in trust, transparency, ambition and care, where talented people are empowered to do exceptional work, while building meaningful careers. 

If you're curious, keen to learn and enjoy building great relationships, we'd love to hear from you. 

About the role 

You'll play an important role in the day-to-day running of our Group People Team, helping to deliver a great employee experience while developing your own HR knowledge and skills. 

Your primary focus will be supporting Grayling, while also working closely with colleagues across Cirkle and Citigate Dewe Rogerson (CDR). As part of the wider Accordience Group People Team, you'll also have opportunities to contribute to projects across the Group, collaborating with colleagues from Red Consultancy and our other agencies. 

Whether you're starting your HR career or already have some experience, we're looking for someone with curiosity, initiative and a genuine interest in supporting people. We'll support your development, so we're more interested in your potential than a particular qualification. 

Your day-to-day impact 

• Be the first point of contact for the People Team, monitoring the inbox, flagging queries, and ensuring swift resolutions. 
• Keep HiBob, our HRIS, as the single source of truth, maintaining accurate data and meticulously organised documents, while continuously improving our people reporting and insights to better support managers and the wider business. 
• Own the onboarding journey: prepare contracts, conduct right-to-work checks, coordinate inductions, and manage benefits and payroll processes. 
• Guide employees through offboarding with care: from updating HiBob and coordinating all aspects of the leaver process to conducting exit interviews and capturing actionable insights that help shape our people practices.  
• Support the probation period process, ensuring timely follow-ups and documentation. 
• Coordinate the administration of the training programme, ensuring seamless delivery of training initiatives, collecting feedback and professional development programs. 
• Collaborate with the Senior People Advisor to ensure smooth payroll processes, manage promotions and salary reviews, and address employee relations queries with confidence and professionalism. 
• Support the team to ensure our policies and processes remain compliant with employment legislation and HR best practice. 
• Review and update our employee handbook, ensuring it remains up to date and easy to use.
• Support a variety of People projects and process improvements across the Group. 

What makes you our ideal candidate? 

• Excellent attention to detail and strong organisational skills. 
• A positive attitude and willingness to get stuck in  
• Confidentiality and discretion you can count on. 
• The confidence to build strong relationships with stakeholders at all levels. 
• A knack for juggling priorities and adapting to shifting demands. 
• Confident using Microsoft Office, particularly Excel, and comfortable learning new systems. 
• Curious about AI and digital tools, with the judgement to use them appropriately to improve efficiency and ways of working. 
• It would be great if you also have prior experience in HR operations, employee relations, or working with HR systems like HiBob! 

Ready to apply? 

If this sounds like the opportunity for you, we'd love to hear from you. Please apply via our website and upload your CV. 

As part of your application, we'd also like you to answer the question below in no more than 500 words: 

"What do you think is the biggest opportunity for a People Assistant to improve day to day HR work, and why?" 

We aren't looking for a perfect answer. We'd simply like to understand how you think.  

If successful, you will be invited to attend a first stage interview with two of our team members.  

Our promises to you 

• Flexible working arrangements, including hybrid working (where you can work two days a week from home) 
• 25 days’ holiday, increasing by one day every year up to 30 days. 
• Birthday day off 
• Gifted time off over Christmas  
• Flexible benefits allowance where you are in complete control of what you receive. It could be anything from dental to gym membership, wellbeing initiatives, training, discount deals or simply a contribution to everyday bills and subscriptions (think Netflix, Amazon, Spotify etc!) 
• Free breakfasts & weekly drinks in the office 
• Regular team socials and early finish Fridays.  
• Personal development opportunities, through our Grayling Advantage Academy (with courses ranging from writing, resilience, creativity and more)  
• New business and employee referral bonuses. 
• Cycle to work scheme 
• Employee Assistance Programme offering a 24/7 confidential advice line 
• Life assurance 

Get to know us 

Grayling is one of the UK's leading communications agencies and part of Accordience, a group of specialist communications consultancies. 

While you'll spend most of your time supporting Grayling, you'll also work with colleagues at Cirkle and Citigate Dewe Rogerson (CDR), who share our London office.  

This gives you the best of both worlds: becoming part of Grayling's close-knit culture while gaining valuable experience across a wider communications group. 

We believe diversity is strength. Our commitment is to combine our employees' unique backgrounds, perspectives and experiences to build a more diverse and inclusive organization that represents all of us and the businesses we work with. We undertake blind recruiting to review all our job applications as we believe that each candidate should be assessed based on their skills and experience, and not on bias parameters such as gender, ethnicity or age.