Senior Employment Counsel (Insurance)

Location: London; hybrid working

Company

International specialist insurer focused on selected areas of insurance expertise and a culture of challenging convention.

What you will do

• Act as the lead employment law adviser to the Group General Counsel, Chief People Officer, HR leadership, and senior business stakeholders.
• Advise on employee relations, disciplinary and grievance matters, performance management, discrimination, harassment, whistleblowing, restrictive covenants, settlements, and executive employment arrangements.
• Lead legal support for restructurings, reorganisations, redundancy programmes, transfers, acquisitions, integrations, outsourcing, and other workforce transformation initiatives.
• Manage investigations, employment disputes, threatened claims, litigation, settlement strategy, and relationships with external employment counsel.
• Advise on employment policies, governance, conduct, accountability, diversity and inclusion, workplace behaviour, and regulatory developments.
• Improve legal service delivery through templates, playbooks, triage processes, AI tools, external counsel management, training, and knowledge sharing.

Requirements

• Qualified solicitor or equivalent lawyer with significant post-qualification experience.
• Strong employment law experience, ideally combining private practice and in-house work.
• Experience handling complex employee relations, senior exits, investigations, whistleblowing, discrimination, harassment, restructurings, disputes, and litigation risk.
• Experience advising HR and senior stakeholders on sensitive, confidential, and cross-border employment matters.
• Experience managing external counsel and working in financial services, insurance, or another regulated and complex corporate environment.
• Strong judgement, discretion, resilience, communication, negotiation, relationship-management, and organisational skills.

Nice to have

• Knowledge of insurance, financial services regulation, or conduct-related employment issues.
• Experience with senior manager accountability, culture, conduct, large-scale transformation, restructuring, or integration programmes.
• Experience leading policy improvement, employment law training, or legal process improvement initiatives.

Culture & Benefits

• Hybrid working designed to support work-life balance, with the working model set by the team.
• Inclusive culture focused on diversity, collaboration, and constructive challenge.
• Values centred on humanity, integrity, courage, ownership, and connection.
• Opportunity to work with senior leaders and legal, people, risk, compliance, privacy, finance, and local legal teams across multiple jurisdictions.