Senior Manager – Business Support Team
We are currently looking for a Business Support Team – Senior Manager who will provide oversight and support to the Business Support Team in the London office focusing on the provision of a high-quality and efficient support team to Partners and fee-earners in the London office.
The role
- Maintaining oversight of the Business Support Team, ensuring adequate resourcing requirements are in place at all times
- Day to day management of Executive, Personal and Transaction Support Assistants, focusing on service delivery and excellence
- Ensuring the firm’s policies and procedures are followed and adhered to
- Acting as the escalation point for any team issues arising within their groups
- Coordinating any agile working patterns in the future to provide adequate levels of resource
- Planning and forecasting yearly functional costs and budgets, managing and controlling day to day expenditure within agreed budgets.
- Communicating regularly with partners, seeking feedback from fee-earners and assistants to continually improve the service provision
- Planning and coordinating administrative and secretarial procedures to streamline processes
- Developing a consistent onboarding process for new members to the Business Support Team
- Creating mentoring and communication networks for each grade within the team
- Coordinating the Performance Review Process across the Business Support team
- Work closely with HR to recruit and retain the best assistants, to give them the appropriate training and to support their career development
- Manage more complex employee relations matters in conjunction with HR
- Closely working with the Learning & Development team to establish the training needs and development opportunities for the Business Support Team
- Developing a performance management framework specifically for the Business Support Team
- Provide coaching on both an individual and team level where appropriate
- Where necessary work with individual partners to build objectives and ensure these objectives are met
- Where appropriate write business cases for improvements to processes and procedures across the Business Support team and once approved, lead on their implementation
- Monitor the performance of the Business Support team, gathering feedback, managing team process and implementing best practice
- Establish appropriate training and development priorities to ensure that client and fee-earner needs are met
- Continually develop self and maintain own knowledge in technical and management skills at all times
- Determine the firm’s needs for delivery and user expectations of a quality service; adapting and delivering any change management programmes in line with changing requirements
- Review, implement and improve processes and systems where necessary to ensure that the Business Support team are working as efficiently as possible
- Liaise with counterparts in other organisations to benchmark practices and identify further areas for innovation
- Develop strategy, policy and procedures and manage the implementation of these
- Work with the business to recommend and develop an appropriate model for the regional offices
You
- Relevant secretarial services management experience in a professional services environment
- Excellent leadership skills and ability to empower and motivate team
- Excellent people management skills with experience in mentoring both experienced and junior employees to achieve their professional goals
- Ability to handle more complex people / employee relations issues in a sensitive manner
- Excellent organisational skills and the ability to multi-task
- A commercial approach to solving problems
- Ability to build and maintain excellent relationships at all levels with strong client service skills
- Anticipate problems and develop solutions
- Display discretion when dealing with sensitive information
- Proactive in making suggestions for working smarter
- Have a strategic focus
- Excellent project management skills
- Drive through change in a fast changing environment
Salary/benefits
- A 35-hour working week with flexibility around the core hours of 10am-4pm
- Working from home allowance of £25 a month.
- Annual salary reviews
- Car allowance of £5,000
- Eligibility for the firm’s Profit-Sharing Plan that runs from October to September each year. The scheme enables staff to share in the profits of the firm. Payment is usually c£1,000
- Eligibility for the discretionary bonus scheme at Assistant Manager and Manager level. This is based on both individual performance and firm performance. This is paid annually in August
- Salary review annually in October.
- Twenty-five days annual leave. This increases in line with length of service.
- In addition, under the flexible benefits programme, employees are entitled to buy or sell up to five days (35 hours) holiday a year, subject to staff partner approval.
- Six-month probationary period.
- Life assurance cover of four times salary,
- Private Medical – entitled to join on successful completion of probationary period
- Contributory pension scheme (The firm will contribute 5% of salary on a matched basis with employee from their date of joining
- Access to a number of additional benefits with preferential rates under the flexible benefit programme, which include; health cash plans, health screening/GP support, critical illness cover, dental and travel insurance, Techscheme, Cyclescheme, Gymflex and a Workplace ISA). More information will be provided on joining.