Innecto recently held a webinar focused on Business Services roles in law firms which highlighted the lack of attention and structure afforded to them in the sector and the path to rapid improvement. 

Historically and perhaps understandably, much of the focus in law firms has been on fee-earning roles. It has been more of a challenge for HR departments to implement formal reward structures for Business Services roles. Now, though, this whole area is being driven up the agenda by challenges in recruitment and retention as well as legislative and social pressures.  

Why implement reward structures for Business Services roles?
Without a structure in place for business service functions, roles are often lost in an 'organisational soup' making them hard to compare and challenging to treat with any degree of fairness. Job titles become muddled across departments or locations, job descriptions can be haphazard and pay can be inconsistent. Individuals often find themselves siloed with little clarity around career pathway or growth, increasing the likelihood of them leaving.

Where law firms have chosen to put reward structures and frameworks in place for Business Services roles, they have demonstrated a desire to bring equity across the firm, made themselves more competitive in the marketplace and helped their managers have better conversations around reward. At the same time, it has enhanced governance, fairness and consistency in line with gender and ethnicity pay reporting and overall transparency.

Crucially, it also helps companies get people up to speed quicker in terms of training and development and increases their longevity at the firm, especially in those years where they are operating at the peak of their potential.

Typical barriers to change the status quo around reward structures are:

• Lack of appetite or understanding among partners and business leaders 
• Lack of time and resource to undertake the work required
• Perception that change will be expensive
• Not knowing where to begin

Where to start: Job Architecture
Defining a Job Architecture is a good starting point in creating structure as it enables you to define and organise roles within an organization, including their hierarchy and relationships to other positions. 

With these bones in place, you can standardise job titles and responsibilities across teams and departments, bringing clarity and consistency. 

This can make your organisation look more appealing to prospective candidates and is proven to engage existing staff and improve retention. 

Implementing a Job Evaluation Framework
Job Evaluation is the first step in establishing the value that a firm places on those roles. It enables the company to objectively size roles based on a range of factors typically including: 

• Expertise needed to perform a role
• Complexity of the role
• Impact the role has

A Job Evaluation exercise gives clarity and context, for example, around the difference between a manager’s role and that of their team. This enables HR and business leaders to better understand and justify whether a difference in pay is proportionate.

Framework models range from simple to more complex, depending on an organisation's shape, size, culture and operating model. Innecto’s Evaluate system has been universally successful in enabling sustainable change.

EVALUATE. JOB EVALUATION, EVOLVED.
Innecto's proprietary Job Evaluation system Evaluate has been developed and enhanced over the last decade to meet our clients’ changing needs. 

The system is based on the academic principles of work level theory and ensures that businesses can make fair and equitable decisions around role assessment, grading, career opportunities and pay.

Time-saving - Evaluate makes evaluating roles quick and straightforward, reducing the onus on HR resource. The built-in job description library allows HR to create, save and edit job descriptions

Simple and robust - the simple structure enables easy identification of where roles sit within the hierarchy of a levelling framework. 

Enabling Organisational Design – Helps define the ideal shape for your organisation and the functions with it, linking to headcount planning and talent mapping.

Dynamic - As a dynamic product, Evaluate can model scenarios and pre-empt periods of change or growth, providing clarity around requirements for organisational design.

Defensible - Evaluate is compliant with Equal Pay requirements, so acts as a robust defence against pay claims

Business boost - Evaluate increases a company's confidence that roles are being assessed fairly and consistently

Happy employees - Employees can gain a far better overview of their career development potential and how to progress their pay prospects within the company.

Return on investment - As part of the onboarding process, Innecto delivers training and education programmes for HR teams, Managers and Senior Leadership, as well as regular refresher training, helping to ensure buy-in across the business and return on investment. 

If you are a law firm and need advice in this area, please contact Justine Woolf at Innecto Consulting. Justine.Woolf@innecto.com

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