Employment BDP Test

Business Development Plan: Employment Team for 2019/2020

1. Introduction – Current operations

1.1. Key Services Provided (including % split)

Individuals – approximately 30%.

Companies – approximately 70%.

1.2. Structure, People, Roles (including an organisation chart)

 Tracey Guest, Partner and Head of Employment (4 days/week)

 Sarah Calderwood, Partner (3.25 days/week)

 Helen Frankland, Associate Solicitor (3 days/week)

 Adele Shortman, Associate Solicitor (5 days/week), starting 13 May 2019.

Lucy Flynn, Solicitor (3 days/week)

Samantha Tanney (4 days/week)

 Hayley Constantini and Leah Walker (part-time secretaries, working as a job share)

 Daniel Wise, Associate Solicitor is in the litigation team, but does do some employment work in our city centre office. However, all his fees fall into litigation. NB Holidays carefully managed in order that we have sufficient cover given the part-time status of fee earners within the team. We are using Sarah Turner as a consultant as and when required to deal with holiday cover.

1.3. Profile of current client base (age, types, where they live, what they do)

 Individuals- North West/Manchester generally, although we do act for individuals based in the South. Ages generally 20 plus and predominately 30 plus.  Corporate- North West/Manchester generally, although we also act for clients based in London/Scotland etc.

1.4. Top Sources of Business 

Referrals from existing clients.

 Referrals from HR Consultants e.g. P3 People Management Limited.

 Individual referrals from personal contacts of the lawyers in the team.

Conflict referrals from other legal firms.

Referrals from colleagues.

 Court of Protection work and corporate deals generate employment work.

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1.5. Main competitors

Myersons

SAS Daniels

 City centre, eg Berg Legal, Brabners, Knights, JMW

Peninsula / Mentor type service

1.6. Our approach to Pricing

1.6.1.Introduction

(Hourly rates, fixed or capped fees, legal aid, privately funded, % time on chargeable for each member of the team)

 Hourly rates whenever we can bill on this basis.

 Capped fees for contracts of employment, company handbook/individual polices.

 Sometimes capped fees for first meetings/drafting without prejudice letters for individuals.

 Retainers for certain clients who want that approach.

1.7. Overall Current / Past Performance – Key Performance Measures, Trends over 3 years

Please See Attached

2. Evaluation – SWOT

2.1. Trends in your market

 Many companies now willing to spend money on updating contracts of employment and company handbooks.  Corporate support greatly increasing, due to referrals from Simon Wallwork, Nicky Collins and Katharine Mellor. Due to increase further as the corporate team expands.  Introduction of tribunal fees in April 2013 and ACAS Early Conciliation Procedure in 2014 significantly reduced the number of tribunal claims and reduced the work in this area. However, tribunal fees were abolished in 2017 and we are delighted that tribunal work has increased over the last couple of years.

 GDPR has produced additional work over the last 12 months.

2.2. SWOT – our team and the market

2.2.1. Strengths (to be promoted and capitalised upon)

 Six senior employment lawyers in the team, with in depth knowledge of the law.

 Strong relationships with our clients and HR Professionals results in good referrals of work.

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Price competitive.

Options for city centre or out of city centre advice.

 Strong working relationships with colleagues in our other departments, to ensure cross referral of work.

 Excellent contacts through personal relationships outside of work.

 Specialist in advising in the following industry sectors: consumer product manufacturing, education, pharmaceuticals, dentistry, recruitment, hospitality.  Offering an HR hands on approach through Clare Cross, Neil Maxwell and Emma Morris to avoid losing clients to HR consultants who provide that hands on service.

2.2.2. Weaknesses (to be addressed)

 Limited cross selling from other departments (save for corporate and commercial property)

2.2.3. Opportunities (to be actively targeted).

SH client base/contacts (cross selling).

 Local employers offer huge potential which is relatively untapped at present.

 Attendance at more networking events as applicable and more in the city centre.

 Continued seminar work associated with the bi-annual changes in employment law.

2.2.4. Threats (to be guarded against)

 Local competition such as Gorvins, Myersons, MLP and SAS Daniels which are all established players and compete for the same client base.  Free complimentary advice – need to strike a balance between raising awareness of firm in the local community and the detrimental effect on FE work, but this does ultimately generate a lot of new work/goodwill.

Peninsula / Mentor type service

2.3. Key Conclusions

We are in a strong position to market the employment team and obtain new corporate clients, but need to maximise the opportunities to do this e.g. by doing what we can to ensure that other departments cross refer to the employment team.

3. Strategy for 2018/2019 and beyond

3.1. An overall vision.

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We want to aim to continue work for corporate clients to be 70%, or more.

We want to aim to generate more referrals from other departments.

We would like to explore Health Care Professional Regulatory work given that Samantha Tanney has experience in this area. Our workload continues to increase significantly. Lucy Flynn joined in September 2017 (working 3 days per week) and Samantha Tanney joined in July 2018 (working 4 days per week). We have now recruited a 6 th fee earner (Adele Shortman) to assist with increased workload. The team should have capacity over 2019/2020 to be billing approximately £65,000/month. Aim to increase the employment team profile, with all fee earners attending more networking events / writing articles / continuing with seminars. It would be useful to have some immigration expertise and we need to consider whether this could be achieved in-house possibly through the new fee-earner we recruit. Currently we outsource this work to JMW and Brabners.

3.2. People development

We all attend CPD training and read daily employment law updates to keep up to date. We do not have pensions expertise but, as and when this is needed, we will use Counsel. (Approach to Supervision) – Fee earners at Oaklands all sit together and discuss matters daily. Monthly departmental meetings to discuss targets, aged debt and CRM for the month ahead.

3.3. Proclaim /iManage/ Technology / internal operations

(Issues and opportunities for continual improvement that you want to address)

(Key initiatives you want to implement, objectives, timescales, resources needed within the department and beyond) Training is required on iManage and we are all actively engaging with this. All team members are taking part in the Benchmarking programme.

3.4. Marketing & Promotion

 We have entered into consultancy agreements with Clare Cross, Emma Morris and Neil Maxwell to provide HR services (e.g. running a disciplinary meeting/redundancy consultation meeting) for our clients on a consultancy basis. It would not be appropriate for us as solicitors to do this for our clients. We have previously referred such work to an HR company, but are aware that this has on occasions led to us losing other work. The arrangement with Clare, Emma and Neil will ensure this does not happen and is a separate marketing initiative. We bill our clients for their time at an enhanced rate.

 Getting more of the same work from existing clients – how, who?

Market our training packages e.g. “dealing with disciplinaries”. Continue with CRM to go out and have review meetings with key clients e.g. Seashell Trust, Greenhalgh’s, Scapa Plc.

 Cross selling services to and from other departments – how, who?

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Attend other departmental meetings to explain how other departments can market the employment team to their clients. Once a corporate deal is complete, ensure that we follow up with the client where appropriate to ensure the client uses us for future employment advice.

 Building relationships with more potential introducers of business – how, who?

Focus on HR consultants e.g. Charlotte Gallagher, Natalie Lewis, Tara Whiley, Lisa Gibson. In relation to the Health Care Professional Regulatory work, we need to look at membership of the Association of Regulatory and Disciplinary Lawyers and ways to raise awareness that we provide this advice e.g. target healthcare providers, private hospitals etc.

 Focus on Top 20 List of clients / contacts

 Focus on HR contacts on other side of settlement agreements e.g. Tara Barley from Misguided.

3.5. Financial Projections, Budgets and Targets

3.5.1. Income by fee earner

Hourly rates

Tracey Guest - £285

Sarah Calderwood - £285

Helen Frankland - £250

Adele Shortman - £250

Lucy Flynn - £225

Samantha Tanney- £225

NB Some work can be fixed fee/price sensitive, particularly Settlement Agreements and there may be lower recovery for this work, but it is still profitable “bread and butter” work.

4. Direct Marketing/ Action Plan

Estimated Marketing Cost

No Activity

By Who

By When

1.

Employment Seminars: General update seminar for our clients in summer 2019.

All

£600

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Estimated Marketing Cost

No Activity

By Who

By When

2

Developing relationships with new HR consultants (attending events and dinners, coupled with CRM meetings)

TG (Lisa Gibson and Natalie Lewis) and HF (Tara Whiley)

Ongoing

£500

3

Developing relationships with Top 20 target clients

All

Ongoing

£1000

4

General CRM – to go out and attend review meetings with current key clients

TG, SC, HF & LF

Ongoing

£1000

5

Employment postcards, showing key employment statistics (e.g. unfair dismissal cap, national minimum wage etc.)

HF

Ongoing

£200

6

Employment Newsletter sent by email

HF & LF

Monthly

£0

7

Working Mums questions and answers posted on “Working Mums” website

HF & LF

Weekly

Free

8

Attending Seashell Trust Ball with clients on 11 May 2019 (tickets already purchased in Feb 2019 and therefore fell within previous year’s budget)

SC and TG

May

£500

9

Arranging ladies event for our clients; event activity tbc

TG, SC, HF & LF

Autumn

£400

10

Newspaper articles Q&A

TG

3x per year

£2,000

11

Writing articles for magazines etc. as and when required

TG and SC

Ongoing

As part of our firm-

wide PR retainer

12

Networking float for the team (£200 per month)

All

Ongoing

£2400

13

Pro bono work such as for Altrincham Chambers

All

Ongoing

£0

14

Develop contacts in Health Care Professional Regulatory work

ST

Spring

£0

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Estimated Marketing Cost

No Activity

By Who

By When

15

Case Closed Podcasts – £1,200 per session – 2x per year to discuss a minimum of 2 topics per session.

All

Summer 2019 & Winter 2020

£2400

Total estimated spend for 2019/2020 for Employment - £11,000. (Total spend in 2018/19 was actually in the region of £5,000, against a budget of £7,500- £10,000.)

5. An additional overhead for the employment team is the PLC employment module, being a cost of £7,000/annum. This is necessary due to the fact that employment Lexis Nexus was not adequate for employment-related legal research.

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6. EMPLOYMENT TOP 20 CLIENTS / CONTACTS - 2019

1. Scapa Plc

2. The Seashell Trust

3. Angela Mortimer Plc

4. Tipton Training Limited

5. Greenhalgh’s Craft Bakery Limited

6. P J Livesey Holdings Limited

7. Coveris Flexibles (Winsford) Limited

8. Northline Business Consultants Limited

9. One Education Limited

10. Krones UK Limited

11. Stockport CP

12. Building Product Design Limited / Total Hygiene Limited

13. Security Solutions Limited

14. PLCS Limited

15. Main & Main Estate Agents

16. AA Projects Limited

17. Elle R Leisure Limited

18. Ubiquegent Limited

19. Caltec (ATC) Limited

20. Low Level Waste Repository (Sellafield)

Page No: 8

Employment Marketing Expenditure

Activity

Supplier

Nominal Code

April

May

June

July

Aug

Sept

Oct

Nov

Dec

Jan

Feb

March

Overall Spend

£600

Employment seminars Case Closed Podcasts

TBC RMS

21046 21048

£600

£2,400

£1,200.00

£1,200.00

£500

BD with new HR consultatns

21050 £38.00 21050 £87.00 21050 £87.00

£42.00 £83.00 £83.00

£42.00 £83.00 £83.00

£42.00 £83.00 £83.00

£42.00 £83.00 £83.00

£42.00 £83.00 £83.00

£42.00 £83.00 £83.00

£42.00 £83.00 £83.00

£42.00 £83.00 £83.00

£42.00 £83.00 £83.00

£42.00 £83.00 £83.00

£42.00 £83.00 £83.00

£1,000 £1,000

BD with Top 20 target

CRM

£200

Employment postcards / printing Employment Newsletter

Zen Office

21052

£100

£100

£0 £0

NA £0.00 NA £0.00

£0.00 £0.00

£0.00 £0.00

£0.00 £0.00

£0.00 £0.00

£0.00 £0.00

£0.00 £0.00

£0.00 £0.00

£0.00 £0.00

£0.00 £0.00

£0.00 £0.00

£0.00 £0.00

Working Mums Q&A

£500 £400

Seashell Trust Ball - drinks

21046 21046

£500.00

Ladies event

TBC TBC

£400.00

£2,000 £2,400 £11,000 £11,000

Media advertising

21041 £174.00 £166.00 £166.00

£166.00 £166.00 £166.00 £166.00 £166.00 £166.00 £166.00

£166.00 £166.00

Networking

21050 £200.00 £200.00 £200.00 £200.00

£200.00 £200.00 £200.00 £200.00 £200.00 £200.00 £200.00

£200.00

Monthly budget

£586

£574

£1,774 £1,774

£574

£974

£674

£574

£574

£574

£1,774

£574

Total

Nominal

Budget for year

21041 21046 21048 21050 21052

£2,000.00 £1,500.00 £2,400.00 £4,900.00

£200.00

Total

£11,000.00

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Income Projected

Hourly Rate

Target No of Hours per year based on their role

Recovery Rate

Fee Earner Projections

Annual Fees Target

£

%

£

TG Works 4 days / week

285

144,000.00 (full time equivalent is £180,000)

12,000 /month

SC works 3.5 days / week

285

180,000.00 (full time equivalent is £277,000)

15,000/month

HF works 3 days / week

250

120,000.00 (full time equivalent is £200,000)

10,000/month

LF works 3 days/week

225

96,000.00 (full time equivalent is £160,000)

8,000/month

ST works 4 days/week

225

102,000.00 (full time equivalent is £127,500) 8,500/month

AS (11Mths) 5 days/week

250

135,000.00 (full time) [£10,000 first 3 months, £15,000 for 7 months]

777,000.00

Total

53,500.00 April - May 63,500.00 June - Aug 68,500.00 Sept - Mar

Page No: 10

Employment History

Fee Earner

2009/2010

2010/2011

2011/2012

2012/2013

2013/2014

2014/2015

2015/2016

2016/2017

2017/2018

2018/2019

5 Mths

12 Mths

12 Mths

12 Mths

12 Mths

12 Mths

12Mths

11Mths

12Mths

12Mths

£

£

£

£

£

TG

Fees Billed

62,021.32 60,914.00 81,529.00 14,858.00

130,249.21 127,751.67 158,000.67

121,141.70 149,217.00 151,820.00

110,650.56 151,213.80 154,173.20

112,691.70 142,320.00 141,057.50

127,488.23 128,021.50 140,601.00

139,368.16

139,162.46

175,523.40

166,876.78

WIP Recovered Time Recorded

118,073.41

169,158.78 208,448.50 39,184.13

Time W/Off New Files

29,934.00

7,215.00

80.00

520.00

1,327.50

82

119

51

57

64

81

49

52

23

SC

Fees Billed

0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00

99,754.93

112,400.95 110,630.00 132,589.50

107,669.62 123,676.50 124,905.63

103,702.44 127,007.40 127,999.96

109,253.23 103,984.00 109,536.00

109,761.85

125,673.74

163,426.75

171,270.97

WIP Recovered Time Recorded

110,265.74

172,662.70 209,220.35 33,645.30

115,746.00 117,030.21

Time W/Off New Files

18,907.00

3,774.00

396.00

0.00

232.50

0

104

68

67

61

39

36

51

44

HF

Fees Billed

0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00

0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00

0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00

44,691.47 62,052.30 54,033.30 1,062.00

70,960.50

83,891.43

70,709.06 77.768.00 87,115.00

109,356.27

123,460.18

137,315.17

WIP Recovered Time Recorded

92,546.44

138,130.39 165,880.00 19,114.88

102,739.00 103,729.90

Time W/Off New Files

252.00

265.00

0

0

0

31

57

40

53

50

26

AW

Fees Billed

31,179.56

39,786.28 38,902.27

0.00

0.00

WIP Recovered Time Recorded Time W/Off New Files

85

0

0

LF

Fees Billed

47,474.33

94,938.90 93,179.37 115,956.63 21,326.21

WIP Recovered Time Recorded

Time W/Off New Files

59

64

ST

Fees Billed

71,315.93 71,987.88 119,999.45 41,768.16

WIP Recovered Time Recorded

Time W/Off New Files

81

Sarah T

Fees Billed

8,292.92 7,950.92 14,563.50 5,060.08

WIP Recovered Time Recorded

Time W/Off

New Files

1

Total

Fees Billed

62,021.32 60,914.00 81,529.00 14,858.00

242,650.16 238,381.67 290,590.17

228,811.32 272,893.50 276,725.63

259,044.47 340,273.50 336,206.46

283,407.13 360,805.00 361,817.61

307,450.52 309,773.50 337,252.00

364,201.00

413,978.75 359,787.86

509,884.66

650,010.67

WIP Recovered Time Recorded

0.00 0.00 0.00

653,070.04 834,068.43 160,098.76

0.00 0.00 223 0.00

Time W/Off New Files

48,841.00

10,989.00

1,538.00

772.00

1,825.00

82

223

119

155

182

160

0

212

239

Average Recovery

0.00 %

0.00 %

0.00 %

0.00 %

0.00 %

0.00 %

0.00 %

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