HRMM032 2022/2023
AS2 Case study
Turner and Nazir are a law firm that operates across 5 sites in the UK, each in
prime city locations in the centre of towns with impressive offices and facilities. It
specialises in immigration law and medical malpractice – two very distinct forms
of law. The business was founded in 1998 by cousins Abel Turner and Ava Nazir
who are both managing partners. Abel is based in the Sheffield office and Ava in
Reading. Other sites are Birmingham, Leeds and Newcastle. The company
employs 90 staff and has an annual turnover of £5m.
Abel leads the medical malpractice (MM) team . Business has grown significantly
in this area since 2017 due to a large number of claims from a Birmingham
hospital that are part of a high-profile media story. His team contributes 60% of
the revenue for the organisation. Due to the specialist nature of MM work Abel
personally recruits the team through his extensive network and offers bespoke
reward packages.
His philosophy is ‘pay the best to get the best’ and his focus is on salaries and
bonuses rather than wider benefits. There can be as much as a 20% differential
in associate and partner salaries and Abel sees this as a mechanism to drive
internal ambition among the team. There has, however, been a high turnover of
people in the MM team with 3 partners and 2 associates leaving in 18 months.
The team also recruits 2 trainee lawyers each autumn, but the last two trainees
have left within a year. Business is busy, Abel’s expectations are high, and the
team work long and unpredictable hours.
Ava leads the immigration law practice The work is intensive and demands an
increasingly large number of staff to deal with cases. Immigration cases can take
anything from 12 months to 7 years to resolve depending on the complexity of
the case. Some clients receive state/government support for their case, but this
has reduced significantly.
Ava has decided to personally select 5 pro bono cases a year and works closely
with a range of agencies to support clients, dedicating a large amount of her
time to do so. The immigration claims are a steady source of income due to the
global refugee crisis and a large number of high profile and ongoing legacy
immigration cases. The reputation of this part of the company legal from an
employer and employee perspective is strong and has attracted several national
awards and accolades from the legal community over the last 3 years.
There has, however, been a small decline in cases won recently and unusually, a
very critical judgement last month on how a case was presented. Ava suspects
that this may be because some staff are either overworked or losing interest as
she has needed to stretch resources. She has had little time to speak with her
team about anything other than case work and she has lost 4 associates to a
local competitor in the last 12 months. This part of the practice is struggling to
bring new team members up to date with cases before they go ‘live’, and most
staff recently recruited have less than 4 years’ experience and seem to need
more support .
Turner and Nazir pay their legally qualified staff rates that are comparable to the
median base pay rates for the sector (other than the MM team which varies a lot)
and have a philosophy that they expect more effort from employees because of
this.
All staff worked at home during the pandemic, and all have returned to the office
5 days a week since April 2021. A number of staff have requested hybrid working
patterns, but the firm have not yet had time to consider these requests. The
costs of five offices are very high and three out of five of the rents on the prime
city centre sites are due for their annual increase in December 2022 and rent
reviews are due in February 2023 for the other two. Staff costs have continued to
increase steadily year on year by an average of 5% and projections for the next
year show little new business is expected so far.
Turner is proposing a streamlined management structure that places more focus
on the MM team. He argues that some competitors are already reviewing
working practices and office costs and that the company is at risk of being left
behind. However, Nazir is keen to ‘see this out’ and not make any rapid decisions
about people, premises and services. She thinks this may destabilise the
business and the staff further.
Competition continues to intensify with three new small and agile competitors
opening up in Birmingham and Leeds. Staff are unhappy about the lack of
decision making from the two partners, very little clear development and
progression routes and inflexible working patterns and are increasingly
dissatisfied and disengaged.
As the HR Manager, you have been asked to work with the partners to develop a
strategic solution to the challenges and opportunities . Please answer the
questions on the assessment brief to explain how you propose to do this.
