Support Services Team Leader

We’re a national law firm with a local reach. Our legal experts are here for you. Whether it’s personal or business, we understand that everyone’s situation is different. But we’re more than just a law firm – we’re a team of people working together to help individuals and businesses navigate life’s ups and downs. Working here you’ll feel a part of our friendly and inclusive environment.

We’ll value you for who you are and what you bring. We support each other and push boundaries to achieve incredible things and make a real difference to our clients and communities.

We're always looking to support our colleagues to work in a way that works best for them and everyone else, including our clients, the business and the regulators. Please speak to a member of our Recruitment and Onboarding team for more information.

Your Role and What You'll Be Doing

The Support Services Team Leader will assist with the day-to-day management of the PAs based in offices across the UK supporting our teams and clients within Personal Injury. This includes the development and maintenance of appropriate processes (in-line with agreed department processes) that will improve service levels and cost-effectiveness. This role will supervise, co-ordinate and lead the activities of the support functions. There will be significant focus on continual performance improvement throughout the team to ensure operational efficiency.

This is a hybrid role, with two days office attendance in our Manchester office per week.

As a Support Services Team Leader, you’ll:

Conduct 1:1s with team members, manage the wellbeing, attendance, performance, and engagement of the team

Conduct formal end of year reviews for colleagues allocating appropriate performance gradings

Liaise with HR to manage any formal issues

Cultivate a culture of high quality and high performance amongst the team

Ensure seamless delivery of exceptional service to clients

Operate as a change champion to support the development and roll-out of new support initiatives and operational processes.

Ensure the quality and timeliness of work completed to achieve or exceed SLAs/client commitments. This includes personally dealing with more difficult aspects of workload, or process breakdown. Act as trouble-shooter to resolve a wide range of problems

Review and monitor individual employee performance, providing or arranging training and/or coaching when required, to ensure acceptable performance levels are achieved. This includes fulfilling the firm’s appraisal process and providing leadership and guidance through the performance management process for all team

Assist the Partners with projects and initiatives ensuring the PA support team are operating in alignment with their short- and long-term goals.

About You

Proven experience managing and leading a team, including responsibility for performance management, wellbeing, attendance, engagement and development of colleagues.

Experience delivering operational services against agreed service standards, targets or client commitments.

Experience coaching, supporting and developing team members to achieve performance and quality objectives.

Experience implementing or supporting change initiatives, new processes or ways of working within a team environment.

Ability to build effective working relationships with colleagues, managers and stakeholders to achieve shared objectives.

Ability to identify operational issues, assess options and implement practical solutions to maintain service delivery.

Strong organisational skills with the ability to prioritise workloads, manage competing demands and meet deadlines.

Proficiency in using business systems and technology to manage work, monitor performance and support service delivery.

Effective written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to communicate clearly and professionally with a range of stakeholders.

Desirable:

Experience working within a legal, professional services or corporate support environment.

Knowledge of Personal Injury operations or previous experience supporting Personal Injury teams.

Experience managing geographically dispersed or hybrid teams.

Experience supporting workforce planning, resource management or operational improvement projects.

Experience working with service level agreements (SLAs) and performance metrics.

Our Benefits - What We Can Offer You

25 days holidays as standard plus bank holidays - You can ‘buy’ up to 35hrs of extra holiday too.

Generous and flexible pension schemes.

Volunteering days – Two days of volunteering every year for a cause of your choice (fully paid)

Westfield Health membership, offering refunds on medical services alongside our Aviva Digital GP services.

We also offer a wide range of well-being initiatives to encourage positive mental health both in and out of the workplace and to make sure you’re fully supported. This includes our Flexible by Choice programme which gives our colleagues more choice over a hybrid way of working subject to role, team and client requirements.

We have been ranked in the Best Workplaces for Wellbeing for Large Organisations for 2024!

Our responsible business programmes are fundamental to who we are and our purpose. We’re committed to being a diverse and inclusive workplace where our colleagues can flourish, and we have established a number of inclusion network groups across our business to support this aim.

Our commitment to Social Responsibility, community investment activity and tackling climate change is a fundamental part of who we are. It’s made up of four strands: Our People, Our Community, Our Environment and Our Pro Bono.

Additional Information

As part of the Irwin Mitchell Group’s on-boarding process all successful applicants are required to complete the group’s employment screening process. This process helps to ensure that all new employees meet our standards in relation to honesty and integrity therefore protecting the interests of the Group, colleagues, clients, partners and other stakeholders.

We carry out pre employment screening to establish your eligibility to work in the UK, criminal record and financial checks with our trusted 3rd parties.

The employment screening process will fully comply with Data Protection and other applicable laws.

Location

Manchester

One St Peter's Square, Manchester, Greater Manchester, United Kingdom, M2 3AF