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Curium Helps A Legal Sector Client Achieve Incredible Results

Curium Helps A Legal Sector Client Achieve Incredible Results

Jodie | 20 Nov 2024 | News | Coaching

The Hourly-Rate Headache

Boosting efficiency and encouraging the best performances from team members is a driving factor behind the success of this prestigious client. One of the key indicators of how well this approach works across the company was through the amount of chargeable hours recorded. This remains a crucial metric critical for the company through both the fixed-fee and hourly-rate work they complete.

In recent times, our client had seen significant improvements in the fixed-fee operations, but she recognised that the hourly rate segment still had room for growth. This presented an interesting challenge to attempt to understand and remedy.

The Challenge

Curium was called upon in early 2024 to become part of an ambitious strategy that would approach the hourly-rate issue through concentrating on one team. The Curium People First methodology would become vital to the development of this project. With an emphasis firmly on creating valuable & sustainable changes within the nine members of the team, it became much simpler to align with a new hourly-rate goal in a rapid way. The results demonstrated a healthy rise in chargeable hours and allowed a blueprint to be created for further use.

“The equivalent 10% increase in chargeable hours, applied across the whole area, could see an annual surplus of £4.73 million, showcasing this new way of talking about performance”.

Let results do the Talking

Before the program began, the team was set a target of netting 6.5 chargeable hours per day. In January, only five team members had met these targets. In March, as the project was in full swing, eight out of nine team members were surpassing them. Importantly, this performance level was sustained through April too.

The baseline was 1% below target in January.
The team improved to 5% above target in February.
It rose to 17% above target in March.
It was sustained at 13% above target in April.
Overall, the team posted a remarkable increase from -3% in January to +10% in April. *

This initiative led to an average improvement of 13% over the last two months of the pilot. If it tracked for the financial year it would result in an annual financial benefit of £222K for this small team alone.

All of this success was testament to a well-structured and consistent performance management framework that maximised people’s output to drive impressive results.

“It can sometimes be difficult to address under or over performance with senior colleagues and peers in the business, but this method allows it to be undertaken. It also provided a facility to discuss over performance, check in on mental health and wellbeing.”

How the Client Achieved Her Goals

Our client implemented a well-structured coaching-focused performance management system. As the Head of Product, she facilitated monthly one-on-one meetings with each team member for optimised information sharing and guidance.

These sessions empowered the colleagues to identify their own areas for improvement and develop individual strategies to achieve their goals. It was an approach that emphasised ownership and creative problem-solving, to shift away from the traditional directive style.

Emma Taylor is the Coach and Chief People Officer for Curium. She adds: “This approach uses a coaching style methodology where the ownership of the performance lies with the fee earner, not the leader. It is a learned skill that fosters creative thinking and accountability. It sounds simple doesn’t it, and it should be! However, as leaders, with good intention, or lack of patience, we often jump to solutions too quickly and take away the ownership and accountability of performance gaps from the individuals themselves. ”

Where to Take It Next

Our client realised that the success of this pilot could be replicated across other teams. The consistent application of the performance-focused one-on-one meetings was identified as the primary element to follow to make this happen.

The next steps involved assessing the current capabilities of other Product Heads, conducting workshops to teach these techniques, and setting up regular observations and coaching sessions to ensure the new methods were effectively embedded.

This structured and repeatable approach to performance management would help achieve strategic goals, optimise performance, and create a culture of excellence and accountability when rolled out across the company.

The High-level Plan

Project Set-Up
Plan & schedule all necessary updates and governance.

Initial Observations
Assess the capability of leaders to design the Performance Management Workshop.

Workshops
Train leaders in performance-focused conversations.

1-2-1 Observations
Monthly observations of fee earners through one-on-one meetings.

Coaching for Product Heads
Tailored coaching sessions following observations.

MI & Data Review
Analyse performance data to inform additional outputs for tracking.

Results. Rewards. Recognition.

The pilot project proved that this new approach to performance management could significantly boost chargeable hours, improve job satisfaction, and reduce staff attrition. The team’s performance shifted by having a clear understanding of performance gaps and strategies to address them.

“The team’s performance shifted from mostly under-target to nearly all members exceeding their goals.”

Team Feedback

Feedback from the pilot team highlighted the benefits of this new method.

One senior partner noted:

“This is way better than previous discussions. It considered non-chargeable tasks and disruptions, which other departments often overlook.”

“You were fair and clearly broke down potential reasons for impact such as work, motivation, etc and helped to close the gap. I think the business has not been good with taking into consideration the ‘people’ aspect of how chargeable hours can be affected.”

“This is much better than previous discussions as it has been more ‘cutthroat’ with more blame put on the handler plus you also took into consideration any non-chargeable tasks, any disruption etc.”

“Taking an individual deep-dive into why chargeable hours targets are not being met, rather than relying on prompts such as auto-generated emails attaching global spreadsheets, was guaranteed to reap rewards.”

“We have acknowledged that performance management at a team level is where the current performance gap lies. This methodology addresses that gap and has demonstrably shown how the gap can be closed and eroded leading to higher performing teams.”

The Curium Conclusion

Our client was clear-eyed on the results she wanted to see and open-minded to the methodology that would ultimately take her there. For the Curium team, this is always such an advantage in aligning our processes with the goals that we need to achieve. Creating valuable change requires real trust, wide adoption and thorough understanding, and that can only ever come through encouraging behavioural shifts that benefit individuals. The more individuals this impacts upon, the greater the chances are that goals and aims will be met and exceeded.

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