Senior Resource Manager 12-month FTC

We are looking for an experienced Senior Resource Manager to support our Real Estate team and growing Resource Management function. This is a 12-month fixed-term contract, with a high potential for transitioning into a permanent role in the future.

As the Senior Resource Manager, you will lead the fair and skill-based allocation of work across our Real Estate teams, ensuring equal opportunities and reducing unconscious bias. You'll play a key role in supporting career development by matching people with work that aligns with their growth goals, boosting engagement and retention.

You'll proactively identify training, performance, and wellbeing needs, working closely with Partners, HR, and Learning & Development teams. By managing resource utilization efficiently across teams and locations, you'll drive greater collaboration and profitability. Additionally, you will support the rollout and continuous improvement of a new resource management tool, enhancing processes and management information to aid decision-making.

In this role, you can expect to get involved in a variety of work including:

• Working with the Practice Group Leads (PGLs), Team leads (TLs) and other Partners
• Developing an excellent working and trusted relationship with our partners to gain a deep understanding of their practice, pressure points and resourcing needs and keeping this knowledge up-to-date.
• Building a Resource Management presence in key Teams team meetings and Partners' meetings as necessary.
• Providing weekly utilisation and projected capacity reports to the Teams partners as well as providing more regular updates to the PGLs, TLs, and other partners as needed.
• Reviewing utilisation and overall hours (i.e. including chargeable and non-chargeable time) stats on a daily and weekly basis flagging any areas of concern in real time to the partner group as required.
• Working with Fee earners to develop an excellent working relationship with them (counsel, associates, trainees and paralegals) to understand pressure points, capacity, skill sets and skill gaps and assisting with matching the fee earners preferences (where possible) to work that becomes available.
• Understanding and mapping the skills in the team (with the support of a new resource management tool), including where there are outstanding experience needs as well as understanding their career aspirations.
• Proactively monitoring, reminding, and chasing fee earners to update their capacity forecast on a weekly basis.
• Working within the Practice Management Team and with other Business Support Services: Work closely with the other resource managers in the firm to develop a global, best practice approach to work allocation practices by sharing guidance and experience.
• Working closely with the Practice Management, Finance, HR, Project Management and Business Development teams on people initiatives, issues and best practices.
• Assisting with (internal) secondments and recruitment.
• Liaising with trainee supervisors to monitor trainee performance and allocate appropriate range of work.
• Carrying out weekly and monthly work allocation analysis to report on trends, recommendations to smooth utilisation or improve processes where needed and to flag any areas of concern to be addressed.
• Comparing individual and the team's forecasted utilisation against actual utilisation, on a weekly basis, and providing support to address consistent inconsistencies as needed.
• Being aware and keeping track of holidays and mapping holidays to utilisation to pro-actively recommend work re-allocation solutions (where needed) ahead of time.

We will invest in your ongoing training and development to support your professional goals and help you to thrive in your role from day one. Our opportunities are open to all suitably qualified applicants, so to be considered for this role, you must meet the following skills and experience:

• Experience in work allocation or resource management, ideally within legal, professional services, or corporate environments.
• Qualified lawyer or professional with a law degree or relevant legal/resource management background.
• Strong commercial acumen with excellent stakeholder management and client service skills.
• Outstanding communication, negotiation, and influencing abilities, with confidence engaging senior decision-makers.
• Proven project management skills and ability to drive change in ambiguous situations.
• Proactive, resourceful, resilient, and able to exercise strong judgment while handling sensitive information discreetly.
• Proficient in Excel; experience with resource management software is a plus.

At CMS, we place diversity and inclusion at the centre of our culture and the heart of our organisation. As a firm we recognise, celebrate, and embrace the diverse talent our society has to offer because we know that to solve big problems, we need the best and brightest minds available to us. In support of this goal, we commit to actively breaking down barriers which stand in the way of those from diverse backgrounds and play our part in levelling the playing field.

We are a Level 2 Disability Confident Employer, and we actively encourage applications from people with disabilities, whether visible or invisible. We are committed to promoting equality of opportunity throughout our recruitment process and in every element of the employee life cycle. If you require assistance, or if you would like to discuss any accessibility requirements or adjustments as part of the recruitment process, please contact a member of the Talent Acquisition team who will be happy to support you.