Kennedys is seeking a Reward Manager to join our global HR team, based in either our Chelmsford or London office.
The Reward Manager will play a key role in shaping and delivering the firm's total reward strategy, ensuring our approach to pay, recognition and market positioning enables us to attract, retain and motivate exceptional talent across our global business. Working closely with HR, Finance and business leaders, the role will provide expert advice across all areas of reward, including salary benchmarking, annual pay reviews, incentive schemes, reward governance and regulatory compliance.
Reporting into the Global Head of Reward, the Reward Manager will help ensure our reward practices remain competitive, equitable and aligned to our firm-wide strategy. This is an exciting opportunity to make a significant impact within a growing global law firm and contribute to the continued evolution of our global reward approach.
At Kennedys, we recognise the value of flexibility and offer a hybrid working approach, allowing employees to split their time between home and the office in a way that supports both individual needs and team success.
Team
The Kennedys HR team support the firm around the world with all people related matters.
The HR team is based in various locations globally across Kennedys' five regions; APAC, EMEA, US, LATAM and UK. The areas of HR that we have responsibility for are Business Partnering, Talent, Recruitment, Responsible Business, Operations, and Reward.
You will be working in a fast-paced, demanding, and global environment as we strive to make a difference for our people, clients and communities where we work.
Key responsibilities
Reward Strategy
- Develop and deliver the firm's global reward strategy, ensuring alignment with business objectives and the people strategy.
- Continually review reward practices to ensure they remain competitive, equitable and fit for purpose
- Identify global market trends and recommend enhancements to reward programmes
- Lead on reward projects both cyclical and as may be required from time to time.
Compensation
- Lead the annual salary and bonus review processes
- Manage, oversee and analyse the provision of compensation benchmarking tools and analytics, together with job coding where required
- Develop salary structures and pay frameworks
- Provide reward recommendations to support recruitment, promotions and retention
- Monitor the effectiveness of bonus and incentive schemes.
Governance & Compliance
- Ensure compliance with reward legislation and regulatory requirements across all jurisdictions, including gender pay reporting and the EU Pay Transparency Directive
- Support pay equity analysis and reporting
- Develop and maintain reward policies, governance frameworks and approval processes.
Stakeholder Management
- Provide expert reward advice to HR Business Partners, senior leaders and Finance
- Present reward insights and recommendations to senior stakeholders
- Build strong relationships with external reward survey providers and consultants.
Data & Projects
- Support reward budgeting and workforce planning
- Lead or contribute to reward transformation and continuous improvement projects
- Work closely with the Reward Analyst to provide insight-led recommendations
- Work closely with the HR systems and analytics team to ensure data accuracy.
The Reward Manager will have line management responsibility for a Reward Analyst.
Required experience
- Significant experience in compensation and reward within a professional services or corporate environment, ideally globally
- Strong knowledge of salary benchmarking methodologies
- Experience leading annual salary review processes
- Understanding of reward legislation and governance
- Advanced Excel and analytical skills
- Excellent stakeholder management and influencing skills
- Strong commercial awareness
- Experience with HR systems and reward platforms
- Knowledge of Pay Transparency legislation.
Please let us know if you require any additional support or adjustments to be made in order to submit your application to Kennedys.
*where a level of experience is indicated, this is a guideline only and represents the amount of time we would usually expect a candidate to accumulate the requisite level of experience. This does not preclude applications from candidates with more or less experience.
About Kennedys
Kennedys is a global law firm with expertise in dispute resolution and advisory services. With over 3,000 people in 45 offices across 18 countries around the world we have some of the most respected legal minds in their field.
Our lawyers handle both contentious and non-contentious matters, and provide a range of specialist legal services, for many industry sectors but we have particular expertise in litigation and dispute resolution, especially in defending insurance and liability claims.
We're a fresh-thinking firm, and we're not afraid to bring challenging new perspectives to the table way beyond the traditional realm of legal services. We empower our clients with a diverse range of ideas, tools and technology to make their lives easier, as well as delivering exceptional results, every time.
What do we have to offer?
We welcome high-performing lawyers, business services professionals, secretaries, graduates and apprentices to join our rapidly expanding global firm. Whatever your role at Kennedys, you'll be involved in exciting and stimulating work, where your input will make a difference.
Our culture and values form a big part of who we are and we take them seriously. We make a difference by being approachable, straightforward, supportive, distinctive and ambitious. Our values are at the core of who we are and what make us a great firm to work with and for.
The Firm recognises the value of investing in our people's development and believes our culture and values contribute to the quality of our work and of our client relationships. With a culture of on-the-job and experiential learning, peer to peer learning, mentoring, resources and tools that enable you to drive your career, we can support your development in your current and future roles. A variety of other opportunities are available including secondments to clients and our global offices.
We strive to celebrate diversity, empower our people and ensure everyone can bring their authentic selves to work. We've created a culture based on client service, professional excellence, hard work and trust, where diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) is a key priority. We recognise that many of our people want to work for an employer that is aligned to their values, which is why we are building an inclusive culture, decarbonising our operations and supporting our people to thrive at work. Our people are the key to driving this change and helping us to make a difference to our clients, our people and the communities in which we live and work.
Kennedys is an equal opportunities employer and is committed to ensuring our recruitment processes are as inclusive as possible. We expect all employees to be aware of and comply with all relevant policies and procedures within their jurisdiction, including those relating to Information Security, Data Protection and Quality Management, refer any breach promptly to Risk & Compliance and to complete all mandatory training when requested.
