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Talent Development Business Partner

Bristol

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Are you a learning and development / talent development professional in Bristol with a proven track record both at strategic and delivery level?  Are you looking for an opportunity to own the direction of travel for talent development delivery in a seriously ambitious law firm? 

Due to our continuing growth and our people focus, we are recruiting a Talent Development Business Partner. You will report to the Executive Director of Talent Development working with key business stakeholders to shape, design and deliver our development offering for our legal teams, business support professionals and clients. Alongside your Talent Development Business Partner colleagues, you will shape our talent development programmes to drive firm strategic priorities. Among other themes, this will include design and delivery of programmes to our legal teams, supporting our lawyers to develop business, client and market impact, advisory performance and client relationship capabilities, management and leadership capabilities, as well as supporting personal career ambitions.  You will also support in upskilling business support teams with a full offering of people development programmes, designing, delivering and procuring a full offering of people development programmes to grow our legal operations capability, alongside management and personal development programmes. 

You will work alongside our legal and professional support teams to facilitate team days that drive performance and delivery of team plans, and there is scope to work on a one-to-one basis alongside individuals to support personal and / or business growth.  You will be familiar with hot topic market themes for professional service firms from the L&D perspective, and you will have scope to support the re-shaping and design of talent processes that underpin our career framework. 

We have enjoyed significant growth and success in the last 10 years reflecting our belief that our people are core to everything we do as a firm. We have invested heavily in wellbeing and continue to embrace and develop our approach to agile and flexible working, with over 30% of employees on a formal flexible agreement and a further 30% on informal arrangements, in addition to our core culture of hybrid working. We achieved the National Equality Standard at the first point of assessment, and at re-assessment, attaining the highest score to date from any law firm carrying the accreditation.  We have established clear career frameworks ensuring everyone has a progression path without glass ceilings, and we ensure everyone benefits from tailored career, business and market development plans.

If you are looking for a forward-thinking firm with the ambition to succeed, this is the perfect opportunity for you!  

What we need

This is a great opportunity to develop our people and support the design and growth of our lawyer programmes and legal operations capability, while also lending additional strength to a highly successful, fun and valued team of experienced Talent Development Business Partners. We are looking for:

  • A highly successful learning and development / talent development track record both at a strategic and delivery level, ideally with experience of law firms / professional services firms
  • Prior legal market experience is not essential. The key to success in this role is to have excellent stakeholder management skills, tailoring your approach to different individuals with the ability to deliver strategically aligned and differentiating L&D / talent programmes that meet our business and market needs
  • You will be able to spot opportunities to improve our processes, and collaboratively create new approaches which meet business and client needs
  • Commercial awareness to drive our business and market sector strategies, working with our stakeholders to build relationships, ideas and solutions. 
  • Experience of working with developing colleagues from early careers through to and including Directors and Partners will be highly valuable.

Pre-employment screening

Successful applicants will be required to complete a pre-employment screening process which includes a financial integrity check and a DBS check. If you wish to discuss any issues or questions in connection with this, please do speak in confidence with a member of the Talent Acquisition Team at [email protected]

Eligibility to work in the UK

Eligibility to work in the UK will be verified in the final stages of the selection process. All candidates must be able to prove their right to work in the UK, which may include meeting the Home office criteria for Visa sponsorship. Candidates who require sponsorship should evaluate the Home Office eligibility criteria for a Skilled Worker visa before applying and keep up to date with any legal developments.

Our offer to you

In return for your efforts, you can expect considerable scope for personal as well as professional development. We encourage people to engage with our popular and well supported coaching and mentoring programmes, which connect you to people right across the firm and at every level. We create space for mental and physical wellbeing with our weekly Lifestyle Hour, 28 days annual leave, a day off for your birthday, and a sabbatical you can take every 5 years. You can also buy holiday and manage your benefits flexibly using our sophisticated portal to configure your total reward offer according to what you value most. As part of this, you can make ongoing or one-off donations to our charitable foundation and access our CSR programme where you can engage with community-based initiatives (as a team, or individually) twice a year, to give something back where you feel it matters. Take a look here to find out more about Our benefits | Foot Anstey.

Why Foot Anstey?

As one of the UK’s fastest growing law firms, Foot Anstey believes in helping our clients and people achieve their ambitions, unlocking new and exciting opportunities. Our team of business and legal advisors are motivated by understanding clients’ goals and collaborating with them and other advisers to deliver solutions.  By becoming our clients’ most trusted advisor, we are enabling them to achieve their ambitions. How we do it is just as important as what we do. Our values define the way we act with our clients and one another every day, and because of these we think our culture and environment sets us apart.

Over our history we’ve grown from a high-street firm to a significant regional and national player working with leading brands and individuals predominantly across six key sectors: Private Equity, Retail & Consumer, Energy & Infrastructure, Islamic Finance, Developers and Private Wealth. Our strategy of gaining market share through meeting clients’ needs, investing in and developing high quality talent and using technology and innovation to enhance our services has led to significant growth. We now operate from seven locations with offices in Truro, Plymouth, Exeter, Taunton, Bristol, Southampton, and London. 

Our people are central to our success, in every part of the business. We actively support our employees to achieve their aspirations through offering meaningful careers with balanced rewards, which have been carefully designed to focus on personal wellbeing. We offer continual opportunities for support and professional development through our Talent Development programme and Digital Skills Academy, and believe in empowering each other to achieve and strive to create a progressive and inclusive working environment. 

Creating a diverse and inclusive workplace is integral to delivering our strategy, and we were delighted to be awarded the National Equality Standard for a second time in 2021.  We consider this to be right at the heart of our priorities and goes way beyond our policies – it’s something we consider across everything we do, from the make-up of our client teams, encouraging staff to reach their potential, through to our leadership. We aim to support our clients and our people to achieve their goals, regardless of background, gender, race, beliefs, sexuality or other non-work related factors. We champion aspiration and encourage it in everyone that works with us.  As such we actively encourage applications from all suitably qualified people, regardless of any characteristics protected by law. If you apply for this role you may be encouraged to answer our diversity and social mobility monitoring questions, so please be reassured that any answers you provide will remain entirely anonymous and confidential and will in no way impact your application.

Foot Anstey. Powering Your Ambition.

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The Equality Act 2010 generally defines a disabled person as someone who has a mental or physical impairment that has a substantial and long-term adverse effect on the person's ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities.

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