How can interim recruitment level up your resourcing strategy?

What is a resourcing strategy?

Resourcing strategy - it’s always high on the agenda for a law firm, but what does it really mean, and what does it consist of? CIPD defines a resourcing strategy as ‘the attraction and recruitment of individuals into the right role at the right time and cost.’ How you curate a resourcing strategy can depend on your organisation's goals and how it will tie into achieving them.

Often within a law firm setting, the focus metrics are around cost and efficiency. How can you most effectively deliver your client’s work at the lowest possible cost, and how can you manage cost more widely across the firm itself? Over the recent years, particularly since the COVID pandemic, firms are opting for leaner teams so they are less tied into retaining a large permanent headcount in less busy periods. But what does that mean for periods of increased workload? How do you scale your team but without the commitment? With the introduction of interim staffing in tandem with traditional permanent sourcing, you are better able to hire roles at the right cost, at the right moment and in line with your firm’s strategic goals.

Timing of hires and over/understaffing

Timing-wise, it is important to only hire permanent employees when you know that there is a baseline level of work they will be used for at any given point during the year. If you do not factor this in, you will end up with a number of permanent employees who are underutilised. In a world where lawyers bill by the hour and will have higher salaries than the national average, this can be a huge cost to the business when they are not making money. Interim recruitment can help you make sure your team is staffed to the correct level and you are only making permanent hires when absolutely necessary.

Litigation is an area that lends itself particularly well to employing the interim recruitment model for busier periods. The work is often lumpy and hard to predict, which means that you can go from being a manageable level of busy, to all hands on deck. You want to be able to take on the larger pieces of work, but equally you don’t want to pay for permanent heads when there are periods of downtime. Using a provider such as Flex Legal to scale up your team quickly can be a fantastic way to increase your capacity at speed, with the flexibility to scale back down when the project is finished.

Reduction in time to hire

This ties into another benefit to using interim recruitment as part of your resourcing strategy - the vast reduction in time to hire. You likely are not going to have the luxury of time to spend months sourcing for a permanent role and then waiting for a notice period to hire someone when a large piece of work comes down the pipeline. So, what do you do? Do you turn down the opportunity? If you utilise interim staffing you can easily say yes to the work that comes your way, working with a supplier such as Flex Legal to scale your team up quickly and efficiently.

Employee retention

Interim recruitment into your team can also help with the retention of the employees that you already have. For example, if your associates are spending a lot of time on increased levels of paralegal work, an interim paralegal would be able to pick some of this up and the associates can focus on their normal work. Employees can often get frustrated if they are not able to do the work they have been trained for. Ensuring they have the correct support and can delegate non-fee earning tasks will help with job satisfaction and retention of your most valuable permanent staff members. In addition to this, in busier periods, rather than making your current team take on the burden of working very long extended hours (in some cases leading to burnout), why not hire an interim lawyer to help with the work and then end their contract when that work has finished? In the long term you will have happier, better utilised employees.

How can interim recruitment level up your resourcing strategy?

So why does interim recruitment help to level up your resourcing strategy? The key is being receptive to a different way of thinking, working and managing costs. You can’t have a resourcing strategy that only focuses on one type of recruitment, because it won’t always be the best possible solution to your firm’s strategic goals. Interim recruitment can enable your firm to take on the same level of work (or more!), but then manage costs more effectively in those quiet periods. You can combine it with permanent recruitment to ensure that you are putting permanent employees in the right parts of the business, and supplementing other areas with interim staff where you know that the need for more people will be short term. You can become a business that looks deeper into your workforce allocation, minimising periods of under or overstaffing and working in the most efficient and cost-effective way possible.

Interested in hearing more, or want to discuss how interim recruitment could tie into your resourcing strategy? Book a call with us.