Beth Pipe, FCIPD

This Practice Note, produced in partnership with Beth Pipe, is intended for law firms. It provides guidance on how to conduct an effective attendance review meeting.

This Practice Note, produced in partnership with Beth Pipe, explains how to develop and implement a strategy to reduce absence in your firm.

This Practice Note, written in partnership with Beth Pipe of OnLive Learning, explains the key components of talent management and how to develop a talent management strategy.

This Practice Note, produced in partnership with Beth Pipe, explains why it is important to monitor and assess absence in your firm, what legal considerations you should keep in mind when implementing absence monitoring measures and how to identify and implement, the right absence management system for your firm.

This Practice Note covers how to prepare and deliver a training course or presentation, including guidance on why it is important for any learning event to have a clear purpose, to be pitched at the right level and to avoid death by PowerPoint. It also provides tips on managing nerves and dealing with difficult delegates.

This Practice Note provides guidance on what learning needs are, identifying both individual and organisational learning needs, and how to undertake a learning needs analysis.

This Practice Note, produced in partnership with Beth Pipe, provides guidance on how to implement and conduct effective return to work interviews. The purpose of conducting return to work interviews is to ensure an employee returning after a period of absence is fully fit for work. This is especially important if the employee is still suffering from health problems or is taking medication that may have side effects you need to be aware of.

This Practice Note explains the basic concepts and key stages in improving efficiency. The definition of ‘continuous improvement’ (CI) is often over-complicated and buried in jargon, but it means exactly what it says: continually looking for ways to improve processes, methods and procedures.

This Practice Note, written for those working in the public sector, should be used at the end of the five-step process set out in the Define, Measure, Analyse, Improve, Control (DMAIC) framework for improving efficiency, and will assist with measuring the impact of any changes made and levels of success.

This Practice Note, written for those working in an in-house legal team, guides you through the first step (the define/identify stage) in the Define, Measure, Analyse, Improve, Control (DMAIC) model of continuous improvement, and highlights two different methods you can use to establish which processes need improving.

This Practice Note, written for those working in the public sector, guides you through Step 2 (the ‘measure’ stage) of the Define, Measure, Analyse, Improve, Control (DMAIC) framework for improving efficiency and explains how to measure the problem or inefficiency identified in Step 1, the ‘define’ stage.

This Practice Note, written for those working in an in-house legal team, guides you through step 3 (the ‘analyse’ stage) of the Define, Measure, Analyse, Improve, Control (DMAIC) framework for improving efficiency. This Practice Note will help you to analyse the root cause of the problem you identified in step 1 and measured in step 2 of this process.

This Practice Note, written for those working in an in-house legal team, guides you through step 4 (the ‘improve’ phase) of the Define, Measure, Analyse, Improve, Control (DMAIC) framework for improving efficiency, highlighting how applying the ‘five S model’ of sorting, simplifying, sweeping, standardising, and sustaining self discipline can help you to improve a process.

This Practice Note, written for those working in an in-house legal team, guides you through step 5 (the ‘control’ stage) of the Define, Measure, Analyse, Improve, Control (DMAIC) framework for improving efficiency, and explains how to embed a new process to overcome the problem you have previously identified, measured, analysed and improved.

This Practice Note Improving efficiency—tool selector helps you to improve efficiency at your firm by choosing the correct tool(s) to use at each stage of the 5–step improving efficiency process.

This Precedent provides a worked example of Precedent: Identifying who does what in a process (RACI framework)—blank and has been tailored for those working in local government. This Precedent is commonly known as a RACI framework. Any process will typically involve a number of people, each of whom will have a different level of responsibility. This Precedent will help you to identify who is responsible (R), who is accountable (A), who needs to be consulted (C) and who needs to be kept informed (I) in a process.

This Precedent provides a worked example of an improving efficiency business case and forms part of the supporting toolset available within the Continuous Improvement subtopic. A separate blank version of this Precedent is also available within this subtopic which can be used to prepare a business case for a project to improve efficiency in a particular area of your business.

This Precedent provides a worked example relating to a hypothetical in-house legal department that wishes to make changes to improve its contract drafting process. By using the Define, Measure, Analyse, Improve, Control (DMAIC) framework for improving efficiency, a range of solutions has been identified, including clarifying the process and reviewing how documents are stored in order to minimise the need for internal clients to call the administrative assistants to chase for information. This case study scenario looks at how to implement and embed that specific change only.

This Precedent will help you identify and deal with issues around making and implementing change across your department. It considers the different stages involved in making a change and suggests questions you should consider in relation to each one. A worked example of this Precedent is also available.

This Precedent provides a worked example of the Improving efficiency—Voice of the Customer/Client—blank precedent and demonstrates how client feedback can be used to determine the efficiency of processes. All process improvements should be geared towards improving the experience of the internal/external client, and to do that you need to understand what they want or expect from you. In continuous improvement (CI) terminology this is known as understanding the ‘Voice of the Customer/Client’ (VOC). The VOC needs to be balanced against what your team is willing and able to provide. In CI terminology this is known as the ‘Voice of the Business’ (VOB). This worked example has been tailored for those working in an in-house legal team.