Benefits Manager

Kennedys is seeking a Benefits Manager to join our global HR team, based in either our Chelmsford or London office.

The Benefits Manager will play a key role in shaping and delivering our global benefits strategy, ensuring our offering remains competitive, market aligned and supports the wellbeing, engagement and retention of our people. Working closely with HR, Finance, leadership and external providers, the role will oversee benefit design, vendor management, employee communications and continuous improvement initiatives across the firm.

Reporting to the Global Head of Reward, the Benefits Manager will ensure our benefits offering continues to enhance our employee value proposition and reflects the needs of our diverse global workforce. This is an exciting opportunity to influence and evolve our approach to benefits within a growing global law firm, while contributing to wider reward initiatives aligned to our firm-wide strategy.

At Kennedys, we recognise the importance of flexibility and offer a hybrid working approach, enabling our people to balance time between home and the office in a way that supports individual needs, collaboration 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

Benefits Strategy

• Design and manage the firms global benefit programme and road map, ensuring alignment with the firm global strategy
• Review and enhance benefit offerings to remain competitive in local markets, working closely with regional HR teams
• Align benefit offering with the firm's global strategy and wellbeing objectives.

Benefits Management

• Manage and build positive relationships with benefit providers and global benefit broker
• Lead on annual benefit renewals and contract negotiations
• Oversee benefit implementation and ongoing administration
• Monitor benefit utilisation and employee feedback, suggesting areas for improvement and development.

Governance & Compliance

• Ensure benefits comply with local legislation and governance requirements
• Develop and maintain benefits policies and procedures, working closely with the HR Operations team
• Manage benefits budgets and monitor expenditure, liaising with finance on a regular basis.

Employee Experience

• Develop engaging benefits communications, increasing employee understanding and utilisation of available benefits
• Support with complex benefit enquiries.

Projects

• Lead and contribute to global benefits harmonisation projects
• Evaluate new benefits and technologies, recommending enhancements to current offerings to management
• Drive continuous improvement across benefits administration and delivery.

The Benefits Manager will have line management responsibility for two Reward Administrators.

Required experience

• Demonstrable experience managing employee benefits within a large professional services organisation, ideally on a global scale
• Knowledge of benefit design and market practice
• Experience managing third-party providers
• Strong project management skills
• Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills
• Commercial and financial awareness
• Knowledge of global mobility and international benefits.

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 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 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.

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