CONTENTS
INTRODUCING KENDO TALENT
Kendo is people and performance platform that has several modules covering developing and executing plans (Plan+Do), corporate governance (Governance) and talent management (Talent). The firm has decided to implement just Kendo Talent and the diagram below shows the major processes and the specific features within each process.
We’ll introduce each of the five processes as we take you on the Kendo journey. There’ll be lots of guidance and support so don’t worry about it – we will have a guide to help you at all times.
Completing your Role and Responsibilities
Your first step is to complete the description of your Role and Responsibilities. Some of this has been pre-populated, but you will need to add the more specific individual details. In addition to loading information about Roles and Responsibilities we have uploaded targets for fee earners as Objectives.
In the old system, your Job Description contained most of this information, but now is a good opportunity to update, refresh and put more structure around this. When completing your Role and Responsibilities, you may find it useful to refer to your JD and even copy and paste from it if you want to.
One significant change is the introduction of a system of Role Levels which run from level 1 as new starter to level 6 which is the most senior role in the firm. The firm has assessed your current level and this has been pre-populated so when you log on, your level is already set. Role Levels are important as Kendo sets the skills to the Level you are at in your career. This will allow you to identify areas you can focus on for your own development – but that is in the next process (Career Plan).
Now is the time to log in and start your journey with Kendo. Please click here (you will need your username and password).
When you log in, you will see what teams you are in. These have been pre-populated from the firm’s organisation structure but if they need to be updated please contact Jane McKinlay in HR.
After this you will land on a dashboard which is your Kendo home page. This is where the Announcements tile is located and the link to this document can be found. You can look at your dashboard in more detail when your account in Kendo is populated.
Follow the steps below and use the help files as they are very practical and will help you. In this document we have provided links to the relevant section of this Getting Started Guide.
Step 1 : Purpose of the ROLE
Describe the Purpose of your Role. Your current title has been pre-populated.
Help Guide link: Purpose
STEP 2 : Experience
What is your work Experience relevant to this role? There are four categories you can enter your experience into. Describe the type of experience you have, not where you obtained it. (e.g. three years in family law or four years secretarial experience).
Help Guide link: Experience
Step 3: Technical Skills
Select the Technical Skills tab and look at the drop down list of legal skills for Parkinson Wight. Select the technical skills you or if you need to add a missing skill, ask your administrator (Jane McKinlay) to add it. Kendo will automatically pre-populate the level required for each selected skill and your manager will reviews this. This establishes the skills you need for your role. In the next process, you will be asked to assess your actual level of each of these skills.
Help Guide link: Technical Skills
Step 4: Behavioural Skills
Behavioural skills (sometimes called soft skills) – We’ve preset the 6 most important soft skills for your role level so you do not need to do anything here. In the next step you will be asked to assess your level of capability for each of these.
Help Guide link: Behavioural Skills
Step 5: Responsibilities
This is a big section that sometimes requires transferring quite a lot of information from your Job Description into Kendo. Kendo brings more order to responsibilities by creating Responsibility Groups which you can see when you go to this tab. These are listed below with some examples of what might fit under each Group. It is important to assess how well you have performed in key responsibilities by measuring progress. You can do this by making your key responsibilities measurable. Here are the Groups and some examples:
Client Care Standards
- Remain familiar with the code of practice and to observe the code in all dealings on behalf of the firm.
- Remain familiar with the firm’s requirements as to Client Care and quality standards and to implement these, particularly with regard to the Solicitors Code of Conduct i.e. Client Care letters to include implementation of standard letters for all aspects of family law i.e. divorce, Ancillary Relief, Children Act Proceedings.
Marketing
- Get 6 internal referrals this year
- Write 2 blogs per quarter for the firm’s web site
Personal Professional Expertise
- Maintain and develop general expertise in family law and the requirements of the Legal Services Commission
Productivity
There are several things that get regularly measured in the firm. Some of these have targets set and the CFO sends out results each month. Where targets have been set, these have been pre-loaded into Kendo as Objectives. If you have a target set by the firm or your department, it is better to set these as an Objective rather than a Productivity Responsibility.
The Productivity Group is good for general productivity targets or for items that are very specific to a department or partner. These should be measured but they don’t have to be.
- Have billable hours of 75% of available time
Professional Service Activities
- Handle aspects of family law: Divorce
- Handle aspects of family law: Financial ancillary relief
- Handle aspects of family law: TOLATA
Professional Services
- Attend client meetings and take briefs
- Close files and render bills
Training
- Develop Microsoft Office skills
- Attend an AML training course
General Responsibilities
- This is for all purpose responsibilities or those that might be specific to a department, partner or role.
Measuring Responsibilities
If you mark a Responsibility for measurement you will need to set targets or milestones so there is something to measure progress against. Here are some examples
- For a non-fee earner, the marketing responsibility might be to ‘organise an event’ and milestones could be to:
- complete specific activities by certain dates (ie book location by 1 June
- confirm content and speakers by 1 July
- send out invitations by 1 August and so on).
- For fee earners, there could be a marketing responsibility to ‘follow up with all attendees’ at the event your department organised:
- contact at least 90% of attendees
- organise a meeting with 35% of attendees
- identify a future fee earning opportunity with 10% of attendees
You may not know all of your responsibilities, but complete what you do know. Your manager (Partner) can also add to your responsibilities. One of the core principles in Kendo is to get agreement on all Roles, Responsibilities and objectives. Which leads to our next step.
Help Guide link: Responsibilities
Step 6: Agreement as the Individual
Responsibilities are always agreed to between an individual and their manager. Once you have completed as much as you can with your Responsibilities, send these to your manager for agreement by clicking “Submit”. If you have not finished, you can save what you have done as a draft as a draft and come back to it when you are ready. When submitted, your manager can edit and discuss any changes with you. This negotiation can occur within Kendo or you can have a face to face meeting and record the agreed outcome in Kendo. Reaching agreement is the critical thing – how you do it is up to you.
If you have a target it will appear as an Objective proposed for you and you will need to agree to it, or have a discussion with whoever has proposed it for you on what you would counter propose.
Step 7: Agreement as the ManageR
As the manager of one or more people a number of items are going to come your way for review and agreement. This is not meant to be just accept and agree. This is your opportunity to help define what you people are meant to be doing for you, the team and your clients. Here is our advice for each item that you will be asked to agree to:
Purpose of the Role – make sure this is a simple statement of what the individual’s job is.
Experience – this should be factual and it is a matter of record
Technical Skills – Each technical skill will be pre-populated with a technical level which would be reasonably expected for the Role Level of the individual. As Manager you can change the required skill level either up or down if you feel this is warranted. Remember, you are not scoring the individual’s skill level but rather this Role should have a certain level of that skill.
Behavioural Skills – these have been pre-populated and should not be changed for now. Once everyone has completed their Behavioural Skills and Technical Skill Kendo will show a Talent Profile for each person and from this people can develop Career Plan.
Responsibilities – we have tried to bring some structure to these which previously were covered by the Job Description in a single long list of what people had to do. This is an opportunity to convert your departmental plan, or team plan into an execution plan. There are many groups, some of which cover the “normal must haves” but there is an opportunity to provide more definition on what you want you people to be doing, and then to measure progress (and see where things fall down. It might be good to revisit this with your team and assign your plans into responsibilities for each person in the team.
Objectives – where target has been pre-populated by the CFO you will get a notification but you do not need to agree these. This will be done by Ron as CFO. This has been done this way so we can set up targets and in the future upload monthly actuals.
WHAT’S NEXT
It is important we get the Roles and Responsibilities information uploaded and agreed. Once this has been done (and Kendo will give you a “nudge” if you are running late), we will move to the next process which involves assessing your technical skill and behavioural skills to develop your Skills Profile and then some goals for your Career Plan. It doesn’t matter if you are a fee earner or part of the team that supports fee earners, you should have a Career Plan that provides a pathway for you to improve your skills, stay up to date in a fast moving world, enjoy your work more and do more meaningful work.
You will be advised when we move to the next stage of onboarding by HR and the Announcements tile on your dashboard.
Please look out for emails from your HR team detailing Kendo workshops and help sessions.
Finally, here is your get out of jail card. Read the guides and enter what information you can but if you get stuck (or have “messed up” something) please contact askaguide@thekendoway.com and if you can take a screen shot we can help you more quickly.