Rewarding growth and contribution at MKS

The challenge

Moore Kingston Smith is a multi-disciplinary professional advisory firm, part of the Moore Global network, and London firm of leading accounting and advisory network Moore UK.

With sustainable success in mind, the firm engaged Verditer to introduce an approach to reward that is clear and transparent, process ‘lite’, and managed in line with sound governance.

“We wanted to offer an enhanced reward strategy that ensures our people are supported in achieving their aspirations by an open, scientific approach aligned with our People First principles, while rewarding personal growth and performance, and responding to the market challenges in our sector.”

Salary reviews at the firm had become administration heavy with a bottom-up approach to requesting budget.

The People Team have a busy agenda and implementing pay foundations was a new area for the growing firm. Verditer provided the help to ratify their thinking, guide where to start and support the process.

“We required a specialist that understood reward, professional services, and the nuances of a partnership.”

Our approach

Verditer interviewed key stakeholders individually, and spent time getting to know the firm, before sharing a proposed strategy for discussion with the board.

“Sam explained the rationale behind the decisions, the impact of doing things differently, and had great responses when challenged. It went down really well.”

Once the strategy and pay principles were agreed, we developed two broad and straightforward pay structures: one for Fee Earners and the other for Business Operations.

“Our leaders are required to make pay decisions for team members that reflect the complexity of our peoples’ roles, and take into account the many different ways in which they can contribute to success.”

Enabling those leaders to do this well was fundamental to the success of the project and we lead three reward webinars for People Leads. One to introduce the new reward strategy, one to support pay decisions, and one to support communication.

“The webinars were well attended, and Verditer’s credibility made them memorable.” 

In addition, we developed a bespoke salary tool to model initial pay awards. People Leads can adjust the allocations accordingly and, very importantly, keep in line with their budget.

“What Verditer did brilliantly was develop a clear plan and keep us on track with strong yet reasonable project management.”

The outcome

The firm has been introduced to the reward strategy and new approach to pay, supported by a series of animated videos on the internal intranet site.

People Leads are having open and honest conversations, equipped with the tools to help team members understand where they are on the pay range.

“Our salary review spend is well-controlled, inflation-driven pay increases are a thing of the past and our allocations are consistently applied.”