Prior to Covid, we already had some home working but like everyone else, we ramped this up significantly during the pandemic. Some law firms are now requesting staff to go back to the office, but after discussions with team members, we have retained and developed the ‘wfh’ culture, which fits in well with our flexible approach to working practices.
Numbers
67% of our Court of Protection lawyers and case workers work from home 3 or 4 days per week (those that work more days in the office have chosen to do so).
71% of our support team work from home 2 or 3 days per week – more time in the office is needed to cover ‘hands on’ tasks, including looking after clients who visit our offices and managing paper correspondence.
33% of our employees are part-time (including 43% of our support teams).
Consultation with employees
We regularly survey our teams, to seek to understand what is important to employees in working practices and wfh. These are followed up with individual discussions which allow us to arrive at wfh arrangements that balance office cover, client service, supervision and training, with work life balance and saving money and time on travel to the office.
Support for those wfh
Communication and supervision
New employees will spend more time in the office when they first join us, getting to know colleagues and learning about their role before settling into working more days from home.
Everyone in the firm is asked to work in the office a minimum of one day per week. This enables us to talk face to face, check employees are ok, supervise and delegate work, ask questions and socialize. We have a small number of support roles which need to be entirely office based.
Once a month, each team comes into the office on the same day in ‘Teams week’, with the firm subsidizing regular team lunches on that day.
Everyone has a direct named supervisor or manager who will keep in touch and provide support.
We have a firmwide monthly meeting on Teams, to keep everyone up to date with how the firm is doing, news and developments.