Articles From the Team
Lockdown and New Beginnings…
Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, one of the biggest challenges for businesses (especially law firms and recruitment businesses that are so client facing) has been to find new ways of operating, to ensure employees, clients and customers are provided with services in the safest possible way. It's been a real juggling act for many businesses in ensuring the right balance of face time with staff to maintain engagement levels, but it has led to a new way of thinking for many businesses.
Almost every industry has been impacted in some way; with office-based employees being urged to work from home under the lockdown restrictions. This meant that there was an increased reliability on online solutions to facilitate communication that would usually take place face-to-face. Zoom and Microsoft Teams have become our new best friend, keeping us all connected and feeling part of the world and allowing us to keep in touch and still feel part of a team. Most of the firms we speak to are finding this new way of working a breath of fresh air and are actually getting really good results from staff now working more independently.
This change has been necessary to keep people safe and ensure the wheels of the business keep turning, albeit in a totally different way!
This pandemic has kick started a totally new way of working for the legal industry and it will probably continue to work in this way moving forward, with agile hydrid models taking over. Most of the larger law firms have now confirmed a 20% office based split to 80% home working.
Most firms are now happy with the models that have emerged over lockdown... Staff seem to have a better balance with home life and are actually enjoying jobs that maybe 12 months ago they would have been looking to move away from . This is a massive change from even 12 months ago!
I think lockdown has moved away from quite old fashioned draconian theories of having to be constantly supervised and needing to be sat in the office 24/7. Most are accepting that good team members can he trusted to work, bill chargeable hours and get the job done.
We have seen a massive shift in attitude and it seems this new movement towards flexibility and true autonomy has been one very positive change to come out of the pandemic.