George Bisnought, Founder and CEO of Excello Law, spoke to the Law Society Gazette in a feature analysing hybrid working across the legal profession.
Reporter Joanna Goodman notes in her article that many legal employers are demanding workers spend more time in the office.
This contrasts with Excello’s approach. The firm’s consultancy model has, since its foundation in 2009, given lawyers the opportunity to choose their own approach to flexible working.
Read on for George’s commentary, in full exclusively here.
Mandates vs morale benefits
Before, during and since the pandemic, we have remained consistent in our approach – putting the decision making in the hands of the lawyers themselves.
We were better prepared than most firms for Covid as almost everyone at Excello worked remotely to some extent. In the six years since, many of our partners and staff have returned to spending time in the office and we have strong attendance across our network of UK offices, but everyone is choosing to do so rather than having to complete arbitrary numbers of office days.
Mandated office days will always come with risk – from a morale standpoint in particular. The lockdown periods demonstrated that hybrid working and flexibility can be very effective and that many people are more motivated when they have a say in their working patterns. There’s no one type of lawyer that this benefits most from that approach, senior practitioners from all practice areas and backgrounds appreciate being able to work on their terms.
The culture benefits of trusting your team
We do recognise the importance of maintaining a community and culture even while more of our teams are working remotely than at many firms. Our strategy in this area is multi-faceted: we run regular events through the Excello Inspire programme to give our lawyers and staff chances to spend time together outside of a work setting. That might mean in-person socials, which we run on a region-focused basis across the UK as well as a couple of national events a year; or it might be something online, even as simple as ‘coffee roulette’ connecting lawyers and staff who’ve not worked together previously.
Tech wise we’ve also had the benefit of having built the firm around a flexible hybrid system. Clients want their legal advisers to cut overheads and be more efficient. We’ve found that far easier to adapt to without forcing our teams into the same inflexible working patterns.
A recent study by King’s College, London made the recommendation that “organisations frame flexibility as a long-term business strategy rather than a temporary perk”. This is what’s necessary for firms to succeed. The hybrid working ‘genie’ is out of the bottle and firms should be working out how to best adapt in this new world rather than trying to claw back an old one.
