Winning legal talent by offering flexibility

Winning legal talent by offering flexibility

In a candidate tight market, the ability to stand out from the employer crowd has never been more important. Offering flexibility can give your firm a competitive advantage. We discuss flexible work options and how to implement them in your workplace.

Embracing flexibility helps to engage and retain top talent, increases staff productivity and reduces absenteeism and staff turnover. It is very helpful in becoming an Employer of Choice!

Lawyers are known for working long hours and having high stress levels. This also means that maintaining their mental health and family relationships can be a challenge. Added to that is the fact that high end clients often expect their lawyer to be on call 24/7. This adds up to make the Legal Industry an often challenging career choice. Work life balance in the past has often been exchanged for moving up the career ladder.

The 2020 pandemic changed all of this, and flexibility is now among the top priorities for employees and job seekers.

What flexible working options are possible?

• Job sharing – this is often of interest to lawyers who don’t want to deal with less interesting work that 'part time' employment sometimes entails.
• Flexible hours e.g. early start to avoid the morning traffic
• Flexible working patterns e.g. Doing a 9 day fortnight, or working 38 hours over 4 days
• Purchased leave opportunities i.e. taking 48 weeks’ pay a year in order to have an additional 4 weeks’ leave
• Remote or work from home options

How can your firm help break the mould?

Once you have decided to explore the potential for offering flexible working arrangements to your staff, there can be some challenges to put your ideas into action. How exactly do you change a culture of staying at your desk until the boss has left for the day?

We suggest trying the following:

Role model it

Employees can be concerned they are appearing to do less if they are not seen at their desks at all hours of the day or night.

Senior Managers, Partners, Practice Managers all role modelling flexibility can help overcome this perception.

Open communications

It is vital to ensure an employee on flexible arrangements is still client focused. This means that expectations need to be clear from the outset. Your team member needs to understand that sometimes there may be a need to work longer hours. This may be due to a particularly challenging matter or litigation. In some cases flexibility will need to work both ways to work for both the employee and the firm.

An employee working flexible hours will still understand the need to meet deadlines.

An employee who has flexible working arrangements should make sure they are well known to their team and their client base.

Advertise it

Communicate your flexible work arrangements to both existing and potential future employees by clearly outlining your flexible work options. This includes your firm's:-

• Workplace policies
• Employee Value Proposition
• Position descriptions
• Intranet
• Website

What’s in it for your company?

There are many positive outcomes for a firm when it comes to offering flexibility to its workforce.

These include:

• Reduced wages bill – pro rata
• Increased productivity
• Increased staff engagement
• Reduced staff turnover
• Appearing attractive to talented potential employees

We understand that flexibility also serves up challenges to people leaders. Keeping in touch with a team member who works part of the week remotely or just part of the week can be challenging. Luckily, technology has assisted with this via applications like online meetings and workflow tools. Good two way communication really is the key.

Flexible working arrangements are not just for parents. We have seen flexibility used to give work life balance to people at all stages of life. This might include those who want to volunteer, care for aging parents or even just pursue interests outside the law.

Have you explored the potential for offering flexibility to your employees?

Legal People is your gateway to the best legal career opportunities. If you are looking for a new role in the Legal Industry in Melbourne, then let’s talk!

We are specialists in the Legal Industry and recruit Lawyers, Support staff and HR professionals. If you enjoyed reading this article, you can follow our Company Page on LinkedIn for regular updates.

Further reading:

• Legal People’s guide to a compelling Employee Value Proposition
• Hiring managers: writing a compelling position description