9. Five Ways Law Firms Can Become More Fulfilling and Flexible Workplaces
BY
Steve Glaveski
The move to better ways of work is desperately needed. Gallup reported that 85 percent of people globally are either disengaged or not engaged at work. These numbers are echoed by miserable workplace stress statistics. In Australia, 46 percent of people find their workplace mentally unhealthy.
These figures are nothing short of tragic when we consider that people are spending about half of their waking hours at work for almost their entire adult lives. Both workplace stress and a lack of engagement are chiefly attributable to an excessive workload, people issues, work-life balance conflicts, and a lack of autonomy.
And conflicts grew worse during the pandemic, where remote workforces reported working longer hours than before. This is ample evidence that simply telling people to work wherever they like isn’t going to address the systemic factors causing workplace stress.
Fortunately, these driving factors can be positively influenced not by making grand pronouncements that don’t take account of the realities of the existing workplace culture, but by actively changing how work gets done.
If you’re serious about giving your lawyers and back office staff flexibility at work and fulfillment from it (and driving the bottom line as a result), then consider redesigning how work gets done in the following ways.
The move to better ways of work is desperately needed. Gallup reported that 85 percent of people globally are either disengaged or not engaged at work. These numbers are echoed by miserable workplace stress statistics. In Australia, 46 percent of people find their workplace mentally unhealthy.
These figures are nothing short of tragic when we consider that people are spending about half of their waking hours at work for almost their entire adult lives. Both workplace stress and a lack of engagement are chiefly attributable to an excessive workload, people issues, work-life balance conflicts, and a lack of autonomy.
And conflicts grew worse during the pandemic, where remote workforces reported working longer hours than before. This is ample evidence that simply telling people to work wherever they like isn’t going to address the systemic factors causing workplace stress.
Fortunately, these driving factors can be positively influenced not by making grand pronouncements that don’t take account of the realities of the existing workplace culture, but by actively changing how work gets done.
If you’re serious about giving your lawyers and back office staff flexibility at work and fulfillment from it (and driving the bottom line as a result), then consider redesigning how work gets done in the following ways.
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about the author
Steve Glaveski is a Harvard Business Review contributor on all things high-performance at work. He is the author of Employee to Entrepreneur (Wiley, 2019), and co-founder of Collective Campus, the boutique consultancy behind NewLaw Academy that has generated millions of dollars selling discretionary services to many of the biggest organizations in the world - without the benefit of an established brand,pre-existing relationships, a corporate card, or a large team. Steve previously consulted to the likes of King & Wood Mallesons, Mills Oakley, and Cornwalls, and worked in consulting for EY and KPMG.
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