Crisis situations tend to be significant drivers of long term change. The scale of the crisis we are all currently living through simultaneously across the globe will drive substantial long term change to the way companies think about HR and talent acquisition.
Before I introduce my guest this week, I wanted to point you in the direction of an excellent whitepaper that my good friends at Calgary Communications have produced. While it is challenging to predict the future, the whitepaper looks at the potential long term impact of the pandemic on employer branding in the context of change that has been driven by previous global crises.
Continuing this theme of long term change my guest this week is Martin Glover, HR Director of Scottish legal firm Morton Fraser. In our conversation, we talk about the impact the pandemic is having on the legal industry and what the long term implications are likely to be for communication, HR and talent acquisition.
In the interview, we discuss:
- The challenges of moving from 3 office locations to nearly 300
- Communication, Connection and Culture
- The importance of a strategic approach to wellbeing
- How the legal industry is having to change the way it operates
- How the previously impossible becomes the new normal
- The future for recruiting technology
Calgary Communications Whitepaper
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Transcript:
Matt Alder [00:00:00]:
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Matt Alder [00:00:50]:
Hi everyone, this is Matt Alder. Welcome to episode 258 of of the Recruiting Future podcast. Crisis situations tend to be significant drivers of long term change the scale of the crisis we’re currently living through simultaneously across the globe is going to drive substantial long term change to the way that companies think about HR and talent acquisition. Before I introduce my guest this week, I wanted to point you in the direction of an excellent white paper that my good friends at Calgary Communications have produced. While it’s challenging to predict the future, the white paper looks at the potential long term impact of the pandemic on employer branding in the context of change that’s been driven by previous global crisis. You can download the white paper for free at www.calgarycommunications.co.uk whitepaper and I’ll put that link in the show notes. Continuing this theme of long term change, my guest this week is Martin Glover, HR Director of Scottish legal firm Morton Fraser. In our conversation we discuss the impact the pandemic is having on the legal industry and what the long term implications are likely to be for communication, HR and talent acquisition. Hi Martin and welcome to the podcast. Hi Matt, a pleasure to have you on the show. Could you just introduce yourself and tell us what you do?
Martin Glover [00:02:26]:
Yeah, My name’s Martin Glover and I’m the Human Resources Director at Morton Fraser LLP is a law firm in East Central Scotland.
Matt Alder [00:02:37]:
Could you sort of tell us a little bit more about the law firm and the size of the organization and those kind of things?
Martin Glover [00:02:43]:
Yeah, of course. So we are what would probably be called a medium sized law firm. We employ 237 paid staff and we have 50 partners and we cover really all aspects of the law. So everything you would find in a larger law firm, but we’re just slightly smaller in size.
Matt Alder [00:03:08]:
We’re sort of discussing how you and your organization has had to respond to the crisis that’s being caused by the pandemic. Tell us about the initial impact, what happened when Scotland got locked down? What was the initial impact for your company and your team?
Martin Glover [00:03:24]:
Well, I guess the initial impact is that we went from an organization of two offices, Edinburgh, Glasgow, a touchdown base in London, to one that practically overnight and certainly within a week had just under 300 offices. So that sense of being all together in a couple of places rapidly within a week meant that we were no longer together and we were in almost 300 different places almost at once. And I guess when I can reflect on that, what’s interesting about that is all of the things that hitherto law firms in general had found difficult, that is, working from home and not being together all of a sudden was kind of forced upon us. And literally overnight, there we were for us, in 300 different places. And almost, I mean, I slightly hesitate to say this, the ease with which or the relative ease with which was achieved was for me nothing short of remarkable. And this was people pulling together on the executive team on IT and all the support services to kind of make that happen. And it almost seems easy now to kind of say that’s where we are. But at the time, that required extraordinary effort on the part of a number of people to kind of make that happen. But happen it did. And it happened, as I say, within a very short period of time.
Matt Alder [00:05:09]:
What were the kind of the biggest challenges in that kind of massive and very fast shift?
Martin Glover [00:05:15]:
Well, the biggest challenge, I guess, was will the technology work? And that’s always the fear, because we were an organization that already had agile working in place. We were used to people working from home, working from places that weren’t home service and kind of client needs. And that’s fine when 10, 15, 20% of the workforce at any one time was working remotely. But of course, having 300 people relying on the systems that maybe 20, 30, 40 people relied on is quite a different kind of challenge, really. So the biggest challenge for us was will the technology work? And beyond that, do people even have the technology to enable them to work remotely? So the challenge beyond the technical will this work when I log in at home was do we have enough computers for people to laptops for people to work at home? And how are we going to get those? And when the rest of the world is trying to procure the same kind of kit as you’re doing? That certainly presented some challenges for us right at the beginning. But the technology, the availability of the technology, the technology being able to work, I think in the beginning were some of the biggest challenges for us.
Matt Alder [00:06:40]:
And what’s the impact been from an HR perspective? What have the HR challenges been so far?
Martin Glover [00:06:46]:
So, you know, it’s all fine talking about the kind of technology, but people, I guess were, I guess concerned in the beginning. So what did this mean for them? What was expected of them now being almost forced to kind of work from home, what would that feel like? Did they have a desk they could sit up? Did they have a space they could use? What about the interruptions from kind of family who were now also in many cases kind of working from home? And these became the kind of real life kind of concerns of people. I don’t have enough equipment, I don’t have the right equipment. I’m not sure I’ve got a comfortable chair. So there’s all these kind of health concerns, concerns, well being concerns. And the more and more we’re in lockdown, I guess some of the challenges are for that sense of kind of staying connected. Much easy to do, much easier to do when you’re in a physical location where you’re having conversations over the coffee machine or the water cooler or where you can kind of casually bump into people as you walk around the office. So this sense of remoteness and the potential for disconnection are some of the people issues that we are kind of facing. And also how do you keep people focused on what matters? When people are thinking all the time about because they’re consuming the news, what will happen to my job? Will I have a job? You know, so those are some of the kind of things that kind of occupy us in HR every day.
Matt Alder [00:08:30]:
From a communication perspective, how different is it communicating with the company now that everyone’s remote? And what have you sort of learned about that in this, in this still relatively short period of time?
Martin Glover [00:08:44]:
I’m kind of glad you asked me that because if you’d asked me that maybe a couple of weeks ago, I would have been more worried, more concerned about that. But at the executive team, we were discussing this issue and what should we do as an executive team to make sure people were more connected? And I was just checking in with the exec team on what was happening because right at the start, one of the things HR did was to provide a kind of hints and tips document for how you could actually stay connected, how you could look after your well being, all those sorts of good things that you would expect an HR team to do. But the feedback was interestingly, or the summation of that kind of feedback was we think people are talking more now being in a kind of distributed setup than they were in the office and I’m saying, well, tell me about that. And actually the need to be more connected is more obvious when you’re kind of working and you’re not sitting over the desk or over the aisle from some of your colleagues. So that need to feel and be more present is much, much more evident. So what you’re finding is in terms of the formal communications, people are set on virtual conference calls now almost daily. So this is replacing the kind of people coming into the office in the morning where you maybe have a huddle and you talk about what’s on and all of that kind of thing. So that’s now replaced with kind of video conferencing, much more kind of structured and everybody’s there and perhaps even more people are kind of present at those things. And then equally the kind of social types of things that kind of go on in the communication space now with people on WhatsApp groups talking about stuff that’s got nothing to do with work. So actually checking in with each other on how they’re doing, just at a very, very kind of personal level. In fact, one of the kind of informal rules we have for WhatsApp groups in teams is that we don’t, we don’t talk about work, we just talk about how we are. And I think that’s very much part of the culture of just what it’s like to work at. Morton Fraser we do have a concern for each other on a kind of basic human level. That’s kind of one of the nice things about our culture, I guess, fantastic stuff.
Matt Alder [00:11:27]:
Is there anything else that you’re doing to maintain the culture during this sort of very challenging.
Martin Glover [00:11:34]:
Well, I mentioned well being there and that is something that does kind of play to one of the real kind of core tenets of our culture. So one of the things we are currently doing with one of our providers, part of our well being strategy, is developing a whole approach to well being that our whole entire distributed workforce now can participate in. So that looks at well being in the rounds. So it looks at things like movement, physical exercise, it looks at things like healthy body, healthy eating, sleeping habits. And we are working with this provider to create a kind of half day of content. So kind of like three one hour sessions, four one hour sessions for our distributed staff workforce to kind of consume as a way of saying, look, we’re still here, we care and here is something that we can give to you at a time when we can’t be together as a way of kind of really saying, look, we’ve got your back. And you know, we want to do something that just shows that that’s, you know, that these kind of things matter to us.
Matt Alder [00:12:52]:
And is there anything that’s a unique challenge because the type of business that you are, I mean, what challenges does this pose to you as a law firm?
Martin Glover [00:13:03]:
Yeah, well, it’s a very personal business, isn’t it, administering kind of legal. Because it requires clients and it requires us to kind of give advice. So the lack of, or the inability to kind of forge those relationships in a very, very personal way, which involves looking someone in the eye, shaking their hand, getting to know them on a very kind of personal level, that’s a challenge now because, you know, if we’re receiving new instructions, the way of kind of building a relationship, relationship, we’re human beings is to have those types of interactions. So now that’s much more difficult. So the first time we may meet a client who’s not a pre existing client is over a video call or perhaps even only over a telephone call. Because some of our clients, particularly in the private client division who are coming to us, maybe elderly, so quite difficult to kind of, and maybe unsure, might be deeply concerned, some very kind of personal issues that they might need to talk about. That’s quite hard to do when you’re not able to see someone face to face. And you know, our clients take a lot of reassurance through the initial meeting that they will have, you know, with a lawyer. So that’s a challenge to get them to a place where they feel comfortable doing business with someone that they haven’t met. I think for other clients where we’ve previously met them and we’ve serviced their needs, particularly corporate clients, it’s easier to do. And actually this is a way where we might conduct business differently or additionally kind of going forward through these kind of means that we’re now forced to use. But for kind of individual client relationships. I think that that’s, that’s been a, that’s been quite a, quite a challenge for us and probably more of a challenge for the clients themselves than, than for us. But it’s something that, you know, as lawyers, the lawyering teams are very, very aware of.
Matt Alder [00:15:22]:
Absolutely. And we’ll come back and talk a little bit about the future implications of all of this in a minute. We’re recording this on the afternoon of the 8th of April. Almost certainly the Scotland and the UK are going to continue to be locked down for a number of weeks to come. No one really knows quite how long this might last. Now you Go over the kind of the initial stages of getting everyone set up from home and working out how you can be business as usual, as much as that’s possible. And you also mentioned the wellbeing initiative that you’re putting in place. What else is in your sort of medium term, medium term plan? What’s your sort of focus for the next few weeks of all of this?
Martin Glover [00:16:06]:
Well, I think our focus is about, you know, for our people, is about saying now that we’ve kind of got over the initial stages, you’re quite right, is remembering what we are in business to do, you know, as a law firm and, you know, ensuring that we continue to deliver the sorts of service for which, you know, we’re famous and why people kind of come to us in, in the first place. And in the same way as lots of organizations are doing with us, how can we continue to add value to our clients given that they’ll be going through difficult times at the moment? And what can we give to them as a way of, you know, really, I guess, signaling to them that we’re kind of in this together? Because at the end of the day, you know, we’re a business. This is a very difficult time for us economically as an organization. It’s a very difficult time for the legal industry as a set of organizations and it’s very difficult for the country as a whole. So we need to maintain our focus on actually how are we going to come out of this, how are we going to be match fitness when this period of lockdown comes to an end, as it surely will. So beyond looking at service delivery to clients, beyond looking at our balance sheet, beyond looking at the additional value, it’s about now kind of looking to the future and saying, what is this? And I don’t have the answer. But actually these are some of the things we’ll get into in the kind of days and weeks ahead is what does this mean for our service and our service delivery model going forward, what will the world look like? But one thing is for sure, some of the things that we’ve never ever done in the past and because of necessity we will be doing in the future. So the way that we service clients, in fact the reach that we have now is from being a kind of Scottish law firm is far beyond any Edinburgh and Glasgow. So our ability to kind of service clients in the far flung reaches of the world, I think is one of the opportunities that we would have potentially kind of coming out of this.
Matt Alder [00:18:43]:
I think that’s really interesting because the legal profession is often Seen as a very traditional industry, whether that’s right or wrong, that seems to. That’s a perception that people have. Do you see that this is going to kind of lead to sort of big shifts in the way that the industry operates?
Martin Glover [00:19:02]:
I think that is really dependent upon our size and our current context. So the reality is, and I’ve just said there, could we service clients from abroad? And the answer to that is yes, we could. But people would need to really have a connection to us based in Edinburgh or Glasgow, if they were sitting in, I don’t know, Hong Kong or something like that to kind of want to use this. Because the reality is if you need any kind of legal service of almost any description, if you were in some place like Hong Kong or Singapore or whatever, the reality is you would just choose somebody kind of local to do that. What this has done though is to say where we have a client who’s perhaps got some kind of Scottish connection, but who is in a kind of far flung area of the world doing business whilst they are there, perhaps they’re out there for family reasons or for business reasons. Being able to transact legal services now has all of a sudden become much, much easier for us, for us to do. Do I think that would lead to a wholesale different way of us doing business? I don’t think immediately, certainly not for mortal, for Morton Fraser, but certainly being able to conduct some of our business which is less face to face and is more virtual, then I think it definitely provides opportunities to do that.
Matt Alder [00:20:40]:
And what about the people implications of this? What do you think the future looks like for HR for talent acquisition?
Martin Glover [00:20:50]:
Yeah, I think you’re right about the law being the kind of one of the last bastions of traditional ways of working. And I think what you will see now coming out of this, I think is people looking to balance much more their personal lives and their kind of working lives. And we’ve proved the concept now of how possible it is to deliver outstanding client service us and be a truly agile workforce. And we’ve done that because we’ve had to. There’s no sense of kind of choice or belief around about that. It’s been forced upon us. So we proved that concept. So I think distributed workforces will very, I think reasonably quickly become the norm. That will have impacts for things like the extent to which we occupy estates so big city center offices. Will that be the way going forward? I think these are likely to be much, much kind of smaller places, much more geared around the kind of clients the way some of the Banks have been, if you look at things like Virgin and the Virgin banks, they’ve really changed the kind of customer experience with their kind of customer lounges and things like that. And I think the legal industry could learn quite a lot from that. And I think with lawyers working much more behind the scenes rather than the places where the clients go, if you like. I think that will be one of the major changes that you will see probably pretty soon after this all starts to get back to new normal.
Matt Alder [00:22:42]:
Final question. Give me your thoughts on technology in all of this. Because we’re obviously living in a world where there is a just an enormous tsunami of technology solutions in HR and in recruiting. Do you see more use of technology in the future and what kind of technologies do you think will get focused on?
Martin Glover [00:23:02]:
Yeah, it’s a really interesting question. So I think. Let me answer that question in terms of the law first and the administration of legal services. You know, I’ve only been in legal services for a couple of years. My kind of view of that, coming from other industries, so coming from the oil and gas research industry, for example, is that technology is not well adopted within the legal profession. And I think the reason for that is a belief that every client’s case is different, which it is. And so the difference that any kind of legal firm can make is through the quality of the people that they have, which is also correct, by the way. And that’s got implications for the next part of the question. In terms of talent acquisition, where I think legal services have been kind of slow to adopt, is all of the information and all of the kind of legal texts, libraries, case reviews, all of that sort of data is still largely in paper form now. Yeah, you know, some of it has been. Has kind of been put on to kind of systems, but we haven’t really used AI very much within legal. It’s a new and emerging area lots of law firms are interested in and kind of, you know, understanding how we can use that data. And when we get into that, that will have a significant impact on the role of the lawyer and in support roles like paralegals, for example. So that’s all to come. And I think the current situation that we are in will no doubt give added impetus to that, will no doubt do that. Turning to the second part of your question, so your question about the extent to which this will affect talent acquisition, so how we kind of bring people into the organization, I guess I’m in kind of two minds about that. I think in terms of us reaching out to talent, I think There is absolutely an opportunity to use technology much, much more. So how do we, how do we get our employment value proposition, our people brand out there so that we’re able to attract the very best talent into the business, I think is something that HR teams are going to have to consider. And relying on specialist headhunters and recruitment agencies to get in scarce talent, I think you’re going to see a move away from that probably gradually in the beginning, but I think, I think over a period of time that will move much, much more swiftly. And the reason for that is I think lawyers themselves are now consuming technology again because they have to in a way that hitherto they never have done. So they are administering advice now through technology probably to a greater extent than they’ve done before. So therefore it makes sense that in looking for their next career, you know, it’s obvious that they would use that type of approach and that type of a platform to kind of, to kind of look for the next role. Therefore, I think employers would be well advised to be working on that now as a kind of strategy, as part of their talent acquisition strategy going forward. And a bit like as I said already, the legal profession being the last bastions of kind of traditional approaches to work and so also to traditional approaches to recruitment. So I think HR teams that really kind of get to grips with their employment value proposition get out there in new technology platforms and so that is better consumed by people who are looking for next career moves. I think they’ll be able to steal a march on other people who are trying to also kind of recruit strong talent into their firm.
Matt Alder [00:27:37]:
Martin, thank you very much for talking to me.
Martin Glover [00:27:39]:
Thanks, Matt.
Matt Alder [00:27:41]:
My thanks to Martin Glover. You can subscribe to this podcast in Apple Podcasts or via your podcasting app of choice. Please also follow the show on Instagram. You can find us by searching for recruiting future. If you’re a Spotify or Pandora user, you can also find the show there. You can find all the past episodes@www.on that site. You can subscribe to the mailing list and find out more about working with me. Thanks very much for listening. I’ll be back next week and I hope you’ll join me.
