Getting Serious About Keeping Your Best People

Osborne Clarke OWA has recently been identified in a Commercial Lawyer survey as 'the English law firm with the highest qualified staff retention rate'...so what is their secret? Chris Bull, chief executive, and Sue Wiles, head of Human Resources, provide an insight into the strategy Osborne Clarke uses to retain its people and emphasise the perils of making assumptions about retention.

We successfully recruited in excess of 125 lawyers during 2000, filling all of the major resource gaps we had identified - plus a few we probably didn't even know we had. It has been five years or more since we said goodbye to a partner we actively tried to keep. All in all this amounts to very strong evidence for suggesting that our firm is doing something seriously right and, hopefully provides us with some degree of credibility for writing this article.

This ought to suggest that we will now move on to explore exactly how we have achieved this enviable feat. We don't propose to do that. Why not? Because we don't know the answer, of course. Just as nobody reading this article will truly know the answer as to why their firm's track record is worse than ours (or even better - maybe the Commercial Lawyer didn't survey you!). Many managing partners and HR directors will suspect they know the answers, which brings us neatly to our main theme; if improving recruitment and retention is your aim, it is vital that you realise assumptions are the enemy of success.

Having recently left our assumptions behind, we have embarked upon a fascinating and occasionally terrifying journey, focusing on finding out what our people really think about life with Osborne Clarke OWA. We have produced a clear, agreed set of core values underpinning the way in which we deal with our people. Once these values have been picked over and a consensus formed, that they do accurately reflect the firm's culture, we will move on to test whether we truly 'live' them - in all circumstances and with all of our people.

By definition, the core people values of every organisation should very clearly underpin the way in which it behaves. Consistent application of the values is imperative once a firm has taken the bold step to publish them. Taking that step is a very clear message to everyone in the firm that these core values will (rather than might) form the basis of the way in which the firm operates. Ours contain, amongst others, commitments to provide challenging and interesting work; to actively support people's careers; to be fair and consistent at all times. Part of what we are implicitly saying to people is 'if you feel that anyone, partner or staff, in this firm is not living these values, tell us and we will do something to prevent it happening again'. Inevitably this will happen. Most medium to large law firms are still growing at an explosive rate, and the rapid influx of new people who don't necessarily 'know the rules' will increase the risk of behaviour that contradicts the firm's people values. Our advice to anyone contemplating a similar route is to be absolutely certain that you are committed to responding positively to evidence of this sort of 'whistle-blowing'. Start ducking the issues, particularly with aberrant partner behaviour, and you will be in a much worse position than when you started.

Earlier we referred to testing the people values. This stage of the process is critical and inevitably involves actually talking to the people in the firm. But remember: assumption is the enemy of this process. No matter how well your partners feel they really know what people are thinking, the fact is that they don't. Our recent success in recruiting and retaining gives us the perfect excuse to allow complacent assumptions, about what we are getting right, to take the place of analysis. Instead we are taking a different approach. We want to understand in much more detail what really makes people join and stay with us and then act to both extend and deepen those factors which turn people on, and work to improve the areas our people tell us are still not good enough.

Within Osborne Clarke OWA this stage of the process will involve a short series of workshops with people from around the firm and a comprehensive staff survey. The workshops and the survey are being conducted by an external organisation, introducing an element of independence and encouraging a greater degree of openness. A team of people from within the firm, led by the authors, will be working very closely with the external team to design the survey questions in line with our people values. The main criteria for the survey has already been identified. It needs to be short, easy to complete, interesting and must cover all the aspects of our people values. It is unlikely to meet with success, however, if we simply print the values and ask people to score the firm against them. We aim to produce a survey that reflects people's daily working lives and experiences of the way they are dealt with.

Keen students of the legal press may be reading this and muttering 'don't do it guys'. There have certainly been instances of firms apparently issuing surveys with questions along the lines of 'would you consider leaving the firm within the next 2 years?'. Take the inevitable statistical response to this type of question and throw it to a legal journalist and, hey presto, you have a less than flattering front-page story. These lessons are not lost on us. That said, there is absolutely no point in attempting to design a survey with the aim of avoiding negative or unpleasant results. You might as well make up the answers at the same time as the questions. Once again, assumption would derail the exercise.

There are immediate benefits that ought to accrue from stating your people values this clearly and from conducting a well run survey. In particular, a firm-wide commitment to dealing with all of its people in the right way will be very clear. Definite statements will have replaced vague platitudes. The firm will have defined the sort of treatment people can expect, while making a commitment to ensure it actually is the experience people receive. It is important to understand, however, that this is only half the work involved. The firm needs to take (and be seen to take) significant action to address any negative feedback received and, in particular, tackle any perception among people that is it failing to live any of its core people values. What's more, the firm needs to be prepared to re-perform the testing regularly.

If the content of the values statement is right then the experiences of potential recruits, new joiners and established staff must be improved. Everyone in the firm should work towards ensuring the values are being lived. The process of publishing the values and stimulating a high response rate to the survey will focus people's attentions on these cultural issues and should naturally produce a degree of improvement across the organisation. It is important that the values statement and survey act as a catalyst. However, it is unlikely, even in a firm with generally happy people, to be enough. The actions required to address problem areas will have to actually take place, to achieve the goal of ensuring values are being lived. Within Osborne Clarke OWA, initial work around the firm has already suggested that our induction and welcome process for new joiners is in need of serious work and that our performance review processes need an overhaul. There will be many more issues, large and small, which arise as we complete our survey and the related workshops.

At the risk of being guilty of sly references to our success there may be some of you who question why a firm with the level of retention and recruitment we enjoy would spend valuable management time and effort on this work. We are clear about that. Our business strategy demands a supply of talented, motivated people to grow our position in our key markets. Our recent success in recruiting and retaining talent absolutely has to continue for us to achieve these strategies. It makes huge sense, therefore, for us to take time to really understand the reasons for our success and how we can make the most of these strengths. One aspect of this will be to 'market' more effectively the things our people approve of most to both potential recruits and, indeed, to the people already here. Just as importantly, however, we need to be aware of the seeds of potential future disaffection. It is vital that firms like ours, with a strategic imperative to retain and recruit the best people, spot any potential problems in the way we treat people and put them right before they do real damage.

Some firms will have very clear empirical evidence that tells them their people are not happy. Qualified staff turnover rates in excess of 25% or even 30% are common among UK firms. Taking concerted action to put this right, along the lines outlined so far, must be a high priority for these firms. However there may be some considerable obstacles in the way. Some of these firms will find it difficult to persuade the partners to take the bold move of publishing and committing to values when it is clear not every member of the partnership practises them.

It is even worse for those firms whose honest and accurate people values statement makes unpleasant reading. Statements along the lines of 'we are rigidly hierarchical and only value our partners', or 'we expect you to record a minimum 1800 chargeable hours each year, principally spent on repetitive and unchallenging work', or 'our support staff are effectively invisible to us' would be honest in some cases. Only the most bull-headed firm would ever consider publishing these as an option. Partnerships for whom this is likely to be a problem have a considerable amount of work to do before they can move to the stage of publishing their statement of values. If a firm were able to be honest enough to question it's underlying culture in this way, it might just be an indication that they had what it takes to attempt the required 'cultural revolution'.

A couple of important caveats apply to all of the above. Firstly, professionals are unlikely to be attracted by a firm that deals with its people impeccably but is unable to pay well or make good profits. The underlying economic preconditions for firms to thrive, and thereby to attract and retain the best people, remain firmly in place. Similarly, a firm that is unable, perhaps simply due to that state of its core markets, to offer stimulating and challenging work, will struggle to bring in and keep the best talent. Only when these two conditions are met would it make sense to immediately shift your strategic focus to a people strategy. That is not to ignore the linkages between these areas. Motivated people ought to provide the best service to clients and thereby drive profit growth. They should also be likely to move the firm in the direction of more challenging work if it is not already on offer. Yet again though - a note of warning: Be careful about making the assumption that you are offering interesting and challenging work. Your jaded senior partners might think it is fine and dandy, but the views of your up and coming assistants might be very different.

There is no universal panacea for high retention rates and successful recruitment. Every firm faces different circumstances and is addressing subtly different internal audiences. If we were all the same, we would be best advised to give up the game now and get on with the mergers. We have therefore avoided any attempt in this article to suggest what the content of a perfect values statement should be, as it must reflect each firm's unique personality and culture. What is increasingly important, though, is that firms do differentiate themselves more clearly. The process outlined above provides an excellent route to identifying this differentiation.

All the good work contained within the production of a values statement and even addressing the issues identified by a survey is unlikely to be good enough by itself. How a firm communicates and publicises their efforts, both internally and externally, is equally as important. It is essential to the success of this process that your people and potential recruits actually see very clearly what you believe in and what actions you are taking to 'live' your values. Perhaps an examination of the art of effective communication is the essential companion piece to this article. Certainly without great communication skills embarking on the people strategy route is a risky gambit.

Chris Bull is chief executive and Sue Wiles is head of Human Resources at Osborne Clarke OWA. They can be contacted at chris.bull@osborneclarke.com and sue.wiles@osborneclarke.com.