On the bright side

Redundancy consultations are now commonplace, but it is the way that firms handle them that has the biggest impact on employee morale. Des Cahill reports

It seems lawyers are a lot less angry than expected about the personal consequences of the economic downturn, based on responses in this year's Employee Satisfaction Report. The findings of the report, published by Legal Week Intelligence earlier this year, were discussed at a roundtable held, in association with Hays Legal, on 13 October.

Considering the timing of the research, which was conducted in April and May of this year, the tone of the lawyers who responded was surprisingly measured. While there was some negative response to redundancy programmes from staff, this was mostly due to the inept handling of the redundancy programme rather than the existence of the programme itself.

Although Hays estimates that around 80% of major legal firms have gone through some redundancy or other formal downsizing programme, how they have handled it directly affects their reputation as a good employer.

Compared to last year, lawyers were more worried about the possibility of being made redundant. However, only 1% more were actively looking for another job - 13% this year compared to 12% last year.

According to Yvonne Smyth, managing director of Hays Legal: "Although we are now seeing some stabilisation in the recruitment market, it has been an extraordinary 12-18 months."

"It's been a real wake-up call for associates," she added. "The market is slowly picking up but the roles are quite specific and employers are being very picky."

The evidence from the research, which canvassed the opinion of over 4,000 lawyers from UK top 50 firms, is that assistants are still reasonably satisfied with their working lives. A high percentage of respondents would recommend their firm to a friend or colleague - the average rating employees gave for the likelihood of recommending their firm was 7.6 out of 10. The category to suffer the most damage was 'being valued as an employee', where the score was only 6.6 out of 10, down from 7.0 in the previous year.

However, a feeling of being valued was rated as the most important aspect of lawyers' working lives, with a score of 8.9 out of 10, just ahead of work/life balance at 8.8.

Assistants are still driven by the ambition to become a partner, whether at their own firm or another one, although it is less of an obsession than it used to be. Only 54% of respondents describe it as their prime ambition. The attraction of remaining in a senior, non-partner role has risen considerably over the past 12 months - from 10% in 2007 to 15% this year.

It appears that partners, whose practices have been hit by the same economic vicissitudes as other parts of the business world, are starting to wake up to the merits of other professional disciplines like human resources in dealing with some of the resultant problems.

With many firms involved in some form of restructuring process, HR professionals found that they became a vital part of senior management. One of the main issues for them now would be trying to retain their partners' attention once legal businesses started to return to normal.

Attendees

John Malpas, publisher, Legal Week, chair
Andrea Pankhurst, Bird & Bird
Catherine O'Mahoney, Clifford Chance
Emma Rowe, Denton Wilde Sapte
Andrea Roots, Herbert Smith
Ottilie Sefton, Holman Fenwick Willan
Rosalind Jamieson, McGrigors
Anna Smith, Mayer Brown
Patrick Gaul, Weightmans
Yvonne Smyth, Hays Legal
Charlotte Wright, Hays Legal
James Hanbury, CEO, Incisive Media
Des Cahill, Legal Week Intelligence

For more details on the Employee Satisfaction Survey 2009, contact Paul Birk on 0207 316 9864 or email paul.birk@incisivemedia.com.