HR Why your retention strategy must have staying power

Retaining engaged staff is at the top of the list for many businesses, and for law firms this is particularly true. Training and developing lawyers and support staff is a large investment in time, commitment and dollars.

Partners and managers hope that staff will remain happily and productively employed to ensure not only a return on this investment, but also a continuity of internal relationships with colleagues and external relationships with clients. The challenge of staff retention is not new, however the approaches to retaining staff seem to remain the same tried and often ineffective ones, with ‘pay them a bit extra than we intended and make sure they are eternally grateful’ being one tried and untrue method. At this point I want to make it clear that retaining staff forever is not the aim. Rather, the goal should be to extend the tenure of young lawyers, provide career options for mid‐career lawyers which lead to extension of tenure and/or planned moves, and to aid the long‐term retention of senior lawyers and partners.

Make it meaningful

Many firms are coming up to ‘that time of the year’: the annual performance review. This is a process rather than a valued interaction for many, and when reviewers are rushed and disengaged with the process the outcome can be a negative one rather than a positive one. Whenever I wonder why firms continue to bother with reviews, the answer is made clear very quickly – this annual process represents the only real opportunity for staff to receive meaningful feedback and to have focused career development and progression discussions. I think the time has come for those with people‐management responsibilities, be they partners, senior lawyers or managers of support teams, to commit their time to more meaningful and constructive conversations and planning discussions with their staff. Yes, it might mean a bit more time, however I think it will lead to a much greater impact.  And if your mind instantly turns to the loss of billable hours, consider this equation. When a lawyer who is productive on client work for five hours per day (yes, low for many firms, but work with me on this …) leaves a firm, there is going to be at the very least three weeks of billable time lost.   This figure of 75 billable hours is an absolute minimum. Let us take the charge‐out rate of $200 per hour and $15,000 in total. For one moment, put aside the disruption to the client service, the team and the time it will take to recruit and develop a new team member.  A partner on $400 per hour could invest three additional hours a quarter with this person, and potentially be more than $10,000 ahead for the year. Now think about the disruption the last time a productive member of your team left to join another organisation. What investment would you make to have avoided that?

Engage in conversations

Two years ago in this journal, I discussed the concept of stay interviews, making the observation that employees often find it easier to access information about their career opportunities, likely remuneration and plans for a firm’s future via a recruitment interview with a prospective employer rather than any discussion within their own firm. That is because people are too busy and have not made such conversations a priority. I discussed the approach of ‘stay conversations’ – conversations aimed at understanding what employees like/want/expect so that those managing them are fully aware of this. Too often this information is found out at exit interviews, a conversation which happens much too late. I would like to share with you one firm’s approach to this concept. Meyer Vandenberg Lawyers is a Canberra law firm that employs more than 80 people. They have started the first round of what they are calling ‘Insight Interviews’. Their practice manager, Tanya Berlis, has interviewed all the partners and staff, listening to each person discuss their likes and dislikes, ambitions, career plans, highs and lows at work and ideas for how things could improve in the firm. I asked Tanya to share the firm’s experiences so that other firms can think about how they might actually implement such an approach to staff engagement and retention. Below is a summary of Tanya’s thoughts.

• Get the partners on board first as leadership and support needs to come from the top. Tanya presented a board paper about the proposed Insight Interviews, pitching the approach as a strategic change from looking backwards at what has occurred to gathering meaningful information for predicting and planning for staff development and retention. Following an announcement from managing partner Archie Tsirimokos, the partners at Meyer Vandenberg discussed the Insight Interviews plan to their own teams, ensuring there was ownership at the team level rather than it being ‘something HR is doing’.    
• Start with the end in mind. Meyer Vandenberg had a clear agenda: we want our staff to have compelling reasons to stay with Meyer Vandenberg and to do this we need to know what makes each and every individual staff member happy, what motivates them at work and how the firm can continue to support their success. The design of the questions and the communication to staff reflected this purpose.
• Ask the hard questions. There is no point asking questions you already know the answers to.  Meyer Vandenberg did not shy away from listening to the concerns raised by staff. In fact, the 15 questions were designed to encourage staff to think deeply and critically about their motivations and their workplace.
• Share insights with an insider. Meyer Vandenberg made a deliberate decision to have the interviews conducted by the practice manager, a person trusted by the partners and by the staff. Having had the experience of using an external facilitator for a targeted feedback process in the past, the decision was made that the conversations would be more meaningful and credible if conducted by one person across the firm. The consistency of one person conducting these initial discussions and that person being somewhat removed from the day‐to‐day working relationship have also been noted as benefits in this approach.
• Ensure there is commitment not just to the discussions, but also to the follow up. Credibility will be lost very quickly if the discussion raises expectations only to have future commitments lost in the ‘busyness’ of day‐to‐day practice. One hundred per cent of partners and staff participated in the Insight Interviews over two months, with discussions ranging from one hour to 1.5 hours per staff member. The themes are currently being analysed for a report to the partnership on firm‐wide trends and for useful development information for practice groups. The responsibility for the action related to each individual plan rests jointly with the employee and their manager.
• Make the conversations part of an integrated talent development and people approach, not a stand‐alone activity. At Meyer Vandenberg, the Insight Interviews replaced the firm‐wide midterm reviews and link back into annual performance reviews which focus on reviewing and updating the individual plans and KPIs as well as career progression checkups.   

This change in approach is in its early days at Meyer Vandenberg. Feedback on the Insights Interview initiative has been overwhelmingly positive, with 95 per cent of staff rating it positively. Such enthusiasm for this new initiative has in itself been of value, engendering a greater feeling among staff that they are important and being heard. The firm now intends to capitalise on this through its commitment to follow up and action. It believes  the insights gained were well worth the investment in time and effort and that the benefits will be there for their staff, their clients and the business as a whole.

Kriss Will is a law firm management consultant and the founder of Kriss Will Consulting. She can be contacted at kriss@kwillconsult.com.au. Thank you to Meyer Vandenberg Lawyers and Tanya Berlis for sharing their Insight Interviews story.