The latest Make a Difference Leaders roundtable brought together senior people and wellbeing leaders from across the legal sector to explore a pressing question: how can firms make employee health and wellbeing a genuine business priority when the pressures of high performance, client demands and commercial targets are not going away?
For many law firms, the challenge is not a lack of commitment to employee wellbeing. There are policies, programmes, networks, manager resources and campaigns in place.
The harder question is whether those initiatives are sufficiently embedded in the way the business operates to make a meaningful difference.
That was the starting point for the latest Make a Difference Leaders roundtable, which brought together representatives from several law firms, to share experiences and explore what comes next.
One theme emerged particularly strongly: wellbeing cannot sit separately from performance.
The billable-hours dilemma
Legal work has some distinctive characteristics that make this particularly challenging.
Billable hours, client demands and performance targets can create an inherent tension. People may be encouraged to look after their wellbeing while simultaneously being expected to work long hours, meet demanding targets and remain responsive to clients.
As one participant put it, the challenge is essentially: look after your wellbeing – but make sure you bill the hours.
This can make traditional wellbeing messaging feel disconnected from the reality of working life.
The firms represented at the roundtable were also conscious that many people attracted to legal careers are highly driven and accustomed to working hard. The issue is not necessarily that employees want to work less. Rather, they want to work sustainably – and to avoid unnecessary pressures that make already demanding jobs harder than they need to be.
That distinction proved important.
Tackling the unnecessary stress
One participant described how their firm had undertaken wellbeing audits and focus groups to understand what was actually creating pressure for employees.
The findings were revealing. Some of the biggest sources of stress were not necessarily the high-profile pressures associated with legal work, but relatively mundane issues around workflow, prioritisation and work allocation.
For example, someone could have a relatively quiet day in terms of chargeable hours, only to receive a major piece of work late in the afternoon and end up working until 10pm.
Similarly, receiving a substantial task at 4pm on a Friday might create avoidable pressure – not because the work itself is unreasonable, but because of how and when it is allocated.
This points to an important shift in thinking: improving wellbeing does not always mean adding another wellbeing initiative. Sometimes it means fixing the way work gets done.
From ‘fluffy’ to people risk
Another recurring theme was the language used to position wellbeing with senior leaders and partners.
Participants agreed that wellbeing can still be perceived in some parts of the business as something slightly “fluffy” or separate from commercial priorities.
One alternative approach discussed was to frame it through people risk.
Burnout, poor mental health, excessive workload and ineffective management can all create risks for an organisation – from absence and attrition to reduced performance, employee relations issues and reputational damage.
Thinking about wellbeing as part of risk management therefore offers one way to move the conversation away from “wellness initiatives” and towards the conditions required for a sustainable business.
But participants also recognised that risk is not the only compelling argument.
Wellbeing and high performance belong together
Another firm represented at the roundtable has been deliberately moving away from presenting wellbeing as a trade-off with high performance.
Instead, it is seeking to position health, energy and performance as interconnected.
That means asking what enables people to perform at their best over the long term – and addressing the organisational barriers that get in the way.
The language matters because the underlying message is different.
Rather than: “We want you to look after yourself, even though the business needs you to perform,“
the proposition becomes: “Looking after your health and energy is part of performing well.”
This also reflects a broader evolution in workplace wellbeing. Terms such as “sustainable performance”, “healthy performance” and even “human operating systems” are increasingly being used to describe a more integrated approach.
Stop building brilliant resources nobody uses
The roundtable also highlighted another familiar challenge: engagement.
One participant described the extensive resources available to employees and managers, including online toolkits and internal communications. Yet people are often simply too busy to find, read or use them.
Even HR colleagues sitting alongside the wellbeing function were not always aware of resources that had been created for them.
This raised an important point about the difference between providing support and making support usable.
If people are working under intense time pressure, asking them to find a toolkit, read a long article or attend another optional session may not be enough.
Wellbeing therefore needs to be considered alongside the employee experience: how easily can someone access support, and how naturally does it fit into the way they already work?
Make wellbeing part of the operating system
For one participant, the answer has been to move wellbeing further into the organisation’s systems and practices rather than treating it as a standalone pillar.
That includes considering how wellbeing is reflected in the firm’s code of conduct, internal systems, communications, leadership conversations and wider people proposition.
The same principle was evident in discussion about office design.
One firm is undergoing a major office move and has involved its wellbeing and inclusion teams early in the process, helping to shape the environment through considerations such as wellbeing standards, inclusion, neurodiversity and soundscaping.
It reflects the idea that the physical environment is itself part of the employee experience.
The role of leaders is changing
Perhaps the most significant shift discussed was accountability.
If wellbeing remains primarily the responsibility of HR or a dedicated wellbeing team, it is difficult to make it a genuine business priority.
Instead, participants discussed the importance of making leaders accountable for creating the conditions in which people can perform sustainably.
That means looking at workload, management behaviour, workflow, communication, work allocation and team culture – as well as the more traditional wellbeing offer.
The importance of collaborating with colleagues across the business, including in Learning & Development, was recognised. The group also considered the realities of making leaders accountable for team wellbeing through their KPIs and even linking bonuses to this. This is one of the topics that we’ll be exploring at the Make a Difference AGM and Leadership Forum on 19th October at the British Library.
It also means recognising that different groups and generations may have different expectations.
One participant observed that a new generation of future partners increasingly wants both to succeed professionally and to remain present in their lives outside work. They are not necessarily rejecting hard work; they are questioning the assumption that professional success has to come at the expense of everything else.
A sector moving from wellbeing to sustainable performance
The discussion did not produce a single formula for legal firms to follow. And that was perhaps the most useful conclusion.
Different firms are at different stages of the journey, with different cultures, client demands and commercial priorities.
But there was broad agreement that the next phase of workplace wellbeing cannot simply be about adding more initiatives.
The opportunity is to understand what actually makes work unhealthy or unnecessarily difficult – and then change the systems, behaviours and expectations that create those conditions.
For legal employers operating in a high-performance environment, that could mean making wellbeing part of the conversation about productivity, risk, leadership, inclusion, the employee experience and ultimately business performance.
The question is no longer simply: “What wellbeing support do we offer our people?”
It is becoming: “What kind of working environment do we create – and does it enable our people to perform at their best, sustainably?”
Whilst acknowledging the great progress that has already been made, it was suggested that this may be the more important question for the sector’s next chapter.
Make a Difference Leaders discussions matter. They create space for those responsible for culture, health, wellbeing and employee experience to learn from one another in real time, test ideas honestly and share solutions that rarely emerge within organisational silos. You can find out more about Make a Difference Leaders and apply to join here.
Our Make a Difference Leaders AGM and Leadership Forum is big enough to accommodate a wide range of employers but small enough to recreate what people love about our Leaders’ Lunches. To find out more, register your interest here.
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