Creating an ideas culture at Pinsent Masons LLP
September 15th, 2008 by Thoughts
Katie Dawson, Learning and Development Manager at Pinsent Masons LLP, explains how the law firm has managed to develop a culture of ideas and innovation:
- It’s a brave new world for lawyers, who, not so very long ago, weren’t allowed to sell or promote their services. Now it’s a fight against competitors for clients and talent, both of whom are demanding more from their law firm.
- It’s difficult striking a balance between billable hours and development time, when one has such a clear and direct impact upon the company bottom line. Both are equally important, however.
- Once a year all employees take ‘time out’, in the form of a conference. This gives a good, informal opportunity to network and socialise with their peers, and provide their verdict on the status quo.
- Pinsent Masons builds innovation into the job description, encouraging it to be viewed as a requirement by all staff. In terms of HR, this means that we work to a competency framework. At each employee review meeting, staff members are graded against the criteria for displaying innovative behaviour, which is defined for each employment level.
- Formally-appointed local ‘champions’ and ‘values agents’ work closely together to ensure that good new ideas do actually get implemented. It’s really easy to have lots of great ideas, and see nothing come of them, so we make sure there is a clear line of responsibility attached to implementation. The champions collect and develop ideas, while the ‘values agent’ is responsible for ensuring they reflect company values.
- Our Senior Managing Partner has a regular ‘Ask Chris’ session on the intranet as one method to gather new ideas for improvement and innovation. We also have diversity groups that are consulted on ideas for handling any new client or matter.
- Rewards come in the form of public recognition through our staff magazine, as well as through pay bonuses emerging out of the competency framework.
- New ideas get so easily ‘absorbed’ it becomes hard to look back and identify our greatest innovation. Perhaps one example would be Out-law.com, our website providing legal advice, which we’re very proud to say recently received recognition for excellence through a Webby award – the first time a law firm has won one.
- It’s vital that staff have ownership over their area of work and innovations - decentralised decisions are essential. At one time, all of our decisions had to go through all 300+ partners, which made it really difficult to implement new ideas. Fortunately, now those days are long gone.
- Investment in an ‘ideas culture’ is a purely commercial decision. On one hand, we save thousands of pounds per year through staff retention. On the other, our clients demand to be seen by humans not robots – to achieve this, we take our ‘ideas culture’ very seriously - supporting our brand of “No Barriers”.
