Being apart, together – employee engagement during Covid-19

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Anne Macdonald
Harper Macleod, Glasgow
anne.macdonald@harpermacleod.co.uk

The term ‘social distancing’, while extremely important, can conjure up negativity and can serve to garner a sense of loneliness among people. This is particularly true for those who hitherto were very much used to the routine of an office environment and the physicality of being present. Like almost every other law firm across the globe, we have had to quickly make changes to the way that we work and make difficult decisions. At the forefront of every decision should be the wellbeing of your colleagues and retaining the sense of family within your firm. We have sought to create ways that we can ‘be apart together’ and ensure that we all continue to connect and socialise, even if we have to do it virtually. We are happy to share with you some of the actions we have taken to maintain the sense of togetherness throughout the firm.

The timeline

As will be the case in your own firms, communication and engagement, both internal and external, will always have been a priority but now more so than ever. We invoked the business continuity and disaster recovery plan on 27 January and were able to fully stress-test our business to ensure that we were equipped to meet client obligations while prioritising the health and wellbeing of our people, clients and stakeholders. We ensured that all staff, across all functions and office locations, who were able to work from home had the equipment and training to do so. After we invoked the plan, ten per cent of the firm was absent due to requiring to self-isolate and by mid-February 25 per cent of the firm was working from home because they had travelled to high-risk areas, experienced symptoms or lived with someone vulnerable. We then moved to everyone working from home from lockdown.

From mid-February onwards, our Management Committee met daily and cascaded information on a weekly basis to all colleagues. On 27 February we communicated our contingency plans and protocols to all colleagues, including no unnecessary travel or face to face meetings. On 3 March, we contacted all key clients and stakeholders to update them on the same to ensure that we managed expectations while highlighting our continued priority of meeting all our service promises. At the heart of our colleague engagement at all times was full transparency in our actions to empower our people to make decisions regarding their own wellbeing and that of their families.

Being together virtually

Our first step was to create an internal hub on our intranet for all of our colleagues to access as a one-stop for all Covid-19 information, including documents for working from home, remote working set up, links to official health updates and government advice, together with advice on what to do in and around our offices. All of our internal communications have focused on driving traffic to the hub to ensure easy access to all the latest updates. The hub went live on 6 March and the updates contained within the hub have had more than 3000 page views to date. The intranet continues to be an important communication tool for colleagues and is regularly updated, including most recently, updates on continuing professional development and compliance matters.

Furlough – it’s not farewell

Our people make our business and our culture is the sum of our collective actions. Like many, the option to be able to furlough staff during these uncharted times was met with cautious relief. We pride our firm on being a place of opportunity for all and once the pandemic and associated economic crisis have subsided, we want to be able to emerge strong and ready to yet again provide opportunities to all. To be able to ensure future prosperity for all within the firm, we have chosen to furlough some colleagues. However, undertaking the furlough process was by no means an easy exercise and it was a challenging time for the partnership when giving very careful consideration to this. The sense of trust and positivity from our furloughed colleagues recognising our actions are for the long-term benefit of everyone has been hugely humbling and reassuring. All the years of reinforcing our inclusive culture really has given the firm a sense of collective purpose and resilience. We are very proud that we have reacted to all the challenges as a close and trusting family.

As part of the furlough process and guidance provided by HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC), it became quickly apparent that we would need to be able to provide evidence to HMRC that our furloughed employees were not ‘working’ during this period. For this reason we had to remove the remote access of all individuals that have been furloughed from the firm. This created a difficult situation for us as the one thing our people strategy relies upon is open and transparent communication with everyone. We were at pains to stress that we were not breaking off contact with our furloughed team members and we therefore needed to create a new way of being in touch. So the HM home room was born.

HM home room

The home room is an online hub set up by our firm to support our people as we all transition to working from home and adjust to life in furlough. Launched on 23 March, our aim is to ensure we all stay in touch and look after ourselves and our families in very uncertain times. From links to practical tips for working from home and maintaining customer contact to ideas to keep the kids active and our HM Happy Songs Spotify playlist, we are updating the home room on a daily basis. Our most recent additions from clients and contacts of the firm include yoga for beginners, a webinar on dealing with challenges (created by specialists in sports psychology) and healthy recipes and fitness programmes from Glasgow Warriors and personal trainers. We have since promoted the HM home room to our clients and wider communities, including chambers of commerce, charities and business support organisations, to name a few. Our home room resource has been met with much positivity and further sharing to benefit their communities.

Let’s work and play together

To supplement the home room content, we created the HM Home Room Facebook group on 27 March and since then, 55 per cent of colleagues have joined it. We continue to work on growing this and in particular target as many of our furloughed colleagues to promote our inclusive environment and keep people engaged.

The Facebook group is a private group open to all colleagues as a place where we can help to bring the home room to life, where we can catch up with colleagues and share experiences of being at home. It’s also where we can share our attempts at trying some of the activities and tips we have gathered online. We are encouraging our teams to get together and share what they are doing to keep team spirits up, from team WhatsApp groups and TikTok dance challenges to kids’ home baking and pet galleries. Most of all, we want all of our wonderful team to look out for one another during a difficult time. This has developed far beyond our expectations and the engagement from participants has brought together individuals from all our office locations, practice areas and roles within the firm. The home room and Facebook group will become a fixture in our colleague engagement programme after the pandemic.

It’s good to talk

Outside the firm-wide hub, home room and Facebook page, we are also encouraging departments and teams to be in touch with one another as much as possible. Many departments have created WhatsApp groups so that the more social side and, as we would say in Scotland, ‘banter’ can continue as if the teams were sitting beside each other in the office. Teams are catching up for social calls on Zoom and we will also be launching Microsoft Teams across the firm to allow for more official departmental meetings and team talks.

Colleague availability portal

We recently saw the launch of a Colleague Availability Portal. This allows real time access for all to view the status of colleagues so there is visibility on who might be on holiday, who is on furlough and any flexible working patterns. This again with the ethos of complete transparency throughout the firm and also assists with allocation of work.

Concluding thoughts

Colleague engagement has never been so important and it’s been very heartening to see how well everyone within the firm has adapted to the new way of working. While we may be separated physically, we’ve actually never been more together. If we are to take a positive from the dreadful pandemic, it’s the fact that we know we have true resilience.

'A ship is always safe at shore but that is not what it’s built for' - Albert Einstein

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