Investing in and rewarding people can help a firm keep up its momentum during critical times
Providing employees with a variety of opportunities for career advancement is crucial to keeping them engaged in their work.
K3 Legal highlighted this when its flat hierarchy model helped the firm to sustain its growth momentum during the height of COVID-19’s onset. The firm made it a point to focus on people investment, promoting staff to reward their contributions and to offer them the chance to take on more responsibilities.
K3 Legal also concentrated on attracting new talent that could help keep the firm going at a strong pace.
“We are actively growing our team into director roles, and we believe firmly in not holding on to equity as directors at the expense of growth,” managing director Edwin Morrison said.
Anderson Lloyd also saw the value of staff development to add to its leadership capacity.
“We offer well-attended training and continued professional development, and we endeavour to represent the communities in which we operate. We also have measurable gender objectives, from summer clerk recruitment to board representation,” CEO Richard Greenaway said. “The firm also invests in our future leaders through a 12-month leadership program; peer-to-peer, senior and female mentoring; and making an executive coach available to all partners and staff.”
At present, over 40% of the firm’s equity partners are composed of women, and a quarter of the leadership team are aged under 40.
“The momentum of having great people doing their best work is magnetic. We try very hard to provide our people with lots of room to develop, balanced with strong mentoring, and we never let up on our culture – it’s the significant other in our relationship with growth,” said general manager Carmen Simmonds and managing partner Sam Hood of Norris Ward McKinnon.
Norris Ward McKinnon was named as one of this year's Best Law Firms to Work for in New Zealand. Learn more about the winners here.
