Simply the way to become the best

Sheri-Anne Mizon, managing partner at Attwaters Jameson Hill, outlines the intention and approach that led to an accolade of being named one of the best places to work in the UK

Attwaters Jameson Hill is a major regional law firm with offices in and around Hertfordshire, Essex and London, and we were recently honoured with a Sunday Times ‘Best Places to Work’ award in the medium-sized business category.

The firm’s partnership has worked so hard to foster a distinctive culture, and here we tell the story of what the award means to the whole team.

Where it all began

Three years ago, Attwaters Jameson Hill was coming to the end of an existing five-year plan. In drafting the new five-year plan, the firm’s partnership decided that investing in staff would be a top priority over the next few years.

While businesses acknowledge that without the best staff they have no business, do they usually demonstrate this in practice in any meaningful way? Probably not. Our firm decided to go back to basics and review all existing staff policies and procedures.

The first stop was knowing what we wanted to achieve. And that was retaining and recruiting the very best staff — people who believed in and delivered our ‘Service Pledge’, and who felt secure, supported and valued in their roles and the business.

A new plan based on employee feedback

The next step was to approach our existing employees for honest feedback on their experiences. Step by step, based on this feedback, the partners began to effect meaningful change within the business.

We reviewed our promotions criteria, implemented a social wellbeing committee and put some budget behind it, refreshed our events committee and increased that budget as well, in addition to implementing hybrid-working models that were as flexible as the business could accommodate. The firm also funded the purchase, delivery and installation of all equipment needed to ensure the setup for working from home was a success.

Input rather than income

Rather than continuing to focus on narrow, profit-based targets, the firm’s partnership also scrapped its previous, arbitrary fee targets. In their place it implemented a simpler set of KPIs which focused more on employee input.

All in all, we made a point of asking staff what they wanted and needed from us as an employer – and we really listened.

Eventually, we got to a point where the partnership felt that things had really improved, but we wanted an independent third party to review our staff, so they wouldn’t feel scared to say what they really thought. We decided that independent party would be the Sunday Times anonymous staff survey.

It could have gone horribly wrong, but we entered as we wanted an honest, open review of our new policies from our staff. We never imagined we would actually win a place on the list.

When we saw the results, we were absolutely delighted. We all feel very proud of the business we’ve built together, and we owe nothing but thanks to our wonderful staff who make this business a pleasure to work at, day in, day out.