Managing people risk through better employee experience

How Teal Compliance Recruits

Amy Bell: Like I said we don’t want pure replicas of existing team members, but need the values and ethos of those people to fit. How do we measure and track that our recruitment for like-minded professionals work?

We survey the team every month asking them to tell us who their Teal Stars are that have demonstrated the values this month. It’s nothing to do with the billing target. It’s nothing to do with productivity, because my logic is as long as you get people who are committed to doing good work and enjoy being here, then the rest will just follow efficiently. Generally people want to do a good job.

Jane Gilchrist: Yep! 100% believe that for sure, when you look at what some of the biggest people risks are and why people leave law firms. It’s because there is a mismatch between what the firm says the culture is and what they experience on a day-to-day basis. So, managers are often the missing link between those two things, but the more that we can enable and equip the managers with the right skills to be able to deliver that on a day to day basis and really think about their interactions with their teams, as well as how to get the most out of those, then deliver those values for pure visibility …. It makes a huge difference. 

Amy Bell: And the role modelling point which you mentioned a couple of times, I think it’s just so important, because if you want to know the quickest way to trash a compliance program is to let a person of influence, whether that’s Jane Doe in legal accounts, Jane Doe-Mark Two on reception or John Doe, the Senior Partner of the business NOT show you up and be an effective role model. 

Jane Gilchrist: I’ve been in team meetings before, where a director may have come in and said, “oh, well, this is the word that we’ve got from the powers that be. I don’t necessarily agree with it.” Nobody is going to take it seriously, and values are a bit the same, aren’t they? If we say integrity is our value. And then, you see a manager sort of talking poorly about somebody at the water cooler. Then it’s done.

Integrity – you’ve absolutely got to live and breathe it.

Tips for AML and People Management 

Amy Bell:  I’ve explained how we did it at Teal and how we continue to monitor ourselves, but can you give us any other good tips you’ve got for a firm that either has done this values exercise, and they’re not kind of feeling it? How would you go about it? How do you help people do that?

Jane Gilchrist: I think the biggest thing for me is to reflect on them really regularly. Sometimes firms will agree on their set of values, and they’re on the wall forevermore. 

We want to know from them how they think they demonstrate their values to their team. If they can show us from their colleagues how they would be able to mirror those values is key to us.

I’ve actually sat with firms where we’ve had working parties, representatives from all across the firm, or roles or departments, and they’ve put post-it notes all over the wall in terms of what they think the values are and how they demonstrate them. And then when you see the same ones popping up again and again and again, they are absolutely your values. 

How good are you at receiving feedback?

Amy Bell: One thing I think I recognise, because I’m rubbish at it, is receiving feedback, getting good feedback. Never mind bad stuff! I want to curl up in a corner and cry, and nobody ever taught me how to do it. Nobody ever taught me to, because as well as we’re not teaching people how to deliver it. We’re not teaching people how to receive it. NOTE for readers please read AMY’s personal blog to find out more.

Jane Gilchrist: Yes, and how to depersonalize it, because sometimes you only ever give feedback how you would like to receive it, not necessarily thinking about what’s going to be really important for them. What do they need to take from this? And let’s focus on that which can help to de-personalize it? And rarely are you giving feedback on an individual on a personal level.

You know you might be talking about behaviours that they’ve demonstrated at that particular time in that particular moment or a piece of work, and I think it’s really important to get that across so that people don’t feel that it’s a personal attack. It’s not easy to receive feedback, is it?

Particularly when it’s not great, but usually it feels like that, because it sometimes hits home.

You need to sit with it for a little while.

Amy Bell: It’s the combination of the person giving the feedback possibly tripping up over themselves when giving it, by that I mean the person receiving the feedback might not hear properly what the giver is intending for them to hear. Lost in translation. That is definitely a lesson I’ve learned in my career. I thought I had said something, but they heard something else.

Being able to communicate that really clearly, which can be really difficult if you’re scared of them bursting into tears or something. But they shouldn’t be bursting if it’s a two-way street in a healthy and safe place.

It comes back to psychological safety. That was a term that was used in the call I had with my new employee. It feels like a safe place for anyone to put their hand up and say, I don’t know how to do this. Why do I ensure my team and I work in this safe place?

Yes, we have got loads of rules as we are a compliance business, but our main rule between our team is that if you are stuck for 10 minutes, you ask for help. 

Top Tips for Compliance and Psychological Safety

Amy Bell: Having the 10-minute Rule and then asking for help is our Number One Rule at Teal. It’s not efficient for you to sit there for longer than 10 minutes worrying about something. So that means it’s costing money. And it means other jobs are going to drift. And then clients aren’t going to get the service that they’re wanting to get. 

That’s the first practical reason for it, if you need one! 

But the real reason for it is, I don’t want anyone sitting there worrying so we literally have a dedicated communication channel like a lot of firms. We use Team for instant messaging and I can’t tell you how much we all use it and how quickly our cries for help are solved!  We all use it, including me. 

Questions like, can someone tell me the answer to “this”? Does anyone know “that”? etc.

The reason that we do that at all levels in the business is so everyone can see those questions and sees that it truly and really is safe to put your hand up and say, I don’t know.

We all collaborate on the answer, and the query is solved in minutes. 

Remote Working and People Management

Amy Bell: We are a remote team here at Teal, in the main and this is one of the challenges I find which is why we had to find a genuinely great way of communicating. But one of the challenges that I find speaking to law firms these days is when they are still doing a good proportion of remote working and therefore managing supervision and support in that remote environment.

You simply can’t actually get body language from them can you?

Jane Gilchrist: Yeah, but it’s really difficult, isn’t it? It’s about getting to know your team and checking in on them on a regular basis. It’s about having a catch-up in the diary, whether that’s weekly or monthly. The fact your remote colleagues are used to you asking how they are! We have found that without those call catch ups it can become a little weird and people can become phone phobic. 

The mobile goes or the Teams’ noise echoes out and we think what do they want?! But because you are used to having chats on the phone with catch ups, when the phone goes, it’s not scary or anxiety inducing, because you’re used to having them on the phone. You haven’t got that initial panic when their name pops up on teams. 

If the usual scenario is radio silence, your team is definitely NOT going to come to you when they’ve done something wrong. And so sometimes we hear a lot about, “let’s share our wins”.  Sometimes it’s about “let’s share some of our really big icky things”, “ or really awful conversations that I had to have to sort this out”. 

Jane Gilchrist: I would self-refer to the managing partner and say, I’ve dropped the ball on this, how can we make this better? Just really talking about those sorts of things can massively start to normalise some of it.

Amy Bell: That’s exactly why I wanted to make sure I did things differently from my experience previously. We have a long running client that outsources their compliance to us. I have been working with them for 12 years now and I still remember the first time that we discussed this very subject with them. How to try and create a culture of people being able to put their hand up and say, I’m stuck without fear of reprisals. 

My tip is that if you need a business reason for it, the 10 Minute Rule or just to feel safe to put your hands up and say you think you’ve mucked up, then you can justify it because by admitting something early on reduces the risk of professional indemnity claims! That’s a fact.

If a firm can evidence that the initial mistake was highlighted early on, and then what the firm’s attempt at rectification was, that’s a big tick for PII because insurers know that everyone, and every firm at some stage will make a mistake, it’s how you try and fix that mistake that counts.

Amy Bell: Anxiety and Solutions

Amy Bell: I’m going to tell you. I used to cock up pretty regularly. I had to have months off sick with stress from it, because I never felt confident enough in this hierarchical situation. Dog eat dog. Everyone’s trying to get the same job as a partner. I didn’t say anything. It made me ill. 

When I came back from sick leave I started a group: Bring Out Your Dad meetings.

It was for peers, and I’m like, just bring the files you’re stuck on. We’ll workshop them together. There’ll be a great learning example for everybody else to just come along and listen to. So, we’re doing great training. But also, it means you won’t be stuck on that file anymore, and you won’t be waking up at 3am in the morning worrying yourself sick about it. 

Jane Gilchrist: Similar actually in a team that I was running in, that we had a black box system. If you had a file that you absolutely had lost your way on you could put it in the black box. It gets passed on to somebody else. They would work it through, because it’s always easier to sort out somebody else’s difficult file than your own, isn’t it?

And quite often it’s never as bad as you think it is. Once you sit down and actually do the work; it just gets this nuclear field around it, and you know, as a coach people think, “you must be perfect” …  absolutely not!

The shelf in the office…..

Amy Bell: I had that shelf. It was at the bottom. It was underneath the Law Gazette! They used to come every week. Those of you new lawyers will have no idea what we’re talking about if you’ve not had files, but for us that have been doing this law thing for a while, it’s the bottom shelf, covering dust behind the desk!

I’m like, what are those files behind your desk? Oh….so nobody else roots through them and sees I’m behind or stuck and I’m scared. And this is why the root cause analysis of things like complaints and claims is so important. 

Spoiler Alert! The root cause analysis, if you don’t already know this, it’s likely to be 5 questions away….. In my experience. The FIVE WHYS is the root cause analysis model, which I love. It’s dead simple. Ask yourself why something happened five times.

You are going to unearth what was really underneath it. It’s pure psychology.

We use it in our TEAL TRACKER software. We have an analysis module that helps our clients digest these and then collate what their overall root cause analysis data is across their business. 

For example, say the data says the cause of a problem was based on Human Error, the FIVE WHYS in the Tracker’s root cause analysis actually shows that it’s not really about human error. That’s not really the cause. Why did this highly trained, very expensive, skilled person make this silly mistake?

Answer? Usually resourcing lack of training, lack of capacity, taking on work they shouldn’t have taken because trying to keep someone happy like, there’s about 10 causes right? But they’re never just because they were careless. And what happened was I took out human error, but I did put in a lack of attention to detail. 

And that’s where suddenly everything ended up in lack of attention to detail! I was like, this isn’t the right answer in reality. I dug deeper into our research model and though there’s another TWO WHYS after lack of attention to detail, like, why is a very busy person who’s well paid got a lack of attention to detail? 

Too much work normally, and yet I was dissatisfied with that answer as it doesn’t really get to the cause to thereafter support the business or its people going forward. 

The Tracker’s analysis started bringing out the true reasons.

So what our system does is it based on what you’ve said? The potential causes.

The Tracker then predicts what the cause might be, and you just have to pick from a list. If the actual cause that you really know of isn’t on the list, you can get it to regenerate more options for you, but based on your previous answer, it will. 

That’s when we’re now getting more accurate root causes because “people” to blame aren’t coming up.

Obviously, we do want people to be driven by empathy, and we don’t want people to feel that they’re being blamed. But at the same time things are going to keep going wrong unless we tackle the root causes of them. 

Jane Gilchrist: When they’ve got a reason like that, it’s clear it’s an operational reason. Then it makes that whole feedback piece much easier, because you’re giving feedback on why the process has failed, or where they might have some potential learning gaps. It’s far less personalised than you saying, “you’ve made a mistake here”. 

Getting Managers Aligned with the Right Coaching Skills

Jane Gilchrist: Getting managers to have the right coaching skills is so important because they are learning through asking questions, rather than just giving answers. 

Amy Bell: My skills as a manager really got upgraded when I learned about coaching instead of mentoring or just “showing”.  When I started in the law it was kind of sit at the feet of your training principal and watch what they’re doing and do what they do. 

Jane Gilchrist: We want to build capability, not dependency.

Managers don’t often understand coaching or how to coach people, and sometimes it can feel like it’s going to take a little bit longer than their schedules want. But you’ve got to be flexible haven’t you? We often want to fix things NOW, because there’s a deadline. We need to get it sorted today.

But then let’s have a debrief meeting tomorrow and understand how we could do that differently next time to have a think about it, and we’ll have a chat tomorrow. With this stance you’re much more likely to get a better response when you do that rather than just constantly telling people what to do, or them coming to you with a problem. 

Quite often I’ll hear that managers will say “just leave it with me /  I’ll sort it out”.  They may have sent something to their partner to “look at” but then the partner has totally amended it. They’ve not always had the feedback, or they’ve got it back with lots of red lines through it, and there’s no conversation about what was actually wrong. 

Amy Bell: When I was running my budget for the training program that I talked about I built all the levels in the business. The most important course of learning first in the budget was coaching skills for managers. 

It takes a little bit of time for people who’ve not been managed in that style to get used to it. But what ultimately happens is, people don’t come to you with problems. They come to you with a problem and three solutions, because they know that if they don’t come with a solution, you’re going to send them away again.

Are you a Micromanager?

People can feel micromanaged, especially in the legal sector. 

Amy Bell: The person who is the micromanager probably doesn’t know they are doing just that. It’s not their intention. 

Jane Gilchrist: Micromanagement makes people feel like they’ve not got any autonomy, doesn’t it? And when you look at what the drivers are, particularly in the legal sector, together with survey results, approximately 60% of employees value autonomy in the workplace but that jumps to a massive 90% for the legal sector.  

If you give people the answers all the time without letting them research and find their own solutions whilst feeling safe to do so, is vital. They won’t feel micromanaged. Employees feel like they’re being disempowered as they haven’t got autonomy, whereas coaching helps to provide that to them. 

I have clients come to me for 121 coaching and tell me that they asked their firm to invest in them and provide coaching. It’s often that they are told they will think about coaching as a firmwide initiative as they don’t want to invest in 121 because the coaching might not be CPD accredited. I have lawyers and professionals funding their own coaching because they know it helps them with their own career development. I find that the firms who don’t invest in 121 coaching see those individuals move to other firms.

Who wouldn’t want to empower their staff?

When we work with a new cohort of leaders, helping them to establish a peer group and coach each other, the benefits that they get from group coaching just means that it spreads far and wide across the firm. And that’s probably one of the biggest results that I see is that they’re able to have those conversations and support each other.

Amy Bell: That’s what we did in the firm I was in. We had 700 people, a thousand salary partners, next 1,000 a hundred salary partners next 700. So it was a lot. Obviously, all our salary partners wanted to get to equity partner status. They were of the ilk that they couldn’t make everyone an equity partner, you know nothing to go around! So it was like how are we going to make sure that the people that are applying or wanting to progress have got the best skills? 

That was where the idea for the Training Academy came from!

We didn’t just need brilliant technical people or compliance people who are compliant. We need that as well. But we need people with great skills. And so, owing to the shape of the firm, we kicked off with coaching skills for the salary partners! The coaching then cascaded down the firm.

Coaching and people skills for best practice risk management is vital for a compliant firm.

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