Intelligent Office UK: The choice of change

Alison Bilgin, chief operating officer at Intelligent Office, says the hybrid-working era has begun, and law firms are already reacting fast

The pandemic has triggered an era of rapid transformation among all kinds of organisations, not least law firms, who are now reconciled to a more agile future as lockdowns relax and offices become accessible once again. With 74% of our law firm clients adopting a hybrid-working model, and the latest PwC research indicating that a majority of employees are preferring to continue working remotely at least three days a week, Intelligent Office is seeing a rapid revolution in the legal industry towards a model that reaps the unique benefits of both in-person and remote working in the most efficient manner.

Evidence of the productivity, efficiency, cost, and wellbeing advantages of remote working has persuaded a high proportion of leading law firms to commit to a hybrid future. However, the attractive benefits of a successful hybrid-working model must not be confused with the ease of achieving success via this model. While there is no post-pandemic hybrid-working blueprint for law firms, there are clear signposts to map out a bespoke hybrid journey. Until now, business continuity plans were designed to mitigate one-off, short-term crises – but sustainable success in the hybrid-working world requires law firms to put in place long-term risk mitigation strategies that also positively impact the culture of the firm and the need for cohesiveness and collaboration among teams.

But what does it mean to be successful in the hybrid world? Securing profitable business growth has always been a fundamental objective for law firms, but the elements that contribute to achieving the objective have changed forever. As the market-leading provider of full-service support to a range of top-50 and mid-market law firms, Intelligent Office has been analysing and delivering those signposts in three main areas, as we help firms transition to hybrid working: real estate, resource allocation and management, and the impact of technology.

Rethink real estate

The vaccines are reducing the need for social distancing in workplaces, but convincing home workers to make the leap of faith and return to the office is challenging. Additionally, with staff dispersed between home, office and on-the-go, law firms are focused on reorganising their office spaces to increase staff collaboration, create personalised workspaces and adjust to lower and much less predictable occupancy levels. Building on our work with progressive firms to rethink the legal office pre-pandemic, Intelligent Office is now engaged on multiple initiatives to help clients in their real-estate planning as they make their shift to hybrid, including:

1. Conducting a comprehensive departmental survey to determine floor space, desk provision and the layout needed to design a highly effective, collaborative ‘coffee shop’ environment.
2. Reviewing all workplace practices, standard operating procedures (SOPs) and policies to ensure they are fit for purpose in the hybrid world.
3. Updating and improving post-pandemic health, safety and workplace wellbeing protocols to reflect both accelerated return to the office and permanent working from home.
4. Digitising core support services – including mailrooms, desk and room- booking apps, and concierge ­– to meet the different demands of hybrid working.

Law firm leaders are increasingly concerned about the utilisation levels of support staff since the pandemic, as lawyers pick up more admin tasks while unsure how to flow work to support teams. With so many firms embedding hybrid working, the productivity of support resource is a critical issue

Supporting real-estate portfolio planning: as leases come to an end and break notice dates approach, firms are looking for assistance with planning for a reduction in square footage and office costs, pulling on the know-how Intelligent Office has built up in efficient office and support service delivery, and the migration of onsite to offsite service centres and homeworking, over many years.

Transform resource allocation and management

A recent survey of 900+ law firm decision-makers revealed that firms are expecting to lose 20-40% of secretarial support staff in the next five years, as they shift to hybrid working. At the same time, respondents reported a worrying trend in fee earners taking on more responsibility for non-chargeable tasks, even as lawyers reported increased stress levels and as the cost of qualified lawyers rose again. This has to be an unacceptable consequence of the rapid shift to home and hybrid working and the squeeze on support resources. For Intelligent Office, supporting firms to get the most administrative, often time-consuming client, matter and file admin done by the most appropriate and cost-effective resources represents a fundamental business mission.

As such, law firms are reviewing their services, such as secretarial support, which is at a critical juncture of transformation, with structures revisited and tasks centralised to ensure they are performed by the most appropriate resource. Intelligent Office is firmly at the heart of this once-in-a-lifetime transition, with the capability to deliver any scale of workflow reorganisation, communication, implementation, ongoing training and management in response to the sharp spike in law firm demand.

The impact of technology on employee productivity

Law firm leaders are increasingly concerned about the utilisation levels of support staff since the pandemic, as lawyers pick up more admin tasks while unsure how to flow work to support teams. With so many firms embedding hybrid working, the productivity of support resource is a critical issue, and one that’s seldom measured, analysed or tracked well today.

Intelligent Office’s extensive experience in managing, measuring and reporting support performance statistics has helped bring proven technologies to bear on this urgent challenge, including our time-recording tool that tracks utilisation and productivity levels to identify where capacity might sit. However, technology in itself cannot drive efficiencies. Quality and responsiveness are also critical. As an Investor in People Platinum status business, we invest in a highly motivated and distributed workforce through training, development, recognition and ongoing communication pathways to enable personal connection. Additionally, with the capability to deliver from shared services centres operating on extended hours, both directly on-premises for firms, and remotely or from home, Intelligent Office is in an advanced position to deliver against the hybrid-working challenges that law firms are facing.

As we have always said, crisis means change – but change can be good. Intelligent Office’s proven best practices, advanced processes, and an operational and management infrastructure that have been refined over two decades mean we have become the glue between remote and office working, and are now uniquely placed to simplify hybrid transformation for law firms.