How do you solve a problem like hybrid work? That’s the question plaguing (pun intended) Biglaw. Post-pandemic, most firms admit they’re freed from the shackles of five days in the office in order to hit their billable targets. But everything beyond that has been a series of trial and error.
Now Goodwin is beefing up their efforts to make coming to the office a meaningful part of life at the firm. Described by one tipster as a combination of “Big Brother and Bribes,” yesterday, firm leaders Anthony J. McCusker and Mark T. Bettencourt emailed the firm with a new program intended to improve hybrid work — Showing Up @ Goodwin.
The firm is keeping what they think (and what they say they’ve learned from town halls on the subject) works — namely, three days in-office with anchor days mid-week. But the firm is getting serious about the in-office component of life at Goodwin. Like other Biglaw firms before them, Goodwin isn’t afraid to lean on technology and levy real consequences to ensure compliance.
Second, we are launching personal attendance dashboards to help you manage and track the time you spend working from the office. Your individual attendance data, gathered through computer logins, is meant to be a tool for you and those who support your development. The dashboards are designed to create transparency into the data that is being gathered and reinforce positive habits. You can access your dashboard and read more about it on the iNet.
Third, we are adding expectations for in-person engagement to performance frameworks, and in-office attendance data will be shared with the Allocations Committee, Partnership Committee, Attorney Review Committee, and GO! Team managers as part of the broader set of inputs considered when evaluating performance and engagement.
But as even Above the Law’s salty tipster noted, Goodwin is also using a carrot to make the office environment more enjoyable for everyone:
[W]e are introducing two new programs to help foster connectivity within our offices:
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Showing Up Raffle: Within our U.S. offices, local groups (i.e. local BU groups for lawyers and local Department groups for GO! Team members) that meet the in-office attendance standard in a given cycle will be automatically entered into a raffle to win funds, to support socializing as a team. Look out for a program announcement to be made in the coming days.
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Local Fun Fund: All Goodwin partners and employees globally will be invited to submit a brief proposal for a gathering of colleagues together in or around the office, ideally around an activity or shared interest. A new budget will be opened each month, and proposals will be reviewed on a first-come, first-served basis. Stay tuned for a global program announcement to be made in May.
Contrasted with some of the more authoritarian approaches at other firms, at least they’re trying to strike a balance at Goodwin. Offices aren’t going anywhere, the effort to them enjoyable certainly seems worth it.
Read the full email below.
Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter @Kathryn1 or Mastodon @Kathryn1@mastodon.social.
From: “Anthony J. McCusker and Mark T. Bettencourt”
Date: April 30, 2024 at 14:14:11 EDT
To: DG-LAN Users US
Subject: Showing Up
| Showing Up
It is an anchor day. You come to the office, throw on your headphones, or shut your door. You spend the morning in a seemingly continuous series of Zooms. After grabbing lunch at your desk, you review documents, and head out early to beat the traffic. Over the past couple of months, we – along with the other members of the Management Committee – conducted a series of town halls in each of our U.S. offices. We appreciate your candid feedback, which indicates that the scenario described above is a predicament for many of us. What we heard consistently from you is that merely coming into an office is not quite enough to make the experience worthwhile. We must be intentional about the time we spend working together in-person. Each of us needs to make an effort to show up in our relationships with one another – whether through working, mentoring or being a mentee, providing or asking for feedback, or simply getting to know each other better. The firm, for its part, needs to do what it can to foster an environment to make showing up – both in our offices and in your careers – as accessible and as rewarding as possible. These themes echoed loud and clear through our conversations with you. To this end, we want to reaffirm our commitments and introduce a few new elements to make showing up more accessible, transparent, and rewarding. First, we are sticking with our current hybrid model. Everyone who is a part of a physical Goodwin office should work from the office three days per week, two of which should fall on a Tuesday, a Wednesday, or a Thursday. You may continue to vary your schedule week-to-week. Second, we are launching personal attendance dashboards to help you manage and track the time you spend working from the office. Your individual attendance data, gathered through computer logins, is meant to be a tool for you and those who support your development. The dashboards are designed to create transparency into the data that is being gathered and reinforce positive habits. You can access your dashboard and read more about it on the iNet. Third, we are adding expectations for in-person engagement to performance frameworks, and in-office attendance data will be shared with the Allocations Committee, Partnership Committee, Attorney Review Committee, and GO! Team managers as part of the broader set of inputs considered when evaluating performance and engagement. Fourth, we are introducing two new programs to help foster connectivity within our offices:
Finally, we are relaunching the iNet “Hybrid Work” page as the “Showing Up @ Goodwin” page. By your request, we clarified expectations of our in-office work model, along with the various benefits available to the Goodwin community. This page contains additional information about all of the initiatives we list in this email. It is an anchor day. You come to the office – your headphones are off and your door is open. You planned to have in-person meetings and that is how you spend your morning. You use lunch to connect with colleagues and clients. And you find time in your busy afternoon to exchange feedback on a document mark-up with your team. Let us work together towards this future state. Thank you. – Anthony and Mark
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