Reducing culture risks in hybrid and remote models
Hybrid working is now standard across the legal sector — but that doesn’t mean it’s risk-free.
Through my work as a leadership coach and consultant in the legal sector, I have seen that one of the biggest long-term risks of hybrid is culture erosion. By this, I mean that the culture of the firm becomes less and less strong as a result of the culture being misunderstood, being harder to pass on to new joiners, and ultimately being diluted through fewer opportunities to engage in a culture rich, face to face environment.
So what can you do to get the benefits of hybrid without the erosion of your culture? Here are a few essential things to follow:
- Be intentional with your onboarding process
Onboarding should be designed with hybrid in mind. Combine asynchronous materials, such as case studies and values walkthroughs, with live sessions and shadowing. Work out which elements will be best delivered face-to-face — office tours, getting-to-know-you sessions and team building exercises are all good example of things that work best in person.
It’s also much harder to convey culture subtly when working online — so more direct discussion of what the culture is and what the expectations are would be helpful. Peer mentors with over two years’ experience at the firm can help decode the culture.
In one firm I worked with, a lateral partner who joined during lockdown struggled to read the cultural expectations — particularly around how junior lawyers were supported. His overly direct style, inherited from a different firm culture, almost led to two junior departures. Earlier, more deliberate onboarding might have prevented the misalignment.
- Create a culture that is hybrid (rather than seeing remote working as a bolt-on)
When you’ve always been in the office, it’s easy to treat the remote part of work as an add-on, and ‘not the real work’. But for hybrid to work well, the culture needs to be seen as a hybrid one. As such, values and behaviours which support the culture need to work for remote and in-office settings.
Processes and tools need to work for everyone, not just the people in the office that day. This is particularly important, in order to avoid the ‘in-office bias’ that I see too often — where those who get seen, heard and promoted are the ones who go in the office more than others. And if you’re thinking, ‘they deserve it if they’re going in’, then you’re not yet thinking of your culture as truly hybrid — check your assumptions and start again.
- Ensure that leaders are modelling the values and culture overtly
In a hybrid world, subtle cues as to what is important around here, and how people are expected to act, can get lost. As a result, it’s important that leaders go over the top with communicating priorities and values. This could be narrating decisions out loud, spotlighting best practice, or encouraging honest feedback between team members about what’s working and what isn’t.
One partner I spoke to told me that on a recent office day, a junior lawyer commented on how useful it was to overhear her closing a client deal. We often forget how much of our culture is passed on through proximity and example — something hybrid makes harder.
- Create rules and processes where necessary
Where everyone isn’t always together — and particularly where working arrangements are still bedding in — it is beneficial to codify expectations. What are the norms for hybrid meetings? What is a reasonable response time to a message? What are the core working hours?
Clear expectations such as these will reduce friction, solidify a sense of ‘the way we do things around here’ (which is my favourite definition of culture) and prevent inconsistency and resentment between colleagues.
A final thought
Strong cultures aren’t a nice-to-have; they’re critical for a well-run law firm that wants to mean something to its people and clients. The challenge is to design hybrid in a way that sustains, rather than erodes, that culture.
