JENNI TELLYN AT STEPHENSON HARWOOD SEES A CLEAR ROLE FOR KM IN TACKLING BARRIERS TO INCLUSION
Belonging, inclusion and diversity (BID) initiatives continue to be front-page news as law firms strive to address the challenge of opening access to the profession and retaining more diverse talent. Knowledge management teams might not be the first departments firms turn to for help in this mission, but that should change – if I do say so myself as something of a diversity statistician’s intersectional dream (a female, slightly disabled, state school-educated lesbian). Here are just some of the ways knowledge functions – well known as expert collaborators and silo melters – can be valuable allies to their BID colleagues.
• Communities of practice/networks It would be strange to expect a firm’s people to truly thrive without knowledge about how to navigate the organisation they are part of. How do employees navigate the informal knowledge-sharing networks across the firm? And do you have to ‘know the right people’ to get involved? KM teams can help to examine whether there are implicit barriers to certain groups of employees getting a seat at the table on project working groups or for thought-leadership initiatives. As firms look to avoid ‘Zoom fatigue’, try not to have everyone join every meeting and start to consider how hybrid/remote in-person training and collaboration will work going forward, it will be important to ensure they don’t exclude on the basis of bias.
• Combat alienation by enabling collaboration One example of how a KM initiative has tried to foster a sense of belonging is our own ‘randomised coffee trial’ SHare-a-ccino scheme. We’ve tried to simulate random ‘watercooler’ chats that people missed in lockdown by each month enabling them to connect to a new person at the firm from outside their normal network for a virtual coffee. This has also helped new joiners to develop a sense of belonging and provides an opportunity to diversify networks and gain perspectives from people who have a different experience of the firm.
• Gender-neutral drafting It’s now well known that the impact of outdated gender-biased drafting in legal documentation can reinforce stale gender stereotypes and undermine efforts towards equality. It is becoming more commonplace to address correspondence “Dear [name of firm]” rather than “Dear Sirs”, and to avoid gender-laden terms like “chairman” or “manageress” in favour of “chair” and “manager”. Precedent drafters can help to embed this approach in the firm’s base documentation by tweaking templates using guidance from bodies such as the InterLaw Diversity Forum as a starting point.
Ultimately, structuring your firm’s data to provide easy access to information (whether through matter maps, enterprise search, intranet knowledge dashboards or process checklists) can also relieve stress and allow employees to feel more in control of their work. And through mentoring juniors and guiding through legal training, the knowledge team is often key to fostering an environment where mistakes can be admitted, and failure embraced, to nurture innovation and team spirit.
In short, good KM really can make you happy.
This article was taken from Briefing June 2021 – Platforms for progress. Read the full publication here.
