Billionaire Lord Alan Sugar, who owns prime central London office space, started the year by telling workers to “get their bums back into the office.”
With a ten per cent year-on-year increase in law firms operating fully in the office, there is a strong feeling that in-office collaboration is the key to success.
You can get bums in offices, but can you get hearts?
We don’t share Lord Sugar’s conflict of interest in office culture, so we decided to examine whether a return to the office is really best for collaboration or if it is creating a worse problem.
Is office work the best way to collaborate?
The steady return to office life must be a clear indicator that in-person collaboration is superior otherwise firms would not be so quick to embrace it.
It might be a bit awkward if there were evidence to indicate that the advent of technology has fundamentally changed the way that work is done.
Those pesky Millennials and Gen Z are back at it again, innovating the way that they approach work.
Quiet-quitting, a term for only doing the exact amount of work required to fulfil a job description and no more, is the latest trend sweeping the workforce.
Millennials have been found to “consistently work the least number of hours” compared to other generations and show “the strongest evidence of quiet-quitting.”
Since the term was coined in 2022, it has been embraced by more workers who no longer feel satisfied with giving their heart and soul to a company and feeling unrewarded.
The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) reported that employees forced into the office against their will were more likely to quiet-quit than those given more flexibility.
Worryingly for those driving the return to office exodus, “almost three in five workers said they were more likely to ‘quiet-quit’ if their manager did not provide the flexibility to work from a location that best suited their needs.”
Quiet-quitting kills collaboration as employees no longer strive to push themselves and begin to see work more as a box-ticking exercise.
Why is quiet-quitting so bad?
The thing about quiet-quitting that is hard for employers is that employees cannot be fired for doing it.
They turn up on time, do the work that needs to be done, and don’t make a fuss.
However, if your law firm is going to grow and thrive, and be a happy place to work, inspiring passion in your team can’t hurt.
Quiet-quitting hits law firms hard as solicitors are already facing burnout and the need to work outside of office hours.
50 per cent of solicitors want more time to spend with their families, and half of firms are not billing for all the hours that are worked.
As members of the team begin to quiet-quit, the culture of the firm declines and resentment can grow.
How can I prevent quiet-quitting?
While it is true that fully remote work has been linked to a decline in productivity, particularly for workers who have children, there is little harm in giving your employees some control over their working lives.
Research published in the journal Nature found that “a hybrid schedule with two days a week working from home does not damage performance”, while it “improved job satisfaction and reduced quit rates by one-third.”
Giving your team control over their work lives may go some way to prevent quiet-quitting.
As the main fear behind hybrid work is a disruption of collaboration, you will need a robust system capable of fostering collaboration, whether the team is in the office, at home, or on a Barbadian beach.
Smokeball is equipped with a host of intuitive tools designed to boost collaboration.
From the ability to assign tasks to multiple staff to internal messaging and full visibility over matter progress, Smokeball is tailor-made for dynamic law firms.
Archie, Smokeball’s AI Assistant, helpfully summarises conversations, documents, and even provides updates on a matter, allowing any member of the team to jump in.
Optimising workflows prevents work from spilling into leisure hours, while the automatic time tracking helps you to get paid for all the work that is done.
We believe that happy solicitors provide a better service, so Smokeball enhances efficiency and facilitates collaboration so that your team can engage with more rewarding work and feel satisfied in their careers.
Your team are professionals (they got into this for a reason) and helping them feel respected and satisfied is the cure to quiet quitting.
Stop worrying about bums and focus on hearts. Book a demo today!
