This question dominated the recent Executive Leadership SIG meeting. SIG Co-Chair, David R. Watson, Executive Director, ICLE, shared how ICLE is grappling with answering this question. This approach is shared below.

What a truly crazy world we live in! The past two years have been dominated by all things COVID-19. The good news, at least here in Michigan, is we are beginning to think about life AFTER COVID-19. Are you? Our leadership team has been spending long hours thinking about the future of work at ICLE—no small task, mind you. I thought it might be helpful to share the general framework we have been using as we begin to consider the future of how we work, where we work, and how we reset expectations for our employees and hold each other accountable. All of this is governed by the overriding principles of doing what is right for our customers and what is best for ICLE as a whole. Here are the six broad themes we are contemplating as we work through painting the vision of what the ICLE work environment and culture will look like for the foreseeable future.

1. Relationships—As you consider whether your team is going to be working remotely or in a hybrid scenario with some people working remotely but others working in the office all or some of the time, think carefully about relationships. The relationships among staff we took for granted pre-COVID now need to be nurtured. A much more deliberate and thoughtful effort needs to be built into your day-to-day activities to ensure that the culture and vital communication channels you want to create are actually created and sustained.
2. Accountability/Expectations— If your team is working remotely or partially remotely, how do you communicate expectations to ensure accountability? Even more critically, with a vastly new work environment, does accountability vary between those on-site, hybrid, or off-site? What does productivity now look like? Setting these very important expectations with staff is incredibly important to be successful in a fully remote or hybrid work environment. In this process, take a good look at your current performance evaluation system. With refined definitions of accountability and productivity, and the establishment of new expectations, does your current annual performance evaluation process still work? I would suggest it likely does not and it needs to also be revamped. If you don’t tie accountability, productivity, and expectations to your staff evaluations, these become just words, and the new work environment and culture you hope to establish will in all likelihood never get off the ground or you will lose significant productivity.
3. How do we create a Shared Direction? —How do we bring people along with us and embrace our new vision/plan? How do we tie workplace culture to the new vision/mission? The key—your core leadership team MUST be committed. If not, this undertaking will fail. Once the core team is onboard, the leadership team needs to work with the overall management team and then employees to address questions and seek input, buy-in, and commitment. At ICLE, we have engaged department managers to seek their input and buy-in and then held focus groups with a representative sample of the whole staff to do the same. This is not offering them a chance to change the vision. Rather, it is seeking their input, clarification, and assistance with communication of the vision and to unearth concerns associated with the overall changes so that the plan can address these concerns as well. This approach also helps to encourage a sense of ownership among the staff and creates a vested interest in the vision and plan.
4. Communication—Communication is very different when departments may not be meeting regularly or in the manner they are accustomed to. Feedback loops among staff and to and from managers and staff may not be occurring regularly. This results in an “echo chamber” where you will hear only your own voice unless you commit to regular and systematic communication at all levels. Again, being remote does not afford us the “water cooler” or impromptu communication that often takes place when we are working in a common office. Deliberate, thoughtful, cascading, and consistent communication with a real opportunity for response and feedback are even more important when working remotely or semi-remotely.
5. Technology—How do we leverage technology to support all of the above? We have made a full financial commitment to invest in top-tier technology and infrastructure to ensure we are making our best effort to have our new work environment successful—both on-site and off-site. We are also committing to dedicated “collaboration” spaces for teams who will be required to come into the building in certain instances to achieve innovation. These dedicated rooms will have an adequate space where employees can be distanced/safe, and where the technology is first-rate. We are establishing dedicated office space for those staff members who have no internet or unstable internet to ensure technology enhances rather than impedes their work experience. Those employees who perform tasks that must performed in the office for security reasons (e.g., credit card/financial transactions) will also be afforded dedicated and secure (PCI-Payment Card Industry Compliant) office space.
6. Staff Support in Times of Change—We have spent considerable time focusing on fairness and recognizing the challenges COVID-19 has posed for staff during these very difficult times. And while the plan we are putting in place has ICLE as a whole as its core focus, we have also ensured we are prioritizing staff needs and personal pressures. Our people are critical to our success. Providing them the flexibility to address family needs (e.g., childcare) and with work schedules for important work-life needs and balance is essential for our organization moving forward. Our hope is if we invest in our staff in ways that are new, innovative, and supportive, they will be more productive, committed, and loyal. We expect to also be able to attract and retain the best of talent in an increasingly competitive market.

We have a long way to go in implementing our vision and thoughtfully and deliberately infusing our culture with the new working norms we are working to create. No doubt there will be significant hurdles along the way. We have also acknowledged to ourselves as a leadership team and to our staff that we do not have all the answers. However, we believe this approach is our best approach given the circumstances. So we have committed to this vision for at least a year. At that point, we will assess, take stock of our lessons learned, and adjust appropriately. This will allow us to focus on the implementation of this vision and culture and give staff a sense of overall stability.

I hope this has been helpful and has given you some ideas to consider as you think about your own organizations and the future of work there. I will be sure to give you updates as we progress along this path. We view this as a tremendous opportunity to come out of the COVID pandemic stronger and better than ever. If you have questions, please do not hesitate to contact me: watsondr@icle.org.

Happy Holidays to you all!

(submitted on behalf of ACLEA’s In-House SIG)

My law firm went remote on March 16, 2020, due to COVID-19. We were told to go into the office, gather all necessary items, and not to return until further notice. It was a surreal feeling going into the office on that Monday and experiencing the typically bustling city of Chicago. It felt more like a ghost town than a city. The rest of the week went by like a blur—cancelling live programs, wrestling with technology, and hoping for the best.

In the weeks to come, we all wrestled with changes in our personal and home lives. When it began to dawn on us that remote work was here to stay (at least for the foreseeable future), it was time to think about online, rather than live training.

My law firm has used webinars mainly for external client-facing programs. Internally, most of our training programs were still live in one office and video-conferenced to others.  Pivoting to live, on-line programs was challenging, and here are my lessons learned.

1. Not all remote learning platforms are the same. WebEx (meetings or events), Zoom, GoToMeeting, and all the rest each have their pros and cons. My firm had used WebEx as a platform for external programs, so we began to use WebEx for internal offerings. But what I had to learn is that even with one product, there were different functionalities, depending on whether one opted to use WebEx meetings or events. And I also had to immerse myself in those differences.  I don’t speak I.T. fluently, so this definitely took some time. But it was time well spent because, ultimately, I needed to teach my speakers about the differences, so they too could choose the right approach. 
2. Some attorney-speakers are not comfortable with change. Not all of our partners and senior associates were comfortable presenting online. Of course, comfort of a live classroom was always something we handled (how many people to expect, classroom set up, speaker needs, flipcharts, small group breakout rooms, and the like), but now we had to think about the speaker’s lighting in his or her room, the sound, the connection and bandwidth capabilities, sharing a screen, using chat features, muting/unmuting, and the rest. I created an FAQ for presenting on-line for our speakers on these and other issues and coordinated with I.T. to make sure the speakers had time for a quick dress rehearsal. I also volunteered to be a “producer” for all internal programs, so that I could not only take care of all CLE related tasks (reminding folks to send in verification forms, noting the CLE program code, etc.), but could also handle monitoring the chat, helping with technical issues, and more. 
3. Interactivity can be achieved on-line, but it’s different. Most of our live programs, despite my attempts at incorporating interactivity, still remained lecture based. Pivoting to an on-line format hasn’t changed delivery style. If anything, some speakers are more reluctant to try to incorporate interactive components while learning a new format for presenting. But when exposed to a presentation by Steve Hughes on how to make programs more engaging, I did see incremental change. Perhaps not putting folks into small groups to discuss an issue, but at least trying something like posing a question and asking the audience to respond in the chat feature, using polling, or asking for a quick yes/no. And, for smaller programs, asking the audience to display video, so that the speaker could make eye contact and foster a discussion.
4. Lessons learned. As always, ACLEA members were a great resource. Knowing that I could reach out to those who had more experience was extremely beneficial. Second, being willing and able to learn details about the resources we had and their advantages/disadvantages was key. While I.T. is outstanding, sometimes you need to get your hands dirty. Immersing myself in the platforms and learning the interactive tools was key to teaching others. Finally, patience.  Not all speakers were willing, ready, or able to adapt. Some feared that their expertise in the subject matter would be undermined by their inability to handle technology.  My job was not to dismiss that fear, but to acknowledge that the technology was a bit cumbersome and did take a bit of practice. That said, it was also my job to teach the basics and take care of the rest—everything from reading CLE codes to muting/unmuting to posting polling questions. I do feel that during this time, I have forged new relationships with partner-speakers who might just be willing, over time, to try something new!