Culture: the crucial key to office comeback - S8 EP 04

Rob Bower, Managing Partner of Montagu Evans, tells Claire Rason about why he believes the key to encouraging individuals to return to the office lies in fostering a strong organisational culture. While creating appealing workspaces is important, leadership plays a crucial role in shaping a culture that attracts employees back to the workplace. 

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[00:00:00] Oliver Hansard: Welcome to the latest episode of the Lawyer's Coach podcast. I'm Ollie Hansard and I'm delighted to have Claire Raisson with me, my co host. Hey Claire, how are you doing? 

[00:00:11] Claire Rason: I'm doing really well, looking forward to this episode. And who have you been speaking to? So I have been speaking to another non lawyer.

[00:00:18] This series, we've had a couple of those and in this episode it's Rob Bauer. Rob is the managing partner of Montague Evans. They're a property consultancy. Interestingly, they are a partnership. So again, much like Nicky Owen, lots of overlap there in terms of partnerships and how they're managed. And I caught up with Rob to talk about the trend of.

[00:00:40] offices and the concerns I think some firms are currently seeing around how to get individuals back in. I'm really enjoying 

[00:00:48] Oliver Hansard: the notion of having some non lawyers bring different perspectives from outside the industry onto the podcast. Yeah, 

[00:00:55] Claire Rason: no, I'm really enjoying it. I think, you know, both Nikki and Robin, this episode [00:01:00] provides some insights that I think really will hopefully make lawyers, both private practice and in house, think differently about certain topics.

[00:01:09] I think that's 

[00:01:10] Oliver Hansard: right, because as you listen to Rob, the industry can start to see how other partnerships are dealing with critical issues, in this case, obviously, getting people back into the office. And so learning from, from outside the legal industry, I think it's just really helpful. So let's press play.

[00:01:27] So we 

[00:01:28] Claire Rason: always start our podcasts by trying to understand a little bit about how you ended up in the role that you 

[00:01:35] Rob Bower: are in. I've been at the firm a very long time. So I joined in 90 1994. And so I've been here, man and boy, really worked up as a, as a surveyor started life as a qualified valuer doing mostly work in London.

[00:01:49] In the development space, because we do a lot of development work as a practice, and I've moved into various senior leadership roles, management roles over the [00:02:00] years ultimately ending up in this seat as managing partner of the firm overall. So Yeah, so it's a fairly simple story in that respect.

[00:02:08] Claire Rason: And we are going to be talking about the, the legal profession. We're going to be talking about in particular, the impact that hybrid working is having on that profession. But I think there's probably quite a lot of overlap in terms of. perhaps some of the things that you're seeing as a partnership, as a professional services firm.

[00:02:30] So we'll, we'll look at things from both angles. I guess where I wanted to start was, was where, you know, we've had this conversation offline and I wanted to sort of pick off. up the offline conversation online, which is I'm hearing more and more from, from lawyers, from particularly legal leaders, how difficult it is to create cohesion when, you know, some of the team are in the office, some of the team are working from home.

[00:02:59] So I guess we'll start [00:03:00] with, you know, are you seeing the same thing? In your firm, 

[00:03:04] Rob Bower: the return to work post COVID return to offices working offices does I think have a number of similarities across different, those different professional services businesses. But there are, I think there are some differences as well.

[00:03:20] So I don't think you can just apply a. I think we're all slightly looking for a silver bullet answer as we all tend to, we all say we're not looking for a silver bullet answer, but we really are. And I, I don't think there is one. I think you, you genuinely need to start to look at the nature of the underlying sort of drivers of the business, what they actually do in the different areas of the business and, and probably nuance how you're approaching that sort of cohesion, collaboration, return to the office.

[00:03:49] Perspective. For example, we don't time record across the whole of our business lawyers generally time record across their business. So there [00:04:00] is, I think, quite a bit of inserting in lawyers terms. They're looking at the data and would say from a recovery perspective to them. It was They were recovering more billable hours pre COVID when everyone was working in the office five days a week than they are now.

[00:04:19] And so it's dead simple. We get everybody back in the office five days a week. We're going to recover more billable hours. Maybe that's, maybe that is the answer. I would suggest perhaps it's not as simple as that. And you do need to think about The impact that is having on your people having on the mental health and well being on their happiness and all of that leading to productivity and output.

[00:04:46] So as a business, if I just do some stats, I mean, as a business, our power. Occupancy levels are now on a Monday up near 70 percent, probably over 70, just over 70 [00:05:00] percent, 100 percent pretty much, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and then falls off a cliff to 20 or 25 percent on a Friday. I think the bit to probably keep in mind there, I'm not sure how different that is to the way we were working pre COVID.

[00:05:20] As a, as a surveying and property business, we have people out on site, we have people at clients offices we have people out doing business development, and quite often that was done out of the office sometimes over lunch. You know, yeah, frankly, sometimes on a golf course on a Friday. So I don't think we were ever operating at 70%, 80%, 100 percent on a Friday.

[00:05:42] We're probably always operating at something under 50%. So I think it's the relative drop that probably need to be looking at. And in that context, I'm not. I'm not sure the drop off is as big as perhaps some people think. 

[00:05:56] Claire Rason: And I suspect there are some [00:06:00] listeners thinking, gosh, if only we were at 100 percent for three days of the week.

[00:06:06] What is it that Rob is doing to, to get those numbers? 

[00:06:12] Rob Bower: It is a choice in some respects to be there. And I think probably worth remembering, in my opinion, people come to work, you come to work, they're volunteers. Paid volunteers, but they're volunteers. You know, they're not under some sort of, you know, prison sentence to come into work.

[00:06:27] So, they're all there as volunteers ultimately, and I think it's worth having out. In mind, when you set the rules, if you like, or the guidance, we have approached it by making it clear that we see ourselves as an office based business. We don't see ourselves as a, as a, as a fully remote business, but that we do embrace agile working.

[00:06:51] And we do, we do embrace this move towards more flexible and on a part of the time working remotely or working from home [00:07:00] basis. We've tried to encourage people to look at that on a sort of hierarchy structure, I suppose, of clients first, team second, individual third to encourage people to think about it from a client centric perspective, but also from a team centric perspective, rather than just from an individual point of view.

[00:07:24] If we start to sort of perhaps almost look at it a bit generationally as well, I mean, quite, quite a lot of the. Younger people in the business will have always been, have been in the back in the office pretty quick. They wanted to be back in the office and that's for a whole host of reasons. I think it's both for social reasons, you know, let's not forget the office or work for, but certainly for many people in professional services is part of how they build their social network.

[00:07:51] Some of the more senior or older generations in the business that may live further out. may, may have a longer commute who are [00:08:00] not perhaps as willingly coming back to the office. That's certainly our experience. It may be different in other businesses. And that may be because they don't have as much desire or need to build a social network because whether they're right or wrong, they think they've got all the friends they need and they don't need any more.

[00:08:14] And the commute becomes the deterrent as, as there's certainly one potential factor that long commute. And I think there is a piece, not that we can solve that. That's obviously outside of our control. But genuinely I think there is a piece there for governments and local authorities and transport companies in this country.

[00:08:35] You saw very well talking about better designed offices, the culture in offices and all the rest of it. One of the really big things that surveys constantly show that is deterring people from coming into the office is the commute. And the transport that the awful experience they have on that can not just the length of it, but the experience they have on that commute.

[00:08:55] The other aspect that I think it's sort of worth remembering in terms of the [00:09:00]work from home and doing everything over a zoom call, you know, of this sort of nature is it seems to the pendulum almost swung too far the other way. And if we suggested that we ran our friendships via zoom, I think people would think we're.

[00:09:20] pretty bonkers. If I suggested, I tell you what, let's run our families by Zoom, so we won't meet, we'll just all sit in separate rooms and got on Zoom calls together, you would think I was completely bonkers. If we said let's educate our children via Zoom on it, we'd think, you'd think we were bonkers. So how do we think it's okay for work to operate on that?

[00:09:40] I mean, it's just not. There are certain things where again, we'd all probably acknowledge that if you do certain things by email, it can come across really badly. people can misinterpret it. Why? Because it's a fairly narrow blunt form of communication. Equally, I would say not doing it face to face over zoom.

[00:09:58] What are we talking about? 60%, [00:10:00] 70 percent efficiency compared to face to face. So if we acknowledge there's a 30 to 40 percent chunk of something that's lost there. I think the need to be face to face, the need to get people together is, is self evident to many people. And that's why they want to come back into our offices.

[00:10:17] So so that kind of links back to culture, which would be my last point. You've got to, you've got to have a culture, you can have the best offices, designed offices in the world. If you've got a crap culture, then people aren't going to come in. I don't know whether this is appropriate for me to say this, but when you look at the return to work stats of a lot of public sector organisations, they're really poor.

[00:10:38] And I would say a lot of them don't have a very good culture. And so you could put them in the best offices we could possibly design. I'm not sure that would necessarily encourage a load of people to come back. So I think there is a really important cultural part about it and binding people together and businesses where there is a and [00:11:00] be honest about it as well.

[00:11:00] Maybe there are certain areas of your business where collaboration is not really necessary. In which case don't force people to come back to the office or even necessarily think about encouraging it. If, if there isn't parts of your business where you need really heavy collaboration then boy do you need to try and create an environment where they will want to come and do that.

[00:11:19] And that's probably the last point isn't it back to what we do as a business or the real estate market. There is a transformation going on of creating spaces redefining this Word office. What? What is an office? You know, it isn't a factory full of desks any longer. It is a space where you create something that's almost more akin to the home environment, domestic environment, where there are lots of places for casual interaction, conversations, people to sit down and share experiences and knowledge together.

[00:11:55] Not just Banks of desks or and maybe from a legal perspective, I don't [00:12:00] know, the challenge there might be lots of glass boxes or rooms with people sitting in individual spaces. I think cellularized and open plan is it is a really difficult aspect of modern office design. 

[00:12:14] Claire Rason: You know, it's interesting, I think that as firms are moving from full occupancy to a hybrid model, which perhaps requires less space, if designed in the same way as before, I, you know, we don't need as much space for desks.

[00:12:29] You know, I wonder if there is a shift towards. downsizing or whether there is a shift towards saying, okay, well, we need to use this space differently. So, you know, whilst the same space might not have the same number of desks in it, we can do something slightly different with that space. So I wonder if you've got any reflections on that, either, whether you have any idea of, of kind of what the, what the trend is and, and any thoughts on whether that's the right way to go.

[00:12:55] Rob Bower: Our own experiences is actually went from we took, we took a bit more space when we [00:13:00] moved, not less and, but the additional space was designed to create more non desk based spaces. So. We went from a fairly traditional office arrangement with 250 people based in that office, 250 desks some ground floor meeting rooms and reception area, and then some internal meeting rooms up on the floors.

[00:13:29] And the rest just filled with rows of desks. To an arrangement where we had 220 desks. Not 250 desks for probably a headcount of day one of about 300 and now of about 375, but the additional spaces where we were creating places for people to work, as well as places for people to meet, both formally and informally, got us towards something [00:14:00] like 480 places to work in some form or another.

[00:14:05] Might not be a desk, but another space where, where you could do some, some work. So that's our own experience. We sort of planned that pre COVID. Thankfully, Not only remained relevant post COVID, but became even more relevant. And in terms of market trends, I would say that's probably what we're seeing people moving towards in as much as less desks, fixed desks, and more non desk type spaces.

[00:14:34] On the sort of general market trends towards more space or less space, in our experience, that does tend to vary depending on the industry or, or sector. So. And probably on the size of the business as well, actually. So if you're a reasonable size business, perhaps therefore is inevitably siloed, we are seeing a number [00:15:00] of businesses that are working on the basis of bringing in teams or groups of teams on different days, in which case, potentially you can significantly shrink your office floor plate to the amount of space that you occupy, because you're only bringing in a proportion of your business on any given day for other businesses.

[00:15:21] Where there may be smaller business or medium sized business or where collaboration across the business as a whole rather than within business units remains highly relevant to how you service your clients and your work, then you've got the challenge of your peak days. are still going to be trying to get absolutely everybody in.

[00:15:40] In which case, you can't really shrink your floor plate very much, because you need to allow for maximum capacity on those bid pays. So, it kind of tends to vary, depending on the nature of the industry or the business. And probably the size, the size of the business. 

[00:15:57] Claire Rason: As someone who is kind of business development [00:16:00] focused, it's interesting because I, you know, I imagine there are firms that are thinking about bringing in teams, but actually what you lose is that ability to work across different teams and, and think about how you can service clients slightly differently.

[00:16:16] And, and the other kind of reflection that I'm having, and it. Be interested to see how your industry is responding. So it's, you know, it's one thing to design a space that allows for people to go and, you know, play ping pong or, you know, do something slightly different. But actually there's also a piece around giving people permission when they're in the office to be playing ping pong, to be in one of those spaces working slightly differently.

[00:16:45] And that has to be driven by the firm. But I wonder how much that is present in the minds of, you know, property companies that are looking at redesigning spaces, you know, you can redesign a space if no one's there, then, you know, [00:17:00] you just have a pretty space. 

[00:17:01] Rob Bower: Yeah, absolutely. I suppose we're back to the culture thing to, you know, all of these bits knit, knit together.

[00:17:07] There isn't, there isn't this sort of silver bullet piece. If we take London and we take the city as example, there, there is a clear trend underway, for example, for businesses migrating from Canary Wharf back to the city. And sort of ask yourself why that's the case. And if you look at what those businesses are doing they might be financial businesses, they might be professional services businesses.

[00:17:31] They are generally seeking to trend. And the, these probably are businesses that are trying to get as greater number of people in the office as they can on any given day. So they are looking generally at taking smaller amounts of space. Maybe not vastly reduced, but, but certainly a reasonable, reasonable reduction, 20 to 30% reduction [00:18:00] may, may be 50 percent at the most in a few cases, but I would have said it's, it's less than that as, as a rule.

[00:18:05] So taking less space. But better quality space and in a, a different, whether you could say it's a better location or necessarily want to pitch canary wharf against the city, but different location, you know, you've got a an area that has evolved over hundreds of years, rather than an area that has been built as a, as a single effectively sort of city.

[00:18:27] Whatever the reasons, the trend of occupiers is to begin to start to look back towards the city. Maybe the accessibility is better. Maybe the food and beverage and the amenities are better. It's just a more diverse built environment, I suspect. So that's what they're kind of gravitating towards and taking.

[00:18:46] Better quality space, but slightly less of it. A number of law firms who've done that recently and a number of finance houses and insurance companies and other people that have done that. Two quite big drivers to that. [00:19:00] The What's so called war for talent. So better quality space to compete for the brightest minds and get the best young talent to come and work in the space that you've created.

[00:19:11] And secondly, to move into space that is appropriate to the CSR commitments or net zero carbon commitments that most of those businesses have given or made to their workforce and to their clients. 

[00:19:27] Claire Rason: You were one of, kind of the first, I think to start, you mean partly 'cause you had new space to, to start have, you know, re Yeah.

[00:19:33] You know, to start going back into the, to the office early on. And I wonder how much that is driven by the fact that your clients are obviously in the, in, you know, in the property sector. They, you know, they, they're their bread and butter is real. You know, they want people to be in buildings because that's, that's, you know, that's where they make their money and therefore, you know, advising them makes sense to, to also be in a building, you know, and also this [00:20:00]idea of the, the property industry, I think has a reputation for being one, which is, you know, does business face to face that, you know, likes to have that contact.

[00:20:11] So I wonder how much that influences. Your business and I guess extending that out thinking about with professional services, you know, many will be based in London, you know, are you seeing other industries starting to come back into London, you know, therefore starting to have that kind of, you know, feeling of what we need to be here because this is where our clients are at the moment.

[00:20:34] Rob Bower: So on the first point about being in the property industry and you know, are we are we buying our own cell basically? Yeah, I think there's a, I think there's a degree of that. We're in, we're in real estate, so we tend to be pro real estate. So there is a bit of an echo chamber risk. And we believe that what we're doing is reflective of [00:21:00] what's happening in out in the wider market, which I think is sort of leading to your second point.

[00:21:04] And. So if we talk about the real estate, they are sort of voting with their feet and coming back into offices and you, you will probably see a greater push amongst people in the property industry to be using the property that they're in or encouraging people. In this increasingly data driven world, though, I think we do have enough data for objective challenge and a sense check on whether it's, you know, just a bunch of property people believing their own rhetoric.

[00:21:38] So across other industries, it varies quite considerably if you look at some of the stats. We We're probably seeing highest sort of take up numbers across finance law, certain areas of the [00:22:00] professional services market, and certainly talking to one of the senior officers at the City of London recently he said our numbers show that law has actually been the strongest I think Returner to use of the space and the technology companies that we have in the city are at the weakest end of the spectrum.

[00:22:24] So I can't remember exactly what numbers he was talking about, but sort of 65 to 70 percent take up amongst law firms returned to offices, 40 percent amongst. technology companies. So definitely varies across industries. I think the other thing which is worth noting is it is also changing over, over time.

[00:22:50] And I think there is an element of people getting into patents. There is quite a bit of research out there that, you know, once people have established a routine, It takes [00:23:00] quite a long time to break that routine and re establish a new routine. And clearly we have, we have learned or established a number of new routines through COVID and remote working.

[00:23:10] And it is going to take quite a long time for those routines to be rewritten. In some cases, hopefully they won't be fully rewritten, because I think we all recognize there are benefits to the way we're working now. Ultimately, maybe we'll end up establishing a variety of routines because it's clear that some employers are probably being quite heavy handed about return to work and their expectations almost in a threatening way.

[00:23:42] You want a job, get back in the office. Some people will respond to that and return for frankly being paid what they might consider to be a significant amount of money. Others will say, no, thanks very much. I'm going to go and work somewhere else and re assess my work life balance. So [00:24:00] it's going to lead to quite a lot of change, people moving around, perhaps an opportunity for employers to differentiate themselves.

[00:24:08] Claire Rason: A final question on that idea of choice for those that are listening that are wondering, you know, which direction to go in, you know, do we, you know, keep the same space? Do we move? What advice would you have for them? 

[00:24:23] Rob Bower: Start with the, start with the clients and the people, certainly in professional services businesses, client, heavy client facing businesses.

[00:24:32] I think really important for those businesses to ask themselves. How are our clients working? What, what do they expect? What, what serves them best? And to, and to be, be really open about that with your, with your people, make it part of the dialogue, make it part of a consultation and a collaboration so that everybody across the business understands ultimately we are doing this because it, it, it's[00:25:00] supporting our clients.

[00:25:02] And then. To come to their people and say, okay, how, within the context of what we need to do to best serve our clients, how do we create an environment that is supportive as possible for you as individuals? Those two forces I think are, are what should be driving anybody thinking about how they, where they locate their space, what type of space they take, how they design it And that will vary, I guess, from business to business.

[00:25:29] You know, are you going to get lots of clients still visiting the office? Have you got a lot less clients visiting the office now? Are you working much more remotely with them? All of those things will impact how and what type of space you take, how you design it. And then having done that, then I think you move to people and go, right, what suits our people best?

[00:25:52] In terms of location, what suits our people best in terms of type and style of space? What type of culture have we got? And are we trying to [00:26:00] nurture? How important is collaborate? Genuinely, how important is every business as our collaboration is really important. But really, how important is it? And which bits of the business is it really important in?

[00:26:09] And which business is it less important in? And if you've got parts of the business where they need quiet. studious time focusing on documents or leases or then either create an environment for them in the office where that works or recognize that actually home may well be a better place for those people to to concentrate and be really productive.

[00:26:33] Because ultimately that's what most businesses are trying to focus on, how they increase or improve their productivity. So don't take a silver bullet approach. What is it that will enhance and increase productivity? And that isn't necessarily just assuming getting everybody back into the office is the right answer for that, I think.

[00:26:52] Claire Rason: I could carry on talking to you for, for hours, but thank you so much. Really helpful insights there, I'm sure for, for people [00:27:00] listening. So thank you. 

[00:27:01] Rob Bower: Pleasure, Clare. Thank you very much for having me. 

[00:27:03] Oliver Hansard: Fantastic conversation, Clare. Thanks ever so much for that. What stood out for you as you spoke to Rob?

[00:27:09] Claire Rason: So what was really interesting for me was Rob clearly works in the property industry and therefore, you know, one might assume that the conversation would have gone in the direction of, you know, trends in, in office builds and how, you know, you can make the physical space one. Which is attractive to employees.

[00:27:32] And, you know, there was an element of that, obviously, but this idea of culture, you know, really struck me coming from someone from the property industry, that it all comes back to culture. And the way of thinking about the space for me really resonated in terms of why do we need to have people in the office?

[00:27:54] What do we need them to do when they're in the office? And how do we create an environment where [00:28:00] people want to come? And I think that that conversation is one that law firms need to be having more of, rather than, you know, we need to get people back in, questioning why, and thinking about how to achieve things differently, I think, hopefully, is going to be a takeaway for many of our listeners from Rob's conversation.

[00:28:21] Oliver Hansard: That's right. He had that really helpful hierarchy, didn't he? You know, you're one's thinking process should really be what's best for the clients, then what's best for your team and then what's best for the individual rather than starting from a place which is, well, I only want to come in once a week.

[00:28:38] And I thought that that lens of, you know, if we're going to be a successful business and drive great client service and retain our clients, they've got to be at the top of the pyramid when it comes to our thinking about how we operate. 

[00:28:52] Claire Rason: Absolutely. And I think from that, you know, I would say that wouldn't I, given it's a big part of what I do, but going out and speaking to clients therefore has to [00:29:00] be part of that process and understanding what do clients want, you know, do clients feel the difference when the team is in the office together?

[00:29:08] Do clients care? You know, and, and often I think we, we jump to assumptions and sometimes those assumptions will be correct, but actually You know, the more we can go out and ask our clients to understand what they want and how best we can serve them has to be part of the process when we think about offices and how we, how we manage our teams and how, you know, what's needed.

[00:29:29] And how 

[00:29:30] Oliver Hansard: we work generally in, in the broadest sense, you know, this, this notion of design the space for the task, I thought was a really great piece of advice and, you know, rather than having those assumptions, let's, let's get down to what do we really need to do and where. So thanks for such a great conversation and speaking to Rob, 

[00:29:47] Claire Rason: Claire.

[00:29:48] Not at all. It was my pleasure. 

[00:29:50] Oliver Hansard: So coming up in the next episode, I had the enormous pleasure of speaking to Nikki Edwards and she's a litigation partner at Howard Kennedy. We had a fascinating [00:30:00] conversation when Nikki talked about litigators as the true problem solvers. She also talks about The D, E, and I activities that she's undertaking at Howard Kennedy.

[00:30:10] Claire Rason: Really looking forward to hearing from Nikki. I've spoken to Nikki a number of times and I know she is always good value, so can't wait for that. 

[00:30:17] Oliver Hansard: Brilliant stuff. Thank you, Claire, and thanks for listening. 

[00:30:21] Rob Bower: Lawyer's Coach is brought to you by Client Talk and Hansard Coaching. If you're a lawyer and would like to take part in Lawyers Coach, please visit our website, lawyercoach.

[00:30:31] co. uk for further details. And you can also join the conversation on our LinkedIn group, Lawyers Coach. If there are any topics you'd like to hear us discuss, then just get in touch.