Growth & Development

All our people are all given the opportunity to be part of our successful mentoring programme.

Each person is paired up with a more senior lawyer in a different team who meets with them throughout the year, providing support and guidance in relation to their career development and their aspirations. The mentoring programme deepens our connected culture, creating, maintaining and enhancing strong relationships between our people.

We also run whole group training sessions on topics chosen by the mentoring group. Some recent topics have included:

• Crucial conversations
• Imposter syndrome
• Time management
• How to meet your target
• Networking
• How to effectively communicate with clients

Our competencies framework has been designed to help our people grow and develop. The framework includes a set of competencies for each role and are divided into four areas: servicing our clients, growing our business, leading and managing and servicing our clients. We recognise that people will excel in different areas and actively encourage the development of different skills.

Our competencies sit alongside our Core Values and culture, which embody our beliefs, attitudes, standards, and how we work together to achieve our vision.

We use a motivational, employee engagement tool, Mojo. Which enables our people to understand what motivates them. Everyone has access to their own account where they can track their motivation and set goals. As part of our review process we encourage our people to participate in setting actions every 90 days.

We know that motivations change and Mojo helps our managers understand what each member of their team needs to feel motivated, fulfilled, and productive.

We support our people to work flexibly in terms of time and place.

Our dress code is, “dress for your diary”. We encourage our people to stick to what they are comfortable with as long as it is appropriate for their interactions during the working day.

Our commitment to support our people in achieving good health and wellbeing compels us to provide a healthy and supportive working environment in which our people can be themselves, flourish and reach their full potential.

Alongside our strategy, our health and wellbeing group is open to all our people to join. We focus on different core areas such as physical health and wellbeing, mental and emotional wellbeing, social, and financial.

We run relaxed, fun initiatives such as:

• Wellbeing Wednesday when we focus on educating our people on a wellbeing topic
• Firmwide challenges such as walking as far as we can on one month
• Training and awareness using internal speakers and external speakers at our lunch and learn sessions

We have a Training and Development policy which includes access to funding for professional qualifications such as CILEX and SQE exams, and time off for study.

Internal training is provided throughout the year and is available to all employees in the form of Lunch & Learns, team-based or departmental training, external training, and/or webinars.

All of our people have access to training and webinars through their own my MBL Accounts as well as the available resources on LexisNexis psl. We encourage our people to attend specialist external training, and to reflect and feedback to their team members.

We are proud of our connected and positive culture. Ellis Jones day is a great way to celebrate our culture and values. On the last working day of each month, we encourage our people to come into the office, and we provide them all with breakfast from local businesses.

We monthly e-newsletter, “Movers and Shakers” is jam packed with staff news, activities to get involved in, social events and a celebration of our successes from the previous month. Nigel Smith, our Manager Partner, also includes a personalised message.

Within the newsletter we announce our Star of the Month. This is an employee who has been nominated by their peers for displaying our core values. The winner can select either a £50 voucher or an extra days holiday as their prize.