Law Firms: A Healthier Work Environment May Boost Your Bottom Line

By promoting a healthy work environment for employees, law firms can improve their bottom line in a number of ways. However, attorneys may wonder what exactly constitutes a healthy workplace and how they can ensure their law firm fits this definition.

What Is a Healthy Workplace?

According to the World Health Organization (WHO)’s Toolkit, a healthy workplace is a workplace where all employers and employees work together to continually improve internal processes. In the process, they protect and promote the well-being of everyone within the company and enable the organization to succeed.

The WHO also claims that healthy workplaces depend on four key areas of interaction, including:

• Psychosocial work environment
• Physical work environment
• Each organizational member’s personal resources
• Contributions to the community

Creating a healthier workplace can help ensure everyone in a law firm is cohesive and content, which increases both productivity and collaboration that helps the firm flourish. It can also help attract recruits when headhunting for new attorneys.

How to Create a Healthy Work Environment

If employers at a law firm want to create a work environment that promotes everyone’s well-being and the firm’s overall growth, the following are some steps that they can take to build a healthy workplace.

Designate Leaders

Organizations need leaders to help guide the firm. Leaders should be committed, supportive, and serve as role models for others.

Define Well-Being and Develop a Well-Being Agenda

To help guide an agenda that facilitates the well-being of everyone in an organization, employers should begin by defining well-being, which could differ between each member. Once they’ve determined what well-being truly means and developed an agenda around it, they can either launch a committee or recruit a leader to push this agenda.

Establish Priorities

Law firms also need to prioritize effectively to identify small wins that can help them progress. Employers need to be selective in prioritization, as taking on too much at once can actually hinder rather than help their efforts.

Launch an Action Plan and Continue to Measure Results

Employers should then develop and implement an action plan to help them achieve goals and overcome challenges. In the process, they can measure the results and continue to improve.

These are some of the basic ways to create a healthy workplace that helps increase a law firm’s bottom line, and can also appeal to future attorney candidates.