Bright Spot: Hogan Lovells’ Agile Working Initiative
In 2019, we will be sharing diversity and flexibility Bright Spots – those small or large successes that impact your organization in a positive way. We believe that important diversity and flexibility initiatives can truly impact your organization’s bottom line, recruitment and retention capabilities and employee satisfaction.
BRIGHT SPOT
Hogan Lovells – Agile Working Initiative
One of international law firm, Hogan Lovells’ Diversity & Flexibility Bright Spots is its Global Agile Working Initiative. Launched in 2016, this initiative allows all attorneys and business services members in all offices worldwide to adopt an agile working plan. Employees who choose to adopt an agile working arrangement may utilize a combination of flexible working options including remote working, reduced hours, staggered arrival and departure times, job sharing, and telecommuting. Hogan Lovells even developed a “tool kit” to help explain and implement the policy.
IMPACT
Agile working at Hogan Lovells has allowed the firm to improve talent retention, promote stronger engagement, create a new sense of community, and has given its employees more control over how to balance their personal and professional lives. Lawyers at Hogan Lovells report satisfaction with their arrangements and have shared that the options and flexibility provided by the firm are key in their decision to stay at the firm. The Diversity & Flexibility Alliance honored Hogan Lovells in 2017 with one of our inaugural Flex Impact Awards. While benefitting men and women, the Global Agile Working Initiative has had the added bonus of helping the firm make significant progress towards its goal of having women make up 30 percent of its partners by 2022. Hogan Lovells was also the honoree for Dell’s Outside Counsel Diversity Award.
Bright Spot: Arnold & Porter’s Key Gender Equity Efforts
In an effort to inform and inspire our members and friends, we often share diversity and flexibility Bright Spots – those small or large successes that impact an organization in a positive way. We believe that important diversity and flexibility initiatives can truly impact your organization’s bottom line, recruitment and retention capabilities and employee satisfaction.
Arnold & Porter’s Key Gender Equity Efforts
BRIGHT SPOT
International law firm Arnold & Porter has received our “Tipping the Scales” honor for the past four years reinforcing the firm’s strong commitment to promoting equal numbers of men and women to its partnership. The firm’s higher than average number of women in leadership is the result of many years of dedication to building systems that focus on gender parity and hold leaders accountable for each practice group’s outcome. The firm’s Chair and Managing Partners are keenly focused on diversity, equity and inclusion, and there is a deep understanding within firm culture that gender parity is critical. Building on this cultural foundation, Arnold & Porter is committed to intentional efforts in many important areas. Here we will highlight two particular Bright Spots in Arnold & Porter’s approach to achieving its gender diversity goals:
Annual High Level Pipeline Conversations
Managing Partners at Arnold & Porter have pipeline conversations annually with each of the firm’s practice group leaders. In addition to identifying who will be coming up for promotion in the given year, the conversations center around looking back several years to see what is happening within each practice group. This approach allows the leadership to look deeper into the pipeline, analyze past hires and promotions and be prepared to course correct if there are gender diversity challenges.