SBIA PARTNER PROFILE A&L GOODBODY
A&L Goodbody Supporting Community and Colleagues to Thrive From its internal initiatives to outreach in the community, A&L Goodbody supports creating conditions where people can flourish
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n late summer 2020 we embarked on a project to embrace the opportunity presented by remote and hybrid working, and adjust our mindset from surviving to thriving. We wanted to create our own roadmap to success and ensure that we got our business—and our people—in as healthy a position as possible. After consulting with colleagues at all levels across the firm to develop a way of working that would align with our business objectives and enable our culture to flourish while working remotely, a calendar of initiatives was designed around the themes identified, under the banner of ‘Reset, Revive and Thrive’ (RRT). It includes networking, training, social events, health and wellbeing and knowledge shares. The impact of RRT has been the sharing of great ideas; increased connectivity across departments; a clearer understanding of team-level
goals and plans; increased comfort level with tech tools that support us in these endeavours, and a well and engaged workforce, who felt supported to adapt to new ways of working. COMMUNITY Supporting social mobility through our educational initiatives, over 400 volunteer hours were delivered by ALG employees last year, through their involvement in our paired reading programme, Junior Achievement programmes, and other support and mentoring programmes. In light of the urgent needs precipitated by the COVID-19 crisis, in 2021 we funded 15 Chromebooks to a partner school to help support remote learning for pupils, helping the school go from 60% to 84% engagement in home schooling. Supporting social inclusion through education straddles both our community and inclusion strategies; there is a clear link between quality education and securing
Pupils from Carlow Educate Together who participated in the Suas literacy support programme with ALG
sustainable, quality employment, and that is why our community programme also includes a number of complementary employment initiatives. DIVERSITY & INCLUSION The overall aim of A&L Goodbody’s Diversity and Inclusion programme is to continue to build an inclusive organisation where our people feel comfortable bringing their whole selves to work and where they are encouraged to excel and progress regardless of their gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, disability or socio-economic background. We focus on five main pillars: gender, LGBT+, social mobility, disability, and cultural diversity. In the last year our main focus turned to our disability and cultural diversity pillars, with the aims of growing our understanding and awareness of disability and cultural diversity through events and resources; reviewing our recruitment and employee processes and practices to ensure we are inclusive to everyone; and improving the accessibility of our corporate website. Over the last year we focused on areas that our people wanted to learn more about and to help them understand the different types of disabilities and different cultures in our firm. This is the first year that we have run events from a disability and cultural diversity perspective using our own people, and we found real impact happens when someone from A&L Goodbody tells their story.
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