Formalising ‘quick fixes’ in the face of long-COVID

ARTICLE

Formalising ‘quick fixes’ in the face of long-COVID

When lockdowns were first enforced in March, an estimated 300 million 1 office workers across the globe made the shift to remote working. Months later, despite widespread initial reservations, many law firms are embracing the transformation to working from home.

Managing partners have recognised that they’re able to operate effectively with a dispersed workforce and haven’t experienced the drop in productivity they’d anticipated. According to Gartner, 74% of organisations plan to permanently shift to more remote work post COVID-19 2 – including Slater & Gordon which announced it was closing its London office in September.

Love or hate homeworking, the fact is that it’s here to stay and as the UK emerges from ‘Lockdown 2.0’, it has become apparent that firms are facing long-term change. Any temporary measures put in place back in March won’t constitute a sustainable long-term solution and could hamper legal practices from transitioning successfully into this new era of remote and hybrid working.

Leading outsourced communications provider, Moneypenny, has supported the sector throughout the pandemic to ensure firms are available as and when their clients need them. Head of the Legal Sector, Bernadette Bennett, shares her advice for formalising quick fixes in the face of long COVID.

Sensitive documents

Solicitors handle a vast amount of sensitive materials – from contracts and clients’ identification documents to employee files. With team members working from home, confidential documents could quite easily find themselves in the wrong hands and even if staff are equipped with shredders, there’s no guarantee that they’ll be used properly.

Outsourcing this requirement to a mobile document destruction service is the most strategic way for firms to ensure that they’re protecting themselves and their clients. Employees are provided with sealable bags or lockable bins, which are collected regularly and the contents shredded professionally. The SRA Code of Conduct details specific requirements for confidentiality of client information, but there’s no room for error when it comes to data handling, so this is a smart investment.

Telephone connection

‘How are clients and prospects going to get hold of us?’ – it’s one of the very first questions asked by firms when switching to remote working. The most common solution – if a phone system allows it – is to reroute calls to mobile phones. This approach creates a dangerous single point of failure that, if it failed, would completely breakdown the inbound phone connection to a business.

Relying on mobiles also depends on good signal in employees’ homes and them constantly being available to answer calls. Inevitably, callers will get through to the wrong people and have to wait for a call-back or even worse, reach a voicemail. It makes for a clunky client experience and opens firms up to missing valuable leads. Outsourced telephone answering support ensures that every single call is answered and handled professionally. Calls can be transferred to any member of staff wherever they are working and the service is available round the clock, so firms can be contacted outside of the traditional 9-5 – an ever-growing requirement in the world of remote working.

File sharing and collaboration

When working remotely, sharing files securely and finding ways to collaborate digitally, rather than face to face has become imperative. Cloud-based low cost tools such as Microsoft Teams, Slack and Google’s G-Suite provide a relatively intuitive experience for even the most un-tech-savvy and help teams to work together at the click of a button.

As well as sharing and storing files and enabling multiple employees to access and edit documents at once, these tools also get people talking, which can help to address some of the wellbeing concerns around remote working.

Digital presence

Client visits to the office are off the agenda in the most part so the spotlight is firmly on law firms’ online presence and now’s the time to ensure websites are working as hard and they can.

With reduced resource and remote teams, websites can help manage some of the marketing and communications burden. Live chat solutions can keep volume away from phones and offer a quicker, more interactive alternative to online forms. Additionally, regularly updating website with useful content such as FAQs, videos and downloadable guides give visitors added value and make websites become lead generators rather than just brochures.

The Coronavirus pandemic has brought about a complete shift in worker habits and team dynamics. With little time to prepare, law firms naturally went into survival mode and put measures in place that made sense in the short term to help combat the immediate impact of lockdown. However, in the long run, these fixes create bottlenecks and can begin to have a bearing on productivity as team members don’t have easy access to information they need. The quality of client experience then drops and ultimately, reputation is put at risk. By putting solid foundations in place for successful remote operation now, law firms will not only survive the latest lockdown, but future-proof their businesses.

Moneypenny handles more than 2 million legal calls and live chats each year for more than 1,000 legal firms in the UK, including 60 of the Top 200, thanks to its dedicated team of 60 legal PAs.

Established in 2000, Moneypenny is the world's market leader for telephone answering, live chat, outsourced switchboard and customer contact solutions. In total, more than 13,000 businesses across the UK benefit from Moneypenny’s mix of extraordinary people and ground-breaking technology.

For more information about Moneypenny’s work with the legal sector, visit www. moneypenny.com/uk/legalanswering-services/ ■

Bernadette Bennett

Bernadette Bennett

Commercial Manager – Legal

Moneypenny

1. Data from Boston Consulting Group (www.bcg.com/en-us/ publications/2020/covid-remote-work-cyber-security)

2. Gartner CFO survey (www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/ press-releases/2020-04-03-gartner-cfo-surey-reveals-74- percent-of-organizations-to-shift-some-employees-toremote-work-permanently2)