Will you be greeting your colleagues today with a smile or a grimace?
Jan. 2 is always tricky. It seems, no matter how strong one’s workplace culture, we’re all psychologically hardwired to resent this day, just a little bit. It’s the day the platter of your life’s obligations is returned to you, the day on which you’re reawakened to the fact that you’re not completely in charge of every aspect of your life. You’re accountable to others: bosses, equals, juniors. But don’t worry. That gloom quickly passes.
Or at least it should.
Maybe you didn’t have much of a break. Perhaps your boss had told you to be near your phone or laptop, no matter the time or day—what was Christmas Day to some was Monday to others. Maybe the few days' break was a chance to ruminate, to realize that the office you’ve returned to, however slickly ornamented or buffed, is just not where you want to be.
Now, this isn’t an attempt to make your Jan. 2 any more cheerless than it needs to be. It’s a reminder that, in 2024, workforce satisfaction will be the biggest issue firm leaders face. Reduced to a single word: retention.
Some senior partners I spoke with last year told me that the cyber threat was what keeps them up at night. Such threats are undoubtedly scary. Whose data has been hacked? A client’s? My own? How much will we need to pay out to not just the hackers, but to the consultants and experts we’re hiring in to deal with the problem? Indeed, Allen & Overy is starting out 2024 licking its wounds from a potentially very costly cyber attack that unfolded in November.
But, with cyber risks, it’s more or less a level playing field. You need to be as prepared as can reasonably be expected of a major law firm leader—by the way, that’s pretty darn well-prepared. There will be difficult decisions to make. You may have to pay out millions to avoid client data being released, and suffer being placed on a “suckers list”, but you do get to dodge further reputational injury. There is no right answer here—yet. The industry, and indeed all industries, are still working this bit out.
Retention, however, is the surface-level vibration of deeper cultural pulses...
