Friday Conversation with Amandeep Khasriya and Katherine Maxwell of Moore Barlow

In this special episode I was joined by Amandeep and Katherine at Moore Barlow to discuss some hot topics at the moment.  Diversity & Inclusion, which Moore Barlow are doing fantastic work on at the moment, furloughing and returning staff to work.

You can find out more about Amandeep and her work with the Law Society in the Women Lawyers Division and the Diversity & Inclusion Forum here.

You can find out more about Katherine and her work at Moore Barlow here.

Podcast host Hannah Beko is a self-employed lawyer, coach and creator of the Lawyers Business Mastermind™ (the place for entrepreneurial lawyers to grow).

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You can connect with Hannah on LinkedIn or visit www.authenticallyspeaking.co.uk.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02: 0:01

Hello everyone and welcome to another Friday Conversation. Today we've got a special episode with two guests. We've got Amandeep and Catherine from Morvalo and they are going to come and introduce themselves a little bit more to you. So Amandeep, do you want to start?

SPEAKER_00: 0:18

Great. Yes, thanks very much, Hannah. Absolutely lovely to join you on your podcast. I sit on the Women in Leadership group that we have at Moor Barlow, which Catherine heads up. And we also formed a new Diversity and Inclusion Committee at Moor Barlow as well. And I'm also a committee member at the Women Lawyers Division at the Law Society. Over to Catherine.

SPEAKER_01: 0:40

Hi there, thanks Hannah. As Amandeep said, it's great to be joining you today. I'm a partner at Moor Barlow and I'm involved in the Women in Leadership group with Amandeep and also the Diversity and Inclusion Committee and I practice in employment law, so lots of busy times during the current coronavirus challenges that employers are facing.

SPEAKER_02: 1:05

Absolutely and Catherine you've, well both of you, but you've hinted at all the different topics that we're going to try and cover today. It's going to be a bit of a whistle stop but yes we're going to try and cover some diversity and inclusion because it's such a hot topic and an important topic at the moment and I know it's something that's important to both of you and touch on the sort of other issues that as employment lawyers you've mentioned there Catherine that you're facing as well. So it's going to be going to be very interesting today but before we get into those sort of specific topics. It'd be great to just hear a little bit about both of your experiences in lockdown. So how different was this working in lockdown and now in the new normal for you compared to before? Were you familiar with working at home or you never did it? What was that like?

SPEAKER_00: 1:54

I found it okay at the beginning because, you know, there are people at Morbala even before this that worked from home. But the difficulty came about when you gave it a couple of weeks and you were only ever at home. And then coupled with that, young children being at home with you I've got a four-year-old and that was just it was mad um and then not having that degree of separation between the home and the office and it's far too easy to just pop back to the office and finish off a piece of work so I think that came down to discipline and and forming a better structure and routine for myself working at home um and yeah I think it was um it definitely had its challenges in the beginning but I've I've just I've just got used to it. You just get into a routine. But it's also brilliant being back in the office. I've been back a couple of days and I really love the setup there. I love speaking to people. We work in quite creative and fun teams. So I definitely miss that interaction. And like many of you guys, we've had to find ways of working around it. So how do you keep in touch with your team? Let's do things virtually as possible. How do you, you know, after the passions like diversity and inclusion and continuing with those. In terms of my line of work, I work in the major trauma team at Morbarlo and that wasn't badly impacted by the COVID crisis at all. We were able to continue working with our clients, progressing cases. So I didn't face that kind of disruption, which I think can be really tough for some solicitors.

SPEAKER_02: 3:30

So do you think it'll be a new norm for you going forward to be at home more or do you see the day you'll be back in as before? I

SPEAKER_00: 3:37

think it will be a new norm and I really hope that businesses and organisations can you know can see it's not just something for it's not just a parent issue it's not just for you know a women and you know you know mums issue I hope people I hope organisations really see the benefit for other people who just want to work life balance have other care responsibilities outside the office so I really hope it's embraced and people have a balance really

SPEAKER_02: 4:02

yeah I would absolutely agree with that

SPEAKER_01: 4:06

I can't see it returning to life as it was I can't see that at all because I think what it's done is it's forced everybody to work from home and there were people that you would never have imagined would be able to adjust to the challenge of working from home literally overnight. I mean, the challenge of suddenly having to kit out everybody in a firm of hundreds of people so that they could work effectively from home. I mean, that was a huge challenge and we managed to achieve it you know, phenomenally well. And people have really embraced working from home and shown that they can work from home. So I think there's going to be that work-life balance on a permanent basis, definitely.

SPEAKER_02: 4:53

And how did you find the shift, Catherine? Was it easy for you to move into

SPEAKER_01: 4:58

100% at home? It was very different because I didn't really work from home at all before lockdown. I much preferred being in the office. So I was sort of forced to work here and being an employment lawyer, it was incredibly busy. So I think as Amadip said, that blur between finishing and moving away from your laptop and going into home life, definitely there wasn't that commute to get you out of one mode and into another. I think one of the benefits was the weather. I think if the weather hadn't been as fantastic as it was, it would have been much harder to cope with all of that. But actually, to begin with, it was almost like being on holiday because I was spending time with my husband in a way that I would only normally do if we were away on holiday and the sun was shining. But yeah, no, I've really missed human interaction. And I think everybody started adopting video conference calls. So calls that you would normally do on the telephone. Everybody then was suddenly wanting to do it by video conferencing. And I found it so exhausting. It's so much more tiring doing video conference calls than... telephone calls and meetings so um you know lots of highs but also you know a lot of work um tiring and I really missed colleagues and and as Amandeep said the sort of the laughs that you have in the office and seeing people that you don't work directly with but but uh friends and colleagues from work that you that you see when you're in the office but when you're busy working from home you don't have interaction with anymore.

SPEAKER_02: 6:39

Yes and I agree with you I think Zoom fatigue is definitely a thing that I noticed quite early on because as you say everybody was like oh yes this is great we can use all this video technology and whereas you would have just had a quick phone call which sometimes is all you need everybody wants to get on Teams or Zoom and it does get tiring but on the flip side I think maybe we're all sort of calming down from the initial excitement now and sort of just using it in a more when you would normally use a face-to-face

SPEAKER_01: 7:06

meeting. Exactly I think the other thing that was that was different was everybody was in the same situation so in a way that um not many people would normally have a common conversation something that was a theme in everybody's life suddenly it was a theme in all of our lives yeah

SPEAKER_02: 7:26

Yeah it's interesting that I wonder how much that's brought us a bit closer perhaps almost as a profession who traditionally sort of been quite quite aloof I suppose very what people would call professional but can sometimes just mean we don't really get to know each other very well and I think there has been that chance actually for some barriers to come down and get to know people a bit better hasn't

SPEAKER_00: 7:48

there? Yeah I think that's one of the highs actually Hannah I know we're moving on to that but it's getting to know people's day-to-day at home and asking about the wider impact of COVID because it's not just happening to us like what Catherine said. It's happening to our family, our loved ones, our partners. So it was a great deep dive into people's personal lives, but we've got to know people better through it, whether it's your opposite number on a case, whether it's a member of your team that you didn't know as well. That's been a real fantastic opportunity. And just to see us normalise and be more human in all those aspects

SPEAKER_02: 8:26

yes that's been a definite high what else would you say have been some of the high points and some of the low points as well for you

SPEAKER_00: 8:35

I think one of the low points is, and I think we're coming out of it now, was the uncertainty, right? If you go back even three months, then the unknown about people's jobs, stability, people's health, and just being very afraid of something that we can't control on such a global scale. So that was difficult. And it does impact your mental health and your wellbeing and things like that. A high has been, and Catherine's touched upon is spending so much extra time with your family and loved ones. You know, I returned to work when my little boy was 10 months old. I've never seen so much of him. It's been lovely getting to know him. You know, I returned full time. So that's been really lovely. So that's it. Yeah. So they've been the highs and lows for me.

SPEAKER_02: 9:26

How about you, Catherine? Have you got any extra highs and lows to add?

SPEAKER_01: 9:30

Yeah, I mean, I think one of the lows for me is doing the sort of work I do. It's been really upsetting seeing clients who've worked really hard to create really good businesses, you know, have their businesses impacted really significantly by lockdown and all of the problems that have come with the virus and its impact on the economy and, you know, some in the hospitality industry just, you know, forced to completely close down. close their businesses, not operate, the impact that's had on them and their employees, the number of redundancies that people have been having to make and all of that has been very upsetting for lots of people. So that's definitely been a low. I think one of the highs has been I've got myself much fitter. So I've used the time that I normally would have been spending commuting into work exercising so i definitely feel much more um healthy eating healthfully exercising and that's had a big impact on my my sort of mental state of mind i can see that getting out and doing that exercise makes me feel much better so that's something i definitely want to continue even when i start spending more time back in the office

SPEAKER_02: 10:46

that was going to be my question and you've already answered it so this is a this is a new for the future as well is it yeah yeah Fantastic. So we're going to go into our first sort of mini topic, which is diversity and inclusion. And I know that this has just really exploded in lockdown, I think. I mean, it's been getting more and more important and more and more prominent over the last sort of 18 months, two years anyway. But really, I think there's even more conversations going on now. So, Amandine, do you want to sort of set us off on that, what you've seen and your thoughts about

SPEAKER_00: 11:22

lockdown? Yeah, I think one of my massive things at the beginning of this would be that diversity inclusion would be a low priority for most firms who are just trying to keep their business together. And understandably, they've got bigger challenges to face right now. So I was really worried that it will be low on the agenda. But as we know, what sadly happened during lockdown was the awful killing of George Floyd, which then led to the Black Lives movement. And what we actually saw was the legal professional community really coming together. And we saw some fantastic fantastic statements made by some managing partners and be really open about their journey and understanding intersectionality and race and diversity and inclusion and in fact Ed Whittington our managing partner and you know Trevor Sterling they made some very public statements on LinkedIn and there was so much engagement and one of the things that really came out of it was saying thank you for acknowledging that we're not perfect we don't know how to have perfect conversations about diversity and inclusion but let's try to create those safe spaces and So, you know, it's really, you know, I absolutely love the focus that the legal profession has had when it comes to race during this period. And we've carried on our work. So, you know, when it comes to working with the Law Society, we've continued talking about the Women in Law Pledge, celebrating the one year anniversary of that. The Law Society have just launched some guidance on menopause support guide for law firms. And we've been supporting that and launching that. And it's just been about finding the work workarounds? How can we do things that can still engage our members, connect with our community, support the legal profession? And, you know, Hannah, we did some podcasts, you know, we just carried on trying to find workarounds to make sure that support is still there in place. And particularly at Morbalo as well, I think wellbeing was really high on the agenda. I think HR and, you know, I think Catherine, you've had involvement as well in this. I think people responded very quickly at our firm. And we've had, you know, for the first time ever we've had virtual pilates yoga pt because we understood the huge mental health impact something like this can have you know on an organization um and it was a good opportunity because we just completed our merger with um Barlow Robbins on the 1st of May so it's a good opportunity for us to go you know look at our structure look at our you know committees that we have and start thinking about ways that we can improve the work that we do internally on diversity and inclusion so it's allowed us to go back to the drawing board and you know given us a bit of a refresh on things which has been really positive.

SPEAKER_02: 14:01

no it's great I do see your firm doing doing wonderful things in this area and as you say coming off the back of a merger as well I mean it's amazing really

SPEAKER_00: 14:10

I don't know how Catherine managed as a Catherine probably involved in that but I can't imagine how they did it

SPEAKER_02: 14:14

remotely Because often with a merger, you have a period of trying to settle in and everything is a bit up in the air. But yet you've been able to move forward with these fantastic initiatives as well, which is really good. Would you have any advice? I'm going to put you on the spot here. Would you have any advice for other firms or other individual lawyers who care about inclusion and diversity? What could they do? I

SPEAKER_00: 14:37

think... carry on getting the small and easy wins and carry on finding work around. So, you know, what I found incredible was, Hannah and Catherine, you make experiences too, but hasn't there been such a wonderful pickup of virtual events and engagement? And actually, haven't the numbers been higher than what you'd expect face to face? I think virtual events are here to stay. Don't think you've got to, you know, break the bank with diversity and inclusion initiatives or ways to raise awareness. Get a group together, start your internal networks, get a conversation going and start putting things out there a lot like this, Hannah, where people are talking about diversity, inclusion and getting more people involved in those conversations and creating those safe spaces.

SPEAKER_01: 15:22

Yeah, I think, I mean, technology has just been incredible. It has enabled people to connect in a way that we haven't done before. So I would agree with that. All the invitations that people have been sending out to try and create groups, to share learning, share experiences, network with people because people have missed all that human interaction. And there's been so much of that going on, which has had a big impact on people still feeling connected and being able to get together with like-minded people to talk about subjects that they feel passionate about.

SPEAKER_02: 15:58

That's a really fantastic... point actually I'm glad you made that because and you said there that you know you don't have to break the bank to do this it's not always about money it doesn't always need money it just needs people to start the conversations as you say and I see this a lot with with the mental health and stress sort of work as well people just want a safe place to talk to people about it you don't need to throw a lot of money at it sometimes you just need to say we're here having this conversation come and join us yeah Yeah. Oh, fantastic. It's really exciting. It's fantastic work you're doing. I keep following you on Twitter and everything else, and hopefully everyone else will as well. What we'll do in the podcast notes, I'll put some links to all the various organisations that you've mentioned that you're involved with as well. So, Catherine, we're going to move on to you here in this sort of employment law realm to talk about furloughing, first of all, where, I mean, obviously this was a hot topic right at the beginning, and I know many employment lawyers were working long hours sorting it all out. but now we're sort of coming out the other side and to the end of it what do you see with the future for that?

SPEAKER_01: 17:06

I mean I think it's been incredibly difficult for people because I think that you've had this the groups of people who have been working hard from home you know struggling with technology getting themselves into a space where they can be productive and other people who have been furloughed and for some people being furloughed over the summer which has been the most amazing summer we've had for ages has been great but for Other people, they really felt isolated, incredibly anxious about whether there's going to be a job for them to go back to. And this has been going on for months and months and months, and that anxiety is really built up. So I think when the government introduced the concept of flexible furlough, That was great because it enabled employers to have people back in the office, even if they could only do that for a day a week. And that gave that interaction back to those employees because they're not allowed to do any work for their employer if they're furloughed and unless they're on that flexible scheme. But we've now I mean, we've seen a huge amount of redundancies. since lockdown started, you know, big high street names and very large organisations announcing thousands of headcount reductions. And I think, you know, sadly, we'll see more of that as the end of the furlough scheme draws closer because there are lots of businesses who just don't have the work to offer those employees their jobs back at the end of October. But people are being very imaginative. coming up with sort of alternatives to redundancy. You know, they've got talented people at home that they don't want to lose. So, you know, trying to see whether there are, you know, permanent reductions in pay while the work isn't there or moving on to more part-time working arrangements or... unpaid sabbaticals at the end of the furlough scheme to see whether they can just buy a bit of extra time before they need to make those permanent decisions. But unfortunately, I think there will still be a lot more redundancies to come.

SPEAKER_02: 19:12

It's good to see places thinking more flexibly as well, though, because I think as we've sort of hinted at already, this period has given people a lot of chance to reflect and think about their lives. And I know a few people have said, actually, I wouldn't mind doing part time now. I wouldn't mind doing the equivalent of four days a week. You know, we've managed on the reduced salary that we've been on. So actually, if there are people out there happy to do that and organisations happy to accommodate it, then maybe that is something that will help.

SPEAKER_01: 19:40

Yeah, hopefully, hopefully.

SPEAKER_02: 19:43

And so the other big challenge that we were going to touch on briefly is what we're facing right now, I suppose, which is bringing people back into the office, bringing people either back off furlough or just back into the office from working at home. So are you seeing a lot of challenges, you know, either with your clients or within your firm with that at the moment?

SPEAKER_01: 20:03

Yeah, I think it's a big challenge for us and for our clients. I think the big key issue is obviously the whole health and safety issue around coronavirus and employers having to make their offices COVID-19 secure and that obviously involves social distancing which means that offices that could normally accommodate a maximum capacity of employees are now hugely restricted on the numbers that they can welcome back in so there's the logistics of not only getting the workplace safe and ready for people to return to but then managing the numbers of staff that come into the office because everybody can't be there together. And we are, and I know lots of clients are as well, coming up with sort of rotas and days when certain people come in, but trying to manage that in a way so that teams can get together as well, because a lot of what we've discussed already is the interaction with colleagues that you work closely with and missing those relationships. So enabling people to come in so they can see their colleagues, but managing that safely and also just understanding the need to be incredibly flexible because you know people people haven't got before and after school clubs necessarily people haven't got childcare support in the way that they had previously. People are worried about going on public transport or people have got underlying health issues. And so they're still anxious about coming on public transport into the office and just incredibly anxious about the virus and getting together with larger groups. And I think the government's change on Monday that has led to you not being able to get together with groups of more than six people, that just adds to the anxiety and The current news about the second wave hitting us already. I think there's a lot of concern out there and that filters obviously into the workplace.

SPEAKER_02: 22:06

so do you think um or most employers and maybe yourselves as well are adopting a sort of um almost case by case as in you've got to look at the individuals and their needs and what they're concerned about and as you say what their child care and home arrangements and things are like because it's different for each person i suppose isn't it

SPEAKER_01: 22:24

yeah i mean i know what we did was we we conducted a survey with all our um staff to just to sort of sense test how people were feeling what they're what they were worried about whether they would feel comfortable coming back to work or not and we've really tried to adapt our policy on returning to work so that it that people do feel comfortable and and safe that's the most important thing we want to make sure that people feel safe when they come back to work and and that they're happy to be there and we've seen that people can work well working from home so there's you know there is an ideal balance so that people can come in if they are able to come in and want to come in and we're able to have them in the office and they can work from home on the days when when that can't take place

SPEAKER_02: 23:13

yeah yeah that's the way I see it I suppose for the future for most businesses I think I think that's the way it's got to go um so just finally from each of you what um what have you learned about yourselves or about the country or or about anything in particular that especially over this lockdown period that you'd like to share with other people I'll put you on the

SPEAKER_01: 23:36

spot now. I learned to cook. I can cook better than I could before. And I can do a plank for two minutes.

SPEAKER_00: 23:45

That's really impressive, actually, Catherine. Well done.

SPEAKER_01: 23:48

But I've also learned, I mean, I'm a very, I'm a feelings person. I'm very tactile and I've really missed being able to, you know, give people a hug and have that proper interaction, particularly when you haven't seen people for ages. The first thing you want to do when you do see them is give them a hug. And it's just really hard having to be socially distanced from people. Yeah.

UNKNOWN: 24:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 24:14

I think it's taught me how much more of an effort we need to make to keep in touch with the people that we take for granted in our lives and the kind of interaction and relationships that we've built over years with people we work with and contacts we know, how much effort it really does take. And it's interesting. I met with my head of department a couple of weeks ago and we had a catch up and he said to me, you know, it's really interesting how people go quite introvert in a crisis. You know, they kind of go thinking about themselves because because it is a crisis. We've never dealt with anything like this. And I think I was definitely one of those people, you know, you can go quite into yourself, whereas I'm normally quite a team person. So just moving out of that and just, but it's a process, isn't it? I've not been through it before. So you learn about yourself all the time. So yeah, good days, bad days, really.

SPEAKER_02: 25:07

Yes, I think that's the interesting thing is to find out what, and that's why I love to ask that question, what have people learned about themselves or the way they've interacted with family or with friends or with colleagues? It is something we've never faced before. So it's always interesting to see how people are coming out of it and what changes they might make because it has been such a long time. It's like Catherine said with her sort of change and focus towards health and things. It's been so long that those things can be new habits now, can't they?

SPEAKER_01: 25:37

I think there were lots of very emotional people as well. You know, lots of the whole clapping on a Thursday evening, you know, felt so emotional, crying when you go to the front door and you're clapping and Captain Tom, you know, everybody in tears watching Captain Tom. It's just an emotional roller coaster.

SPEAKER_02: 25:57

It was. And it sort of felt like we were on it together in a way, didn't we? As a country and things, which... which was one of the nice things, I thought.

SPEAKER_01: 26:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 26:09

Oh, well, thank you both very much for joining me. I know we've had a whistle-stop tour of some very big topics there, but it was nice to catch up with you both and to touch on some of those things. So thank you very much for joining me.

SPEAKER_00: 26:20

Thanks, Hannah. Pleasure.

SPEAKER_02: 26:23

Thanks very much.