- This Mental Health Awareness Week, LawCare is getting the legal community talking about anxiety
- Want more information on Mental Health Awareness Week?
- The SQE and Legal Apprenticeships: what are they and how can firms navigate the new legal education and training landscape?
- Top 5 Tips for taking up your first role in management - Dates for the Diary - May Messenger - MLS Court Report Journal Issue 10 - The key to better performance: frequent feedback
Anxiety is the theme of this year’s Mental Health Awareness Week (MHAW) and LawCare, the legal mental health and wellbeing charity, are highlighting the prevalence of anxiety in the legal community.
Anxiety is one of the top three reasons people working in the law reached out to LawCare for support in 2022. LawCare’s Life in the law study (2021) also showed that 69% of participants said they had experienced mental ill-health over the preceding 12 months, and of those 60.7% said they had experienced anxiety either often, very often, or all of the time.
This Mental Health Awareness Week, LawCare wants to get the legal community talking about the common experience of anxiety, so that legal professionals can recognise the signs and know where to turn to for support. During the week, LawCare are hosting a free webinar about anxiety and releasing new guidance for managers and leaders on how to support a colleague experiencing anxiety.
Free anxiety webinar Join LawCare for their ‘Let’s talk about anxiety’ webinar on Thursday 18 May, starting at 12.30pm. This hour-long event features a panel of legal professionals who will share their personal experiences of living with anxiety and their strategies for managing it. Book here.
For more information on new guidance for leaders and people managers on anxiety in the workplace and finding support for anxiety please read the full article here.
Ways to deal with unhelpful thinking styles and anxiety
Treatment for anxiety
Our ED&I Committee discuss breaking the stigma surrounding mental health, looks at how the legal sector has started to address this issue and gives some suggestions how to implement support in your teams.
The Solicitors’ Charity address the importance of Mental Health Awareness Week and signpost useful places to get support.
Date: 29 June 2023 Time: 14:00-16:45 Location: Weightmans, No 1 Spinningfields, Hardman Square, Manchester, M3 3EB Cost to attend: MLS Members £20.00 + VAT (£24.00) Non-members £40.00 + VAT (£48.00)
Hear from BPP University and North West firms about their approach to the SQE. How are they managing the mix of LPC and SQE candidates, are they funding SQE1 and / or SQE 2, have they embarked on recruiting Legal Apprentices? The speakers and panel will address the challenges and opportunities presented by the new regime and attendees will be able to reflect upon what is right for their firm.
This event is ideal for those involved in recruitment, training or supervision of trainees or newly qualified lawyers, including those who have already taken steps in relation to the SQE or who have considered Legal Apprenticeships, and those who have yet to consider recruiting anyone other than LPC graduates.
Programme
14:00 Registration 14:30 What is the SQE and how does it impact on legal education and training? Key questions for firms to ask themselves. 15:00 How could Legal Apprenticeships work for you? 15:15 Q&A session on the SQE and Legal Apprenticeships 15:30 Break 15:45 Case studies and panel: What are firms in the North West doing and how is it going? 16:45 Networking drinks
Date: 19 May 2023 Time: 13:00-13:45 Location: Online via Teams Cost to attend: Free but you must book your place
Management can be a tough gig, especially when taking up your first role. Whilst finding your feet, you’ve got to manage a potentially new group of people, their emotions, issues and challenges. And, what if you have to manage someone who also went for the job you got?!!! In this webinar, Mike Ode from Potential Unearthed will share his tips to help you survive those first few months in management.
Here’s what he’ll cover:
What type of manager do you want to be?
“What are they all looking at?" Why all eyes are on you.
The first 4 weeks – Watch out for the pitfalls.
“Why is everyone being weird with me?" Learn how the cortisol hormone impacts on yours and your teams behaviour.
Managers and leaders have an overwhelming choice of tools and processes by which to manage. But often, the simplest things are the most effective. When it comes to driving performance, measuring wellbeing, and keeping people engaged at work, a little feedback goes a long way. That’s because employee engagement and performance management are both feedback processes.
But managers are often fearful about giving open and honest feedback. That could be because they’ve had no training and don’t know how to give feedback. Or that they themselves aren’t clear about company direction and don’t want to look out of touch or say the wrong thing.
The employee could also be uncomfortable having these conversations, often due to a lack of practice, trust, or rapport. Or perhaps they think what’s the point, no-one does anything with this feedback anyway.
That’s why a continuous feedback framework makes such a huge difference.
Frequency and openness are key to effective workplace feedback. By sharing information honestly and often, we build trust, rapport, engagement and ultimately, long-term success.
How to increase feedback at work, without increasing workload
A digital employee check-in is the key here. Employees update their manager at the end of the week with their successes, challenges, and goal progress. And managers give light-touch, specific feedback on these updates. Employees feel seen and heard, issues are resolved earlier, successes get celebrated wider, and key information gets passed to the right person sooner.
And the best thing? Every time an employee checks-in, they’re building their performance portfolio. This feeds into performance reviews at the touch of a button. Saving up to 90% of prep time and admin.
