WITH 5,000 PEOPLE GLOBALLY, WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO EMBED PURPOSE-LED CULTURAL CHANGE AND CONNECT IT TO THE ORGANISATION’S STRATEGIC DIRECTION?

To build a firm for the future we listened to over 1,400 employees in 16 countries to create and test a set of 8 behavioural principles.

To engage leaders with the results we consolidated our findings into a comprehensive report proposing the principles, global themes, barriers and how to address them. We designed and delivered ‘playback’ meetings, materials and coaching sessions for key stakeholder groups to ensure they understood the findings, could have questions answered and felt empowered to engage their teams in conversations on the topic.

CO-CREATING THE FIRM'S PURPOSE AND VALUES Once we had embedded the behavioural principles and shared vision for the firm’s culture – we worked with the new Global Leadership Team to ask the question: “What will it take to be a responsible leader in the future?”

We created a global insight programme from these Discovery sessions that engaged people from every Freshfields office in articulating the firm’s Purpose and Values and designing a roadmap to bring this to life. Hundreds of people participated in over 40 workshops delivered during Spring 2021.

We helped Freshfields to embed their new purpose and values, harnessing and deepening people’s sense of ownership and weaving it into the fabric of everything they do through a number of key activities:

Including a rolling programme of team discussion and cross-organisational sharing, an annual benchmarking programme to measure progress (and an annual report to transparently articulate this progress), targeted recommendations of short and long term interventions based on report findings and clear linkage to the firm’s strategy through a simple one-page visual and ongoing communications.