“Being a Best Employer is about leadership and commitment. It is about our leaders embracing the strategy and the desired actions and then living this each and every day. It is easy to do in

good times but what is truly defining is sticking to our strategy when businesses

conditions are challenging.”Chris Ward, Managing Partner

Cooper Grace Ward Lawyers

Highly engaged team members delivering excellence in service and quality to clients

Cooper Grace Ward is a leading Australian law firm offering a full range of commercial legal services to local and international clients. Based in Brisbane, the firm is known for its commercial and practical advice, outstanding client service and excellence in its chosen practice areas.

The key people challenges facing Cooper Grace Ward now and in the years ahead

� Keeping its team focused on business performance in the context of challenging economic conditions.

� Attracting and retaining talent who will provide the highest quality service to clients.

� Maintaining a high performing pool from which to develop and select future leaders to ensure business sustainability.

Having a high performance workforce helps Cooper Grace Ward to address these challenges

Cooper Grace Ward considers a high performance workforce imperative to maintaining performance levels in a tough economic environment where client expectations are high and excellence and quality are assumed. Cooper Grace Ward believes that the team must understand and identify with the firm’s strategy, and be prepared to go the extra mile to ensure client satisfaction. The firm believes that this is key in differentiating itself from competitors, retaining and attracting key clients and achieving business results. This in-turn creates an impressive client base and strong internal culture that assists in the attraction and retention of key talent.

Cooper Grace Ward is a first generation firm, with founding partners still in the business. With these original and other longer term partners nearing retirement age, having a pool of highly talented and high performing successors is of critical importance. The organisation’s highly engaged leaders are committed to mentoring and developing the future team, client relationship and business development leaders to ensure the sustainable future of the business.

Cooper Grace Ward Lawyers

Cooper Grace Ward regularly participates in the Best Employers accreditation program because it believes that engagement is critical to business success

The firm believes that findings from its work with Aon Hewitt support its management team in developing a greater understanding of overall engagement and which people practices and drivers are most important for improving engagement. Participation in the program also enables benchmarking against high quality organisations of various sizes and from a range of different industries. Cooper Grace Ward uses the findings from the Best Employers study to measure progress and identify ongoing areas for improvement, and emerging people issues.

A timely, open and transparent approach to communication has contributed to Cooper Grace Ward’s engagement levels and accreditation as a Best Employer

The most important strategy adopted by Cooper Grace Ward during tough economic conditions is over-communication. There is little about the firm’s business performance that is truly confidential, as one of the firm’s key goals is to encourage employees to understand and engage with the strategy. This proactive approach to communication, together with the recognition and celebration of achievements, has resulted in overall communication effectiveness being rated highly amongst employees. The strategy has had a quantifiable impact on employee engagement levels over time, thus influencing client satisfaction and broader business results.

Practices adopted to deliver open and effective communication include the involvement of all team members in developing cultural values, brand attributes and strategic objectives, the regular sharing of performance data, including profit performance, as well as regular information sharing via meetings (group and one-on-one), newsletters and the intranet – Sherpa. All communication is prepared to ensure that content aligns with the values and strategy of the firm.

Cooper Grace Ward took action to address key issues highlighted in its engagement survey

The most recent engagement survey identified that a critical cohort of the firm had experienced a significant decrease in engagement. This verified and quantified anecdotal evidence that Cooper Grace Ward management had become aware of. This change in engagement was identified by the Board as a key business performance and succession issue requiring serious attention. The actions commenced with the Managing Partner, COO and HRD meeting with this cohort as a group to share the full findings of the engagement survey and discuss reasons for the change in an open and frank manner. Team members believed issues to be generally personal or specific to work teams. It was then decided team leaders would meet with this cohort, either individually or in small groups, to openly discuss issues and identify actions. This process is ongoing and specific feedback is being collated and possible actions canvassed.

What can be learnt from Cooper Grace Ward as a Best Employer?

� Maintain open and transparent communication through challenging business conditions.

� Ensure leaders are committed to, and active in, mentoring the leaders of the future.

� Benchmark against and learn from the Best to improve from good to great.

#2013BestEmployers