Key highlights:

• • • Principles need a repeatable process —ÌęResponsible AI commitments become real only when companies systematize human rights due diligence to guide decisions from concept through deployment.

    • Policy and engineering teams should co-own safeguards — Ongoing collaboration between policy and technical teams can help translate ideals like fairness into concrete requirements, risk-based approaches, and other critical decisions.

    • Engage, anticipate, document, and improve continuously —ÌęInvolving impacted communities, running regular foresight exercises (such as scenario workshops), and building strong documentation and feedback loops make human rights accountability durable, instead of a one-time check-the-box exercise.

More and more companies are adopting responsible AI principles that promise fairness, transparency, and respect for human rights, but these commitments are difficult to put into practice when it comes to writing code and making product decisions.

, a human rights and responsible AI advisor at Article One Advisors, works with companies to help turn human rights commitments into concrete steps that are followed across the AI product lifecycle. He says that the key to bridging the gap between principles and practice is embedding human rights due diligence into the framework that guides product development from concept to deployment.

Operationalizing human rights

Human rights due diligence involves a structured process that begins with immersion in the process of building the product and identifying its potential use cases, whether it is an early concept, prototype, or an existing product. This is followed by an exercise to map the stakeholders who could be impacted by the product, along with the salient human rights risks associated with its use.

From there, the internal teams collectively create a human rights impact assessment, which examines any unintended consequences and potential misuse. They then test existing safeguards in design, development, and how and to whom the product is sold. “Typically, a new product will have many positive use cases,” explains Natour. “The purpose of a is to find the ways in which the product can be used or misused to cause harm.” In Natour’s experience, the outcome is rarely a simple go or no-go decision. Instead, the range of decisions often includes options such as go with safeguards or go but be prepared to pull back.

The use of human rights due diligence in the AI product lifecycle is relatively new (less than a decade old) and as Natour explains, there are five essential actions that can work together as a system:

1. Encourage collaboration between policy and engineering teams

Inside most companies, responsible AI is split between policy teams, which may own the principles, and the engineering teams, which own the systems that bring those principles to life. Working with companies, Natour brings these two functions together through a series of workshops to create structured, ongoing collaboration between human rights and responsible AI experts and the technical teams to better co-develop responsible AI requirements.

In the early stages of the collective teams’ work, the challenges of turning principles into practice emerge quickly. For example, the scale of applications and use cases for an AI product can make it difficult to zero in on those uses that . Not all products or use cases need to be treated equally, says Natour, and companies should identify those that could potentially cause the most harm. Indeed, these most-harmful uses may involve a “consequential decision” such as in the legal, employment, or criminal justice fields, he says, adding that those products should be selected for deeper due diligence.

2. Consider the principles at each stage of the development process

Broad principles and values, such as fairness and human rights, should be considered at each stage of the lifecycle. For the principle of fairness, for example, teams may assess which communities will use this product and who will be impacted by those use cases. Then, teams should consider whether these communities are represented on the design and development teams working on the product, and if not, they need to develop a plan for ensuring their input.

3. Engage with impacted communities and rightsholders

Natour advocates for companies to actively engage with impacted communities and stakeholders, including those who are potential users or who may be affected by the product’s use. This could be the company’s own employees, for example, especially if the company is developing productivity tools to use internally in their workplace. Special consideration should be given to vulnerable and marginalized groups whose human rights might be at greatest risk.

External experts, such as Natour and his colleagues, hold focus groups with such stakeholders as . The feedback from focus groups can then be used to influence model design, product development, as well as risk mitigation and remediation measures. “In the end, knowing how users and others are impacted by your products usually helps you make a better product,” he states.

4. Establish responsible foresight mechanisms

To prevent responsible AI from becoming a one-time check-the-box exercise, Natour says he uses responsible foresight workshops and other mechanisms as a “way to create space for developers to pause, identify, and consider potential risks, and collaborate on risk mitigations.”

The workshops use personas and hypothetical scenarios to help teams identify and prioritize risks, then design concrete mitigations with follow-on sessions to review progress. Another approach includes developing simple, structured question sets that push product teams to pause and think about harm. For example, Natour explains how one of his clients includes the question: What would a super villain do with this product? in order to help product teams identify and safeguard against potential misuse.

5. Create documentation and feedback loops for accountability

As expectations around assurance rise from regulators, customers, and civil society, strong documentation and meaningful, accessible transparency are essential, says Natour.ÌęClear, succinct, and accessible user-facing information about what a model does and does not do, about data privacy, and other key aspects can help users understand “what happens with their data, as well as the capabilities and the limitations of the tool they are using,” he adds.

Further, transparency should enable two-way communication, and companies should set up feedback loops to enable continuous improvement in the ways they seek to mitigate potential human rights risks.

The hardwired future

Effectively embedding human rights into the AI product lifecycle starts with a shared governance model between a company’s policy and engineering teams. Together they can collectively hardwire human rights into the way AI systems are imagined, built, and brought to market.

You can find more about human rights considerations around AI in our here

In addition, more options for flex hours and four-day work weeks emerged. Creativity around the time-and-place work paradigm, especially for knowledge workers, blossomed; and team members began to rely on these flexible options to better integrate their work and life schedules. Flexible work options moved from a nice-to-have perk to a must-have benefit that team members now relied upon.

In the last few months, however, headlines have been peppered with news of companies rescinding their work-from-home options and putting in place return-to-office (RTO) mandates. Some business leaders are even mandating five-days-a-week in the office beginning January 2025.

When explaining the mandates, the reasons these RTO promoters give vary, including the need for in-person work to improve collaboration, innovation, productivity, learning, relationships, and company culture. But this RTO news is not sitting well with companies’ talent. For example, when Amazon recently made an RTO announcement, a of 2,585 Amazon employees found that 73% of employees are considering looking for another job because of the new in-office work policy.

RTO mandates risk turnover, which will likely negatively impact work culture and productivity, which in turn can ultimately lead to greater turnover.

The tax & accounting profession is already facing capacity and talent pipeline challenges. The number of college graduates heading into the profession has been declining, and only “one in nine college business-related bachelor’s graduates” are choosing an accounting degree, according to the (NPAG). Given the number of career options open to accounting graduates, tax & accounting firm leaders need to be mindful of what will appeal to talent at all levels.

Flexibility in work is crucial, survey says

In 2024, ConvergenceCoaching added an element to its biennial that queried accounting firm leaders on their remote and flex work offerings and also surveyed public accounting team members to hear their thoughts on these benefits.

Responding team members confirmed the importance of having a choice in where they work, according to the ATAWW Survey. In fact, 83% of respondents said that remote work flexibility is very important to them; and 55% said they would likely seek a new job if they lost the ability to work remotely.

Clearly, those firms maintaining hybrid, remote, and flex-time benefits will have a competitive advantage in acquiring and retaining top talent in this tight talent market. Not surprisingly, in the five years since the pandemic, workers have developed new habits and schedules that enable them to achieve greater work-life integration; 93% of respondents said they feel work-life integration has improved with remote work options.

Today, accounting firm leaders who embrace a one-size-fits-one approach to remote and flex work arrangements could more positively influence firm culture, productivity, and morale by empowering their talent to choose the best and most effective work environment for their day. Instead of RTO mandates, leaders could implement adjustments to incorporate remote management techniques.

The need to outline clear expectations

It is important to clarify what is expected of each employee, because when working at different times or in disbursed locations, the lack of face time can leave some leaders wondering about team member productivity. To ensure productivity levels stay high, leaders need to clearly communicate:

• • • expected team member output, deliverables, or results
    • specific due dates
    • clear response time expectations to email, Teams messages, and voicemails
    • participation guidelines for remote team meetings (cameras are on, unmuted and speaking up, chatting, facilitating portions of meetings)
    • protocols for communicating during normal, agreed-upon work hours as well as changes from the expected normal hours
    • ways to communicate capacity and move past barriers in completing work
    • supervisor/assignee communication expectations
    • expectations for skill development and elevation into higher level work
    • guidelines for keeping calendars current and specific

Establishing clarity around these expectations, leaders can then track and benchmark performance against them instead of measuring less-reliable metrics like time-entered, face time, or keystrokes.

An RTO mandate may feel like a simple way to solve people-management challenges, but it’s likely to have significant unintended consequences on engagement, productivity, motivation, and ultimately, talent retention. Instead, leaders should develop new management strategies that include clearer expectations that can empower employees to produce their very best in both their work lives and their personal lives no matter where or when they are working.

You can find out more aboutÌęthe talent challenges facing tax & accounting firmsÌęłó±đ°ù±đ.

Recently, I spoke with a midsize accounting firm that had spent more than $100,000 on organizational resilience initiatives in 2024, and while firm leadership believed it was successful and wanted to keep momentum going, they were uncertain of their next steps. When I asked what metrics they used to measure success, they admitted they had only tracked attendance and word of mouth feedback.

If this sounds familiar, you’re not alone. However, this is precisely why many companies fall short in achieving their desired outcomes.

In this final installment of our three-part series on organizational resilience, we’ll explore the return on investment (ROI) you can expect when you intentionally invest in transformational solutions to foster resilience within your company. We will also look at two companies that are benefiting because of their previous investment in organizational resilience.

What are the transformational solutions?

Many professionals dream of the perks offered by companies like Google and often view anything less as inadequate. However, companies can thrive without ping-pong tables in the office breakroom and free bagels in the morning. What employees truly want is balance, demonstrated in time off from work for family and a flexible work environment that genuinely supports them. “You have to meet people where they are,” says Mariya Rosberg, Head of Americas Banking and Financial Services at management consulting firm .

What employees truly want is balance, demonstrated in time off from work for family and a flexible work environment that genuinely supports them.

Transformational solutions provide focused, consistent and ongoing support that enables employees to perform at their best. This can include group programs, coaching, training sessions, workshops, and team-building events. The key is sustained effort — one-off happy hours and 30-day walking challenges won’t cut it anymore.

Oliver Wyman launched a group program for women in their Corporate and Institutional Banking practice, designed to address the common challenges that their professionals face. The program provided practical tools to help participants manage both their careers and personal lives more effectively. “We invested in this program because we genuinely care about our people and want them to feel supported,” says Rosberg. “I also liked the idea of creating authentic environments for our team to connect and discuss issues that supersede engagement or rank.”

(LSHV), a legal non-profit that serves low-income individuals, took a different approach as its leaders launched a firm-wide program that specifically addressed attorney burnout. “Burnout is a constant concern in the legal profession, and we saw a group program as the most effective way to support our staff,” says Christa Ring, Human Resources Director at LSHV.

While both organizations implemented group programs, their goals, budgets, and cohort sizes varied. However, that’s a good thing — each devised a customized strategy that led to targeted execution and meaningful outcomes.

What to consider as a success

In the previous article, I shared a simple math scenario in which ROI could be measured through retention. However, many other metrics also indicate success, such as reduced sick days, increased revenue or margins, lower attrition costs, higher job satisfaction, and improved ability to handle competing demands. Subtle improvements, such as better presenteeism, communication, stress management, and confidence, are also valuable indicators of success.

Take sick days, for example. Imagine a managing director nearing burnout who takes two days off due to illness. They likely return feeling behind and disconnected. In contrast, with proper coping strategies implemented through organizational resilience programs, that same director may still take time off but would likely recover faster. More importantly, they would return feeling refreshed, better able to prioritize, and more capable of asking for help when needed.

LSHV’s Ring shared an example of an attorney struggling with severe burnout who was on the verge of quitting. Just weeks into the program, this attorney experienced significant improvement in mood and morale, benefiting from the tools provided in the program. While not every investment yields immediate results, this case highlights the direct impact a thoughtfully designed program can have on employee well-being and retention. “After surveying our people, the majority felt their coping skills improved and that they were equipped with better tools to handle challenges,” Ring explains.

Transformational solutions provide focused, consistent and ongoing support that enables employees to perform at their best.

This outcome is common in programs that are focused on building organizational resilience. Rosberg, of Oliver Wyman, witnessed a similar experience. “One of the most notable observations was participants recognizing they had more control, even when faced with challenges and hardships,” she says.

At Oliver Wyman, post-program surveys showed that participants felt they gained clear tools to reframe stressful situations and improve their boundary-setting skills. Rosberg also mentioned how participants found relief in their newly founded ability to openly discuss sensitive topics with colleagues, which fostered a supportive working environment. “In the long run, I see this as a way to build diversity in our pipeline.”

Success in these programs occurs when both the employer and employee benefit. It doesn’t have to look a certain way externally; it simply requires meeting the needs of both parties. One additional success both Rosberg and Ring noted is the longevity of the investment, as employees continue to reference and benefit from the original program months and years after its initial launch.

When measuring the success of an organizational resilience program, two key points are important. First, not all employees will engage fully. “Keep in mind that not everyone will practice or internalize the strategies,” Ring cautions. “But even if a few employees achieve better balance in their lives, we’ve succeeded.” Second, success is an ongoing process that requires continuous effort; however, once the initial momentum is built, it’s easier to maintain the benefits achieved.

Making organizational resilience your company’s reality

Organizational resilience goes beyond quick fixes — gone are the days when a $150 massage gift card or a team bowling event could save your workforce. It’s about genuinely supporting your people through challenges and not ignoring them. In order for your organization to thrive in the next five to 10 years of uncertainty, now is the time to act. Here are few key steps you can take now:

1. 1. 1. Finalize your budget and intentional goals.
      2. Develop a strategic plan that addresses your top priorities and incorporates the key decisions from earlier in this series.
      3. Get the support needed to achieve a positive ROI.

While this may feel like an additional burden given all your company’s existing challenges, it’s essential. You can’t wait for talent to leave or for bad press to surface — you need organizational resilience now. If you’re still unsure how to proceed, reach out to a well-being consultant who can guide you through the process and ensure your company achieves the ROI you’ve been striving for.

Cultivating a culture of organizational resilience doesn’t have to be a daunting undertaking — it can be an easy win-win.

You can read the complete 3-partÌęOrganizational Resilience series, here.

Another study — the biennial survey (ATAWW), conducted by , a remote consulting team that has served tax, accounting, and consulting firms since 2000 — has looked at remote and flexible work programs in public accounting since 2014. “We perceive a real disconnect between official ‘firm leadership’ survey responses and team members’ experiences with flexibility,” explains Renee Moelders, a partner at ConvergenceCoaching.

This disconnect leads to unmet expectations between leadership and team members which can then create disappointment and frustration around work environments. If left unresolved, trust could disintegrate, and the firm’s culture and ability to retain talent could be at risk.

One area that firm leadership can begin clearing up unmet expectations is around the different points of view within their own leadership team. ATAWW Survey data from 2022 showed that 79% of participating firms’ leadership fully embrace the concept of anytime, anywhere work (20%) or see it as important (59%)​. As encouraging as those percentages are, it reveals that 21% of participating firm leaders do not fully support remote and flex work styles and may restrict flexibility options for their team members.

Team members who are assigned to leaders with this minority viewpoint may want to switch to another team, resent colleagues who have more flexibility, or leave the firm out of frustration with the disconnect. “We’d like to see firms clarify and commit to their official stance and stand behind that more consistently, so the whole team has access to these benefits,” says Moelders.

Remote work and productivity

Some firm leaders continue to question how productive remote team members can be or express doubts about how their remote team members spend their time, believing that remote talent are doing laundry and chores instead of their work. Firms may be tempted to employ technology to monitor performance, including trackers that measure screen activity or the location of their individuals or their devices. Given that accounting is a profession driven by knowledge workers, this lack of trust and suspicion may drive away quality remote and flex workers and therefore, has no place in a healthy employment relationship between professionals.

To build trust, firm leaders could instead implement metrics that measure deliverables, output, and contributions to results. Does it matter when and where people work if they are delivering results? Leaders should create a win-win situation by setting clear expectations on production measures or revenue contribution and holding people accountable for their targeted activities and outcomes. Then team members can have the autonomy to work when and where it is most effective for them. And at the same time, the firm can achieve its goals.

The 2024 is currently open for data inputs from firms through June 28, 2024. An executive summary will be shared with participating firms by the end of November 2024.

Also, those who prefer to work in the office may have a proximity bias. This occurs when learning opportunities or plum assignments are given to those in close physical proximity to the person assigning work. For most leaders, this is an unconscious bias and not what they are truly committed to as a people-management strategy. To counteract this natural bias, leaders should establish intentional learning experiences and competency pathways that map the skills necessary to grow and provide flexible mechanisms or delivery methods to develop those competencies. This way, every individual, whether they work in the office or remotely, will have a greater likelihood of receiving advancement opportunities.

When leaders master intentional learning approaches, they improve their ability to hire people at all levels — including interns and new hires — without geographic constraints. Only 38% of ATAWW respondents said their firms had hired remote talent, according to the 2020 survey; but by 2022, that number jumped to 81% of respondents who said their firm had benefited by hiring a remote person.

Connecting through remote work

In addition to being intentional about learning and development, leaders need to think remote first when it comes to creating connectedness and giving all team members a sense of belonging. Without belonging, talent engagement levels can wane. This reduces productivity and the likelihood of talent staying with their firm. Even hybrid team members report feeling disconnected when they go to the office and very few others are there.

Instead of thinking everyone should return to the office, which will remove a highly sought-after benefit, develop connections and interactions that tether people to the firm. Leaders should assign a shepherd who can check in with their assigned team members, know what is happening with them personally and professionally, and will make their assignees feel seen and heard. Every person in the firm should be assigned to a shepherd.

Despite the differing points of view on these topics and others, many people would like to achieve better work/life integration. Remote, hybrid, and flex work options are tools that offer individuals more opportunity to balance time between important personal and professional commitments. The seasonality and workload compression of the tax & accounting profession poses a real challenge to many professionals. “If your people aren’t , they will struggle, at best, winning at work,” says Tamera Loerzel, a partner at ConvergenceCoaching.

Tax & accounting firms, along with all organizations, are still learning how to make remote and flex work for themselves and their employees. Those firms and their leaders that seek to reconcile the differing points of view will gain a competitive advantage in attracting and retaining top talent.

The author is a Senior Consultant with ConvergenceCoaching.

We examined how three separate government agencies — in Washington, Colorado, and California — are taking an innovative approach to achieve these benchmarks through major overhauls of their programs and processes.

Washington state: Working on Island Time

San Juan County’s 17,000 residents primarily live across the four major inhabited islands in the San Juan Islands archipelago, in the Salish Sea in far northwest Washington state. These residents rely on ferry transportation to and from the mainland, a transportation system which has been plagued by staffing shortages since the pandemic. Following labor negotiations in 2023, the San Juan County government (which employs approximately 200 employees) compromised to meet cost-of-living adjustments in a perhaps unusual way: maintain the same rate of pay but reduce the number of hours worked. Thus, the agency introduced the to its employees.

The nomenclature is intentional: 32 hours per week does not universally translate to a four-day workweek. Numerous county offices remain open five days per week, such as San Juan County’s District Court, which is mandated by state statute to remain open five days per week. With employees working up to 32 hours as full-time equivalents (FTEs), however, this equates to a 4% cost-of-living adjustment and 416 additional personal hours realized.

says that an overhaul of the county court’s schedule for hearings and trials to adjust to the new 32-hour work week required staff creativity and a great deal of user education. For example, the daily court calendar was consolidated so that jury trials would not fall on Fridays.

Prior to the shift, the Court had a large criminal calendar and a jury trial term each week. Now, criminal calendars and jury trial terms have been , with the flexibility in place to hear arraignments on any Tuesday morning, regardless of which docket week it is. Trials are particularly demanding on staff resources, and this does cause some employees work more than 32 hours during those weeks. (Employees who work more than 32 but fewer than 40 hours are not eligible for overtime pay but are paid for additional hours worked at their regular rate.)

From a work efficiency perspective, the small district court team (which has 5.77 FTEs) has found an increased need to cross-train and fight siloing of roles. And they are anticipating a budgetary request for an additional .5 FTE for 2025.

Despite the at-times thin staffing to maintain five days open to the public, employees have indicated that they love the new weekly model. Many services and retail options are on the mainland and require a daylong trip off-island to be completed. Employees report more time for personal interests, hobbies, and the ability to to one day each week, without the need to use limited vacation or sick time for these necessities.

Silicon Valley: Personalizing employee wellness

Home to more than 1.8 million people, the government of Santa Clara County — the heart of California’s Silicon Valley — boasts more than 24,000 employees and is a major provider of health services for area residents through its Behavioral Health Services Department, Public Health Department, Emergency Medical Services Agency, and three county-owned hospitals.

If county employees work so hard to deliver health services to residents, leaders felt it was important that they too should also be able to take care of their own mental and physical health. To ensure this, the commitment was codified in an in 2018.

Since its rejuvenation in 2012, the , which is housed under the County Executive’s office, has been on the leading edge of putting employee well-being at the forefront of the organization’s culture. Program manager Teresa Chagoya said that although offerings have evolved over the years, the program continues to stress accessibility and personalization. are offered online (and will soon return to in-person), including some in newly developed onsite classrooms and exercise amenities held in county facilities. And in its recent employment campaign, Santa Clara County to the organization’s wellness offerings.

The Employee Wellness Division has four navigators who work with differing types of departments to meet their staffs’ unique wellness needs, including two who specialize in developing and delivering wellness programs for hospital and health workers as well as public safety employees. The public safety navigator works in tandem with the health and wellness coordinator for the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office.

The Santa Clara County government also relies heavily on internal program ambassadors through its . More than 100 employee ambassadors across the organization connect wellness efforts to the county’s various departments. Champions help to spread the word about upcoming programs and offerings to their colleagues, as well as to share valuable feedback with Employee Wellness Division leadership. Post-pandemic, both mental health counseling and financial counseling are in high demand by Santa Clara County employees, and the county’s partnership with provides access to 24/7 counseling (whether in-person or virtually) with clinicians engaged directly in triage.

Golden, Colo.: A people-first workplace

City Manager Scott Vargo, the city manager of Golden, Colo., a city of slightly more than 20,000 just outside the Denver’s metro area, helped program last year. And Police Chief Joe Harvey jumped at the opportunity for his 72-member department to be the first to road-test it.

After nearly one year of the pilot, Chief Harvey says that he is serious about building a department and a culture in which people are “heard, respected, and taken care of” because he believes strongly that to deliver the level of public safety that Golden deserves, the organization needs “healthy, balanced, and grounded people” responding.

Chief Harvey stresses that numbers-wise, traffic stops have remained on par, while such as community engagement events and self-initiated calls for service (instances in which emergency service personnel call for service rather than the public) doubled and tripled, respectively. The outcomes of policing in Golden are actively getting better, he adds, while overtime costs were down 75% in the first year of the pilot compared to the year prior.

It’s not just about the financials, however, it’s about reaching the long-term goal of a healthier, more grounded workforce. Anecdotally, police department employees have shared positive effects of a shortened workweek that relate to physical and mental well-being — such as their ability to reduce in their blood pressure medication, sleep better, experience less stress, spend more time with their family, and feel more alert at the tail ends of their shifts.

While staffing ebbs and flows, and departments still find themselves needing to fund police academy expenditures as a part of the recruitment process, Chief Harvey says he was completely staffed at the moment. This affords the department the luxury of being more selective about whom they hire, ensuring that recruits who enter the Golden Police Department are a good cultural fit and align with the of “elevating public trust in law enforcement through accountability and equitable policing.”

Indeed, leadership is confident that if this pilot becomes permanent, the Golden Police Department will remain competitive in talent attraction. City leadership also stressed at the time of the that this program did not mean that city staff would be working less and doing less. Rather, as Chief Harvey clarifies: “[We] have to work smarter and łóČč°ù»ć±đ°ù.”

As more government agencies make it a priority to achieve their goals of promoting a healthy work/life balance among employees and better manage staff members’ mental health issues, these three government agencies can act as beacons to show different ways it can be done and how success in this area can be defined.

For more strategies on managing government agencies, you can download the Thomson Reuters Institute’s State of the Government Legal Department Report 2024 here.

Cybersecurity attacks on local governments and state agencies predate the pandemic but have only worsened in recent years. The cities of , respectively, which caused major service disruptions and cost more than a combined $30 million dollars to mitigate.

As the pandemic escalated in 2020, 44% of global ransomware attacks specifically . A survey administered by the International City/County Managers Association (ICMA) on cybersecurity noted that 21.4% of local government respondents had experienced in the last calendar year. More than 90% of respondents indicated that attacks within their organization were increasing in frequency.

Pandemic-exposed weak spots

The pandemic peak time in 2020 showed weak spots in cybersecurity as more employees began working virtually, leading to new personal electronic devices accessing networks remotely, and increasing use of digital interface tools like Zoom and Microsoft Teams. A Deloitte report surveying state chief information officers indicated that ; indeed, by the end of 2020, 35 states had more than half of their state workforce working remotely, and nine states had more than 90% of their workforce working remotely.

Unfortunately for cybersecurity protection, those employees quarantined in 2020 and working remotely were less likely to have . Organizations without asynchronous collaboration tools likely saw an increase in the transfer of sensitive documents via email. The pandemic overlapped with the massive growth of the Internet of Things — such as wearable technology and smart devices — and the number of connected devices globally ballooned from seven billion devices in 2018 to 31 billion devices in 2020, creating .

Why local governments are targeted

Local governments capture such as names, addresses, driver’s license numbers, forms of payment, Social Security numbers, and more. This type of data has high value for cyber-criminals to capture, sell, or hold for ransom. With more than 90,000 local government organizations in the United States, the targets are numerous, and even worse, many of those government agencies fend for themselves in regard to their network security. That makes — such as counties, small cities, towns, and educational institutions — particularly vulnerable to cyber-attacks.

Of course, ransom is not the only goal of cyber-attackers. An increasing prevalence of — cybersecurity attacks for political motives — is responsible for 9% of attacks targeting government agencies last year. And a final goal (beyond the expression of political sentiments or financial gain) of cyber-attacks on local governments is to shake the public’s confidence in local systems and endanger citizens. This is even more worrisome because local government systems often manage emergency response operations, traffic flow, and public utilities.

Cybersecurity attacks against local government agencies have long-ranging impacts from mild inconveniences to serious disruptions of day-to-day life. In early 2021, a was launched against nearly two dozen Texas municipalities by a Russia-based crime syndicate, which had gained access through a third-party firm that provides technology services to local government agencies. Minor inconveniences stemming from this attack included vital records being offline and public meeting agendas having to be printed. More problematic: police officers couldn’t retrieve records digitally and municipal payrolls could not be processed. Most alarmingly: one unnamed municipality was forced to operate their water supply system manually for more than a week.

Impacts from attacks against state or local governments can spread widely. For example, a single malware incident in Miller County, Arkansas spread to .

Cybersecurity funding & policy

According to a 2021 ICMA report, the for local governments are: i) the inability to pay competitively for employees; ii) insufficient numbers of cybersecurity staff; and iii) a general lack of funds. As the costs and risks for cybersecurity management increase, local governments would be well-informed to when seeking additional funding. Cybersecurity insurance is another option that local government agencies might think about funding, especially considering that the average public sector cybersecurity incident .

The 2022 requires U.S. government agencies to report cyber-attacks within 72 hours and report ransomware payments within 24 hours. States are also subject to the same attack report criteria. The decentralized , a part of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the Department of Homeland Security, has dedicated $185 million in FY 2022 to enhancing cyber-governance and planning, building a cybersecurity workforce, and assessing and evaluating systems and capabilities. A large portion (80%) of allocations to each state must support local entities.

Collaborative state & local solutions

At the state level, Massachusetts has funded cybersecurity programs through their Office of Municipal and School Technology — part of the Executive Office of Technology Services and Security. This program offers and assessments at no cost. End-user training, phishing drills, and other exercises can help mitigate outside attacks and prevent internal user errors that could leave systems vulnerable, especially to phishing attacks, which are reported to be all attack vectors.

New York City and New York State have created a new model of joint operations through their (JSOC), which co-locates city and state cybersecurity personnel in the same command center to enhance collaboration and information-sharing. JSOC offers endpoint detection and response services for five major upstate cities and 50 qualifying New York State counties. In order to qualify for three years of support at no cost, New York municipalities and counties must share their detection logs, which in turn, helps state systems to continually improve and can offer insights and warnings to potential victims.

The emerging field of collaboration intelligence is now tapping into the flood of data from online meetings to better understand not only how employees have adapted, but how online meetings have changed how people collaborate and where collaboration through remote meetings is now trending.

Collaboration intelligence can be an important new business intelligence tool to help organizations improve efficiency and employee retention. In an analysis of 48 million online meetings held over the last three years involving more than half a million employees, some unexpected findings were discovered. Not surprisingly, for example, when the pandemic struck and offices emptied, remote meetings skyrocketed. Workdays became longer by an average of 48 minutes as people adjusted not only to remote meetings, but also to working from home and the always-on mentality that often took hold as a result.

Leveraging collaboration intelligence data can allow an organization insight into its employees’ collaborative patterns and improve efficiency and productivity across the organization.

As the pandemic wore on throughout 2021 and into 2022, we expected to see the number of online meetings begin to tail off. But instead, they increased. However, the dynamics of the meetings noticeably changed: There were more meetings, of course, but they were shorter on average and held with fewer participants. And there also were more ad hoc or unscheduled meetings.

Employees seem to figure out what works for them in terms of how they prefer to conduct remote meetings. We can’t say for certain, but employees may increasingly be using ad hoc and one-on-one remote meetings to recreate the informal meetings by the watercooler that used to regularly take place in the office.

Remote meetings & employee engagement

Collaboration intelligence tools provide tremendous opportunities for organizations to learn how people are interacting — at the employee, team and organizational levels.

Despite concerns about productivity and engagement in remote and hybrid work environments, our data indicates that remote workers have become increasingly engaged over the last two years. The increase in remote meetings in 2021 and 2022, even as some workers returned to the office or moved to more hybrid schedules with some in-office days, may support the notion that as people became more comfortable with remote meetings they made increased use of them to interact with colleagues.

Collaboration intelligence allows organizations to gain deeper understanding of how employees are interacting. For example, it can address such questions as:

• • • Are employees relatively siloed or collaborating across the organization?
    • Do they tend to have more frequent interactions but with fewer people, or broader but somewhat weaker connections?
    • Do they tend to interact with similarly situated colleagues or up the chain with managers?

For law firms, this could produce insights on how interactions take place within and across matter teams and practice groups, as well as among other groups such as mentors, affinity groups and other diversity, equity & inclusion (DEI) initiatives.

Employee satisfaction & retention

Our collaboration intelligence analysis also revealed patterns between engagement and employee retention. In particular, we zeroed in on employees who had left their company. We thought these people were probably in more meetings, leading to Zoom fatigue and meeting burnout. What we found, however, was actually the opposite.

Departed employees averaged 29% fewer meetings — in particular, they had barely half the number of one-on-one meetings, and they were also less likely to host meetings. It’s possible that such employees may have felt they somehow had fewer opportunities to have their voice be heard than others did, or that their views were less valued.

In this way, lack of collaborative engagement potentially can be a signal that particular employees may be having a less than positive work experience, which could then lead to flight risk.

When it comes to employee engagement, it’s important to remember that it isn’t just employees interacting with each other. It also encompasses intangible factors such as how employees feel about their work and their company. While collaboration intelligence doesn’t measure those things directly, it can track some data that may be proxies or indicators of some of those broader employee sentiments around engagement.

Best practices for encouraging engagement

Regardless of the state of remote engagement, there are several steps law firms and other organizations can take to encourage greater engagement.

Encourage synchronous work schedules for remote workersÌę

Having work schedules with time blocks where employees are able to meet remotely during their workday regardless of their location can help facilitate collaborative meetings.

For global firms, this can sometimes be difficult. However, there should at least be an understanding about how to best facilitate meeting schedules in order to avoid having all communications be solely asynchronous through emails. Our research shows being synchronous with one’s teammates can increase workÌęqualityÌęthrough means such as improved information sharing.

Be intentional about meeting culture, but avoid dogmatic policy

When participants enable their camera, for example, it tends to result in higher quality meetings, but it can also result in increased fatigue. Be mindful of the trade-offs and empower team members to make the most effective choices for themselves and the situation. There are scenarios where audio-only communication can increase perceptions of authenticity and build stronger bonds.

Along those lines, training is critical. Commonly in organizations, around 50% of meetings are hosted by only 10% of employees, so offering effective training to that 10% can go a long way in improving meeting culture.

Try to re-engage employees who are disengaging

While collaboration intelligence can identify employees who are less engaged than others, the remedy is not necessarily simply forcing them to attend more meetings. Private but open conversations can determine the main reasons the employee may be disengaged, such as their feeling they are underpaid or that their work is not challenging enough.

At the same time, if an employee’s meeting or engagement patterns shift, it could be due to factors such as a new role that does not require as much collaboration.

Conclusion

Ultimately, collaboration intelligence is an important emerging tool that provides opportunities to better understand how employees are engaging and how their work experience is progressing. Leveraging collaboration intelligence data can allow an organization insight into its employees’ collaborative patterns and improve efficiency and productivity across the organization.

“Any organization has two manifestations: the formal organization with its rules, procedures, and organizational diagrams, and ‘what actually happens’,” said Dr. Roger Miles, faculty lead of the banking industry body U.K. Finance’s conduct leaders’ academy and a researcher and consultant on behavioral risk.

“Discovering the latter exposes problems and risks but senior managers often have a determinist view and wrongly assume that what their rules say is what everyone does,” Miles noted.

Hybrid workingÌęhiding problems

Hybrid working became normal practice at many firms as the COVID-19 pandemic wound down. Staff liked being spared a commute and enjoyed the greater flexibility to accommodate childcare and other needs. And many firms saw the potential to reduce the amount of expensive office space that they rent.

Hybrid working remains popular with employees. With people no longer in the same place at the same time, managers depend on video-conferencing platforms such as Zoom, Webex and Microsoft Teams; however, without the necessary management skills, problems can go unnoticed or unchecked.

“In online meetings, you lack important clues — body language, other visual signs, conversational nuances, significant silences — that would tell people in the same room someone’s holding back their true opinion or has some other difficulty,” Miles said.

“It’s easier to query something in person, especially when you sense that somebody else may support you,” he added. “Virtual working can mean more doubts are suppressed, which is the opposite of the ‘speak up’ culture” that the United Kingdom’sÌęÌę(FCA) expects.

SVB & operational risk

Failure to challenge matters online has been suggested as a factor in the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) because underlying causes included unhedged risks from rising interest rates, a narrow client base, and a sudden pullout of deposits. However, some flagged SVB’s enthusiastic adoption of remote working, which most staff enjoyed. AÌęÌęmentioned the difficulty of challenging decisions like interest rate risk over Zoom.

SVB’s 2023Ìę, released in February, acknowledged that its work-from-home (WFH) arrangements created operational risk. The report said the negative effects of WFH that SVB could experience included systems access problems, cybersecurity or information breaches, and work-life balance problems reducing productivity or causing significant business operations disruptions.

From the C-suite to call centers, hybrid working risk-reduction is not helped by the way many managers in finance are developed, and the focus often is on performing a role, not how to oversee others. Research by the , found that despite the prevalence of managing via online channels, there was scant training for it.

Lack of training, online meetings where most attendees keep their camera and mic off unless called to contribute, and a subconscious ‘familiarity breeds contempt’ attitude creates problems. Sensitive online meetings can be overheard as people take calls in coffee shops, while walking dogs, or on a train. Hybrid working may also contribute to the use of unauthorized messaging services for work.

Further, hybrid working affects staff development and meeting FCA training and competence requirements, as in-person instruction entails getting the instructor and trainee into the office on the same day. Anecdotally, one problem is that upper-middle tier managers at some firms can be absent even on core office days. The Ìęregarding remote or hybrid arrangements require firms to take into account the possible detrimental impact on training, and there are clear shortcomings.

“We all learn in unconscious ways, and seeing your manager operate on a day-to-day basis in person will undoubtedly influence how we learn at work,” said Anthony Painter, director of policy at CMI. “A survey of managers late last year asked about onboarding new employees, and 7-in-10 told us they found onboarding new team members and building relationships at work harder in a hybrid work setting.”

Pushback from firms

The Lloyd’s insurance market is among those pushing back against three days in work patterns and wants Monday restored as an office day, ideally aiming for full-time attendance. Some investment banks always viewed hybrid working as an unloved post-lockdown necessity that got staff back in the office at least part-time without triggering mass resignations in a tight labor market. With economic conditions harder, firms’ attitudes started stiffening last autumn.

Staff resistance to full-time attendance may thwart firms. Several banks have repeatedly told employees to be in the office full-time since late 2020, but logic would dictate that you do not have to keep ordering people to do something if they are already not doing it. AÌęÌęfound that over one-third of staff at London law firms, and nearly half in North America, had ignored calls for greater office attendance with firms reluctantly conceding on the issue.

A call back to the office can weed out those abusing the concept of being managed remotely — sometimes referred to as ZEUS workers, meaning those who put in zero effort unless supervised. One company recently paid staff a lump sum towards the travel costs of returning full-time; later, non-attendees’ excuses included spending the money on clothes and disliking commuting approximately five miles. Another non-attendee who asked whether the firm would installÌęair-conditioning first had to be reminded the office had always had it.

Reluctance to return to the office can indicate serious diversity and cultural problems as well, as it may really be about avoiding unpleasant people. Last month, a recruitment company reported that workers over 55 years old were the most likely to experience deliberate exclusion by colleagues. Women over 45 were twice as likely to face sexist behavior than younger ones and one-third had been bullied.

“If your colleagues are deterred from coming to the office because of a hostile environment, you have bigger problems than the balance between in-person or remote working,” Painter said. “Such a culture is fundamentally corrosive and will impact the well-being and performance of your staff. It will also exclude many talented people, whether over 45 or under 45.”

Other workers may find the office less attractive nowÌęthat fewer people are there.ÌęIn March, reported that 52% of managers found WFH meant workplaces, especially at larger firms, were lonelier; and 47% found work more stressful than in pre-pandemic times.

The tsunami of current and forthcoming retirements from the public sector has been , but many organizations have not had the capacity to plan for this talent shift. Some public organizations have indicated they have a lack of tools, resources, or leadership support to engage in succession planning, combined with the fact that are presently outpacing hiring. In fact, (at least compared to private sector competitors) is that private sector organizations often provide the budgetary cushion for outgoing talent to mentor and train their successors before the retirees formally exit the organization.

Anticipating workforce retirements & turnover

One commonsense approach to managing organizational turnover means behaving in a proactive, anticipatory way rather than in a reactive manner. Conducting a is a logical first place to start — both by identifying the tenure of your existing workforce and analyzing the anticipated future service delivery needs of your customers. Workforce tenure can be identified — both quantitatively and qualitatively — by calculating retirement eligibility measures for employees and through informal interviews of employees about their goals.

Beyond understanding individual goals, it is advantageous for agency leaders to inventory the skills and competencies needed for service delivery within the organization as well as those skills and competencies held by current employees. Performing a regular audit of job descriptions (even before positions open) can help departments and agencies understand where gaps exist within teams as well as what competencies are held by those employees who may be planning to leave the organization.

Succession planning processes open up opportunities to identify and develop talent within organizations in anticipation of turnover. Retirements often have advance notice in the public sector, but efforts to understand and cultivate talent at middle management levels can better prepare organizations when turnover comes at short notice.

Well-rounded leadership development emphasizes the leadership and learning styles of both managers and front-line staff. There is a risk that succession planning and talent development processes can alienate some within organizations. Processes such as these can help organizations to identify emerging talent, but may conversely identify talent that is no longer an appropriate fit for future organizational needs.

Benefits of internal process mapping

In addition to identifying skills and competencies within organizations, engaging in is a highly effective way to increase organizational efficiency and enhance service delivery. At a high level, process mapping removes departmental or agency silos and focuses on adding value to products and services while simultaneously reducing waste and inefficiency. Process improvement can through clarifying standards, reducing unnecessary internal handoffs, eliminating redundancy in information sharing, while at the same time adding value by enhancing service and reducing customer wait times.

Process mapping is disruptive by nature as it challenges the status quo, so an empathetic approach that reduces team member alienation is important. Discussions around the risks and obstacles within process change, as well as a focus on , can contribute to healthy and productive change processes.

Even the best designed processes should be to ensure that they are being performed as intended by employees. Effective process implementation requires leadership buy-in from the top, solicitation of feedback from process users, and organizational training across teams on process norms in addition to process audits.

Documentation & employee cross-training

Where process evaluation and public sector turnover come together is through documentation and employee cross-training. In best-case scenarios, there is advance notice of employee departures; however, organizations should be prepared for worst-case scenarios. Cross-training of employees with an emphasis on understanding one another’s roles ensures during times of change.

Processes which are honed and refined through mapping exercises should be documented and stored in centrally accessible locations in order to better on-board employees new to the organization or new to their roles.

One critical facet of organizational turnover can be the loss of both institutional knowledge and subject matter expertise. In instances where knowledge gaps within teams relate to subject matter expertise, employees should be able to access these process change documents and not have to function within the limitations of their own organization.

Database tools are increasingly offering organizations access to templates, checklists, and sample documents, effectively closing the gap on employee subject matter expertise. These subscription-based tools provide on-demand resources to organizations and reduce the need to reinvent the wheel. Similar resources can often be accessed through professional associations at the state or local level, as well.

As government organizations and agencies prepare for industry-wide turnover and assess their service delivery, there is ample opportunity to involve both managers and front-line workers in the change management process. A holistic approach to inventorying skills and competencies organization-wide, as well as a focus on documenting processes, can better prepare organizations for transition, while ensuring continuity of service.

The data-driven report on the ALSP market — published every two years by the Thomson Reuters Institute in partnership with The Center on Ethics and the Legal Profession at Georgetown Law and the SaĂŻd Business School at the University of Oxford — tries to bring quantitative precision to the growth, potential, and challenges of this innovative market. As part of that research, ¶¶ÒőłÉÄê conducts interviews with dozens of leaders at different ALSPs, getting a first-hand view into how these organizations are adapting to and driving changes in the legal landscape.

Leaders of ALSPs say their companies are growing strongly — the report found that in the past two years, the field has grown 45%. And that leaves many ALSPs looking to hire. “Today, the talent that is coming to us is extraordinary,” says the founder of one U.S.-based independent ALSP. Some of these legal professionals might otherwise be facing layoffs, but in the wake of the pandemic, others are looking for a different career and style of working than law firms have traditionally offered. Law firm leaders are suddenly finding that they need to sell the partner track to associates, rather than simply assuming that every young lawyer prioritizes a partner slot above all else.

This attitudinal shift in the talent mindset could have impacts across the legal industry, and the full implications of such a transition may not be known for years. But ALSP leaders say the experience and credentials of people looking for a substantial career change is impressive, and it is changing the perception of ALSPs.

Changing legal work landscape

The exact nature of law firm layoffs may work to the advantage of some ALSPs. “Law firms started letting go, not their rain makers, but their service partners, who were their subject matter experts,” says that same ALSP founder about the last rounds of law firm layoffs.

For many of those people, says a U.K. partner who runs their law firm’s internal ALSP, an ALSP may be a better fit for an individual’s strengths and career aspirations. For some of those considering leaving the traditional law firm career path, working at an ALSP may mean “doing what they enjoy, which is doing law,” the U.K. partner notes, adding that not every lawyer relishes business development or is a good manager, and for those, an ALSP might be a better fit.

These subject matter experts could also enable ALSPs to move into new service areas, such as into advisory work. “With more and more AmLaw staff on our bench, we’ve been angling to go more upstream and provide services that law firms provide in terms of expertise and counsel,” says the chief product officer of a U.S.-based independent ALSP. This leader also says they see potential in service categories related to labor & employment, regulatory matters, and privacy. “We’re gaining traction.”

Depending on who, exactly, chooses a career outside of traditional law firms, a movement to ALSPs could also have an impact on firms’ efforts to meet their goals in diversity, equity, and inclusion. It’s not a stretch to think that those who are most interested in an alternative way of working would include an over-representation of those who have traditionally had the hardest time navigating the more stringent law firm career path.

ALSPs say they are already seeing a change in the mindset of their clients, who now have a better understanding of the potential and allure of remote work. They’re also understanding that it doesn’t make sense for a lawyer, necessarily, to be acting as a project manager on a large matter. Further, ALSPs have identified the value of putting non-lawyers into leadership positions — a strategy which is often untenable for law firms — empowering ALSPs to leverage business and operational expertise in both the day-to-day running and strategic direction of the business.

Says one partner at a U.K.-based law firm ALSP:

It always used to be, ‘I need a lawyer who’s an expert in data privacy five days a week to sit next to me in Doncaster’ or some other remote place. Now it’s very much more. ‘I need these skills, for this amount of hours. I don’t know or care where they are, if they can work remotely, as long as I meet them.’ And I think that has opened up the market significantly.

Over the past few years, those clients have gained a better understanding of why lawyers might choose to work differently, and in fact, have gained more experience with remote work themselves. Clients also have seen colleagues make career choices that would have seemed surprising just a few years ago.

“We would hear from our clients all the time, ‘If they’re really that good, why aren’t they at a big law firm or why aren’t they in-house?’” says the general manager of one U.S.-based independent ALSP. Now, he says, clients see that ALSPs can allow them to work with the same attorneys they would have hired from an AmLaw 50 firm. “They were at an AmLaw 50 firm 10 years ago, and they didn’t leave because they weren’t as good,” says the general manager. “They left because they wanted something different.”

More and more, that “something different” is often a way of working that ALSPs are only too happy to provide.

You can download a copy of the Thomson Reuters Institute’s Alternative Legal Services Providers 2023 Report here.