We explore how law firm Norton Rose Fulbright is further evolving its workplace policies to better support families, thanks to our partnership with Family Friendly Workplaces.
Alison Deitz has personally experienced just how much legal firms have evolved for those with caring responsibilities over the past two decades.
Now the Chief Executive Partner of global law firm Norton Rose Fulbright, she was one of the first partners in the firm to take parental leave – almost 20 years ago.
She was also one of the first to return to work while still breastfeeding and make use of whatever private areas were available in the office to express milk – at one point, doing so when a managing partner accidentally walked into the meeting room she was using. Following the experience, Deitz pushed the firm to introduce a breastfeeding room.
Ever since, slowly but surely, she’s seen positive gradual shifts that have helped open up greater opportunities to working parents such as several weeks paid leave and greater use of technology to work flexibly via Blackberries and later iPhones for staying connected outside of the office.
But Deitz recognises the biggest shift yet will come from fathers in law firms fully leaning in to take on their share of caring responsibilities.
Three years after we first spoke with Deitz, after Norton Rose Fulbright became the first law firm in Australia to be certified as a Family Inclusive Workplace, we checked back with Deitz to see how its family-friendly policies are evolving and to explore what its learnings might be for others in the legal sector.
Deitz noted again the importance of empathy and role-modelling flexibility in leadership is key while also highlighting some great developments at the firm regarding senior promotions involving team members with young children.
The firm recently extended its gender-neutral paid parental leave to 26 weeks (extended from 18 weeks in 2021), to be taken at any point in the first 24 months of welcoming a new child through birth, adoption, surrogacy or long-term foster care. It introduced fertility leave (up to five days per annum), new provisions for foster care arrangements, and leave for pregnancy loss and miscarriage. In 2023, it also introduced a new policy allowing staff to swap up to two public holidays a year with cultural or religious days that are significant to them.
Deitz says the changes come as the family-friendly certification allows them to evolve what they are offering and respond to key needs that come out through regular diversity surveys.
“These allow us to get information to enable us to respond to the needs of our employees and also our partners… So what is it that they want? What do they need? We want to be able to respond. We can’t respond to everything people ask for, but it has allowed us to adapt and focus on those strongest areas of need.”
In the coming weeks, NRF will launch a new app developed by Parents At Work for those taking parental leave, designed to nurture team members through their transition and return to work, equipping them with guidance, training and parenting support, including the ability to track their wellbeing and use the app to access the right resources, at the right time.
As Amelia Britton, Head of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at the firm says, the “ParentKit App links to the firm’s policies so new parents can avoid having to log into their work laptops to access information, and also supports parents in booking their executive coaching sessions with Parents At Work. Importantly, it’s also designed to better support Dads”.
“One of our goals is to create equitable parental leave and to ensure our offerings are being utilised by all genders,” Britton says.
“We were careful to create an inclusive and gender-neutral parental leave policy and we now have more Dads taking up these opportunities to engage as parents and carers. This is good for everyone and is an important lever for us to pull to reach our goal to increase the representation of women across all levels of the firm including leadership.”
The firm has also launched education and awareness sessions supporting people going through different life challenges, such as navigating through elderly care, pregnancy loss, fertility challenges, menopause and neurodiversity.
As Deitz says: “We’re trying to look at our employees’ lives holistically and what it is they need to enable them to cope with life’s challenges, as well as challenges that arise in the workplace, and how we can assist them and their families”.
NRF has also explored options to further normalise men working flexibly, taking leave and reaching out for support. The new parental leave app supports this, along with an existing series of workshops to focus on the journey for fathers run by Ryan Carters, Founder of Dadfit.
“That’s been really helpful because we’ve been able to promote the many opportunities for dads to utilise our gender-neutral and actually what now are quite generous parental league provisions.”
“We do know that once males are taking up opportunities like parental leave and part-time work at the same rate as women, it becomes a mainstream issue. And I think everybody benefits from that. And I think that’s that evolution we’ve seen over the last couple of years.”
One father to take parental leave, twice, is senior lawyer (special counsel) Rohan Sridhar (pictured above), who is now known as a “Dad Champion” at the firm.
He’s spoken about how he’d never considered being a primary carer when his wife became pregnant, as “it wasn’t something I had seen too many other fathers do, particularly in this sector”. But learning how important it would be for his family, he took the opportunity that became “an overwhelmingly positive process” in terms of combining work and family. He says taking this time supported growing his confidence and capabilities.
“I was definitely under-prepared for what parenthood would bring,” he says.
“The amazing thing about the primary carer leave is that I didn’t have my wife as a safety net anymore. I learnt very quickly all of the little things that go into looking after a baby all day, that I’d always sort of taken for granted.
“More importantly, I was able to learn and grow as a father without having to worry about making sure my work was getting done, and that targets were hit. I had the freedom to focus on parenting without worrying about anything else. It definitely made me appreciate what my wife had gone through, especially as I took over for the easy part after she made sure he ate and slept.”
But paid parental leave isn’t everything, notes Deitz. Rather, it’s about employers considering the “whole person” when it comes to supporting team members, as well as their full families – and ensuring there is flexibility available regardless of what type of journey they are taking.
“We’re seeing a next generation come through who have different expectations [of flexibility]. It’s much more mainstream. I have a whole raft of partners now who work flexibly.”
While the firm has been evolving – with COVID accelerating some aspects of remote working – Deitz notes that those they work with have also changed.
“As we’ve changed, our clients have changed as well,” she says.
“We’ve also seen more women who work flexibly taking positions as general counsel or in-house counsel across our clients … It’s very important for our clients to see us being able to work in a flexible way and to promote equally men and women through our leadership pipeline.
“So while we need to respond to what our clients want and expect, we also need to mirror them to a large extent. And I think that’s what’s been happening over the last few years.”
But leaders must take this flexibility themselves. Storytelling and sharing personal experiences also help.
“You can’t be what you can’t see. It’s really important that the leaders are actually modelling that type of behaviour and that we are promoting people through our leadership pipeline who themselves can respond and are family-friendly,” Deitz says.
Family Friendly Workplaces is an initiative of Parents At Work and UNICEF Australia benchmarking employers and certifying those that meet key standards as family-friendly. You can learn more here.
Originally Published on Women’s Agenda
