Every solicitor in the UK has to be a member of the SRA in order to practice. They are a large organisation, based in the Midlands, which, when it first contacted us was going through a period of rapid change. The brief was twofold; launching new ‘Organisational Values’ and helping with a huge change management programme. The main change was relocating two large office sites into one very impressive new building in Birmingham city centre.
In order to research and develop the programme we spoke to people across the SRA at every level. We wanted to understand how the relocation was going to affect them and to check their understanding of the new organisational values. A fascinating array of opinions were expressed. Some people embraced the change, whilst others saw it as a huge upheaval in their lives.
We devised a three hour session. The objective was to raise awareness of the values and embed them in people’s minds. Our other objective was to focus on the changes taking place and encourage the candidates to embrace them. ‘Short term pain leads to long term gain’ was the main message. We rolled out the sessions over two days to 120 candidates each day. The training venue was the basement of a large Sikh temple in Warwick. It worked brilliantly as a venue as no one had the distraction of rushing back to their desks to deal with emails… and the sessions were a huge success.
Since that time – the SRA have become a regular and very valued client. We have a close relationship with them and now work together to tackle any behavioural training need they have. They have also introduced us to their sister organisation, The Law Society, who also became a client.