Reading: Law firm Boyes Turner launches coaching service
Law firm Boyes Turner, based in Reading, is expanding its existing range of employment law and HR offerings with the launch of a new coaching service. The service is aimed at any organisation looking to offer coaching to its employees and reflects the direction that law firms need to move towards, according to Boyes Turner.
The Boyes Turner employment team has been acting for some time as an extension to human resources teams, providing them with an integrated range of employee advisory services. The coaching service is a continuation of this and has been developed in response to client requests for the firm to play an all-round advisory role, rather than offering purely legal support.
While coaching isn’t a regulated industry, Boyes Turner considers regulation important. All Boyes Turner’s coaches are accredited with one of the major coaching bodies. The new service is available on a 1:1 or team basis and covers a variety of topics including executive and career coaching.
Helen Goss, partner, Boyes Turner, commented: “Organisations benefit from providing coaching to their employees by helping them address the war for talent in terms of attracting and retaining the best staff. It encourages employees to feel valued and so increases loyalty and motivation, improving productivity.”
The move into HR services, in addition to legal solutions, reflects the views of Boyes Turner that the future for law firms lies in advising clients on issues beyond the purely legal. As a firm with many fast-moving tech clients, Boyes Turner continually evolves and develops its services to ensure it continues to add real value, as clients’ business models change.
Goss added: “Our clients tell us that what they want are solutions to their problems. Sometimes the solution is a legal one, but requirements are often more complex and need a broader approach. Coaching is just one way we work can work with HR to provide this. Boyes Turner is one of the few law firms to recognise that businesses increasingly want their legal teams to play a broader advisory role - and to actually offer this.”
SAR Support
Also announced by Boyes Turner is the availability of a new service to help with subject access requests (SARs), which, like the coaching service, is designed to provide a solution to issues HR teams have told the firm they regularly encounter.
With the introduction of the General Data Protection Regulation in 2018, individuals are increasingly aware of their rights. One of these is the right of customers, suppliers and employees to request to see what data a company holds about them. The new SARs service combines the expertise of Boyes Turner’s lawyers with the latest AI technology. It will provide organisations with a cost-effective solution to dealing with SARs, thus helping avoid possible fines and reputational risk.
Barry Stanton, who heads the employment team at Boyes Turner, said: “Since the introduction of GDPR we have seen a marked increase in the number of SARs that HR teams are faced with. A combination of the speed needed to respond, the large volume of data which HR teams need to review and the eye-watering fines at stake make these one of the key issues keeping HR up at night.”
Boyes Turner’s solution demonstrates how the firm is continually innovating. Barry commented, “As a business we’ve never stood still because our clients don’t. We are among the first wave of law firms to realise we need to mirror the changes our clients are going through. This means becoming real business advisors rather than just suppliers of legal services.”
