Corrs Chambers Wesgarth HR manager Alexis Navie has made a bit of a habit of using media to broadcast her peculiar views on a variety of matters over the years.
For example, despite having no apparent formal training in psychology*, Navie voiced her opinion on the reasons behind rife depression within the legal industy in a 2006 article:
Part of the problem is in the “nature of the beasts themselves”, she said. “We are talking about the top percentage of the intellectual population.”
More recently she gave her thoughts on scroring the ultimate legal gig in a corporate-buzz-word-intensive article entitled “how to get a job in a law firm“, in which Navie give the following tips:
- ability to get along with people;
- communicate with impact;
- instilling confidence;
- be open to learning;
- develop ability to inspire people.
But the piece de restistance was publiched yesterday by our friends at The New Lawyer . The gist of the article, entitled The people cycle – which was authored entitrely by Corrs‘ Alexis Navie – is that the market for legal jobs has finally turned and that firms now need to think about the means by which they will retain staff. With an extremely self-congratulatory tone, Tony Robbins Navie then walks readers itching to hear how best to retain staff through “a few ideas that we have tried which you might find helpful”:
· Money is important, it is a sign of reward and recognition so get your compensation strategy right. Make sure the criteria is clear and you can explain logically why they have received the salary that they have.
But it is unclear how Navie is able to “logically explain” salaries and the firm’s compensation strategy when, by her own recent admission, the Corrs reumneration system is administratively burdensome and beset with security issues. Navie said:
We were using a manual process with spreadsheets and our main areas of concern were corruption of files, version control issues and security and confidentiality. Additionally we didn’t have real-time reporting of salary increases and the manual processing of salary review letters through mail merging was an administrative headache.”
Naturally, it appears that Navie has failed to follow her own sage advice to “get her compensation strategy right”. Moreover, if anonymous comments contained in the Firm Spy 2010 Remuneration Survey are any indication, it appears that there is a significant level of disillusionment particularly among juniours over the issue of pay.
An anonymous Corrs fifth year wrote:
[Corrs] runs on the smell of an oily rag. It’s easier to solve global warming than to get a free lunch out of Corrs.
An anonymous Corrs third year wrote:
As a firm, the Perth office is going so well, but all the junior lawyers carry the weight for little in return.
But what about Navie’s other retention advice? Namely:
· Benefits are important too but a benefit for some may not be as attractive to others so do your research with this.
Unfortunately it appears that Navie may have failed to follow the benefits piece too. An anonymous Corrs first year wrote:
Pay increase has been average compared to other big firms. Still relatively happy because I’m in a good department with an approachable partner. I know others are less happy with the increase though. It’s said that Corrs used to pay well (only G+T and the big 3 paid more), with no perks, but it seems the former is no longer the case. Firm exceeded its FY2010 budget, so people are justifiably miffed.
And, rather cheaply, the Sydney partnership decided to hold its EFY party at MoS cafe, a dingey little bar annexed to our building, more known for its mediocre late-night dinner deliveries.
Unsurprisingly, an astute anonymous Corrs fifth-year merged these two issues of HR befuddlement and salary-system security in their comments on the Firm Spy 2010 Remuneration Survey, writing:
very social but poor infrastructure, ie HR, phones…
How is your HR department tracking? Should they keep their views in-house? Or are they also in the “top percentage of the intellectual population”?
Send the Firm Spy your news and views!
*We could be wrong on the issue of Navie’s formal training in psychology, so we invite her to clarify this point. Or anyone else, for that matter.
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HR cause depression. They turn a blind eye and refuse to support employees thereby perpetuating the oppressive culture. They will do anything to protect partners even if it is unprofessional and unethical.
The thing I found interesting, as a Corrs employee, is that Navie didn’t talk about redundancies at all. Odd given that Corrs was one of the first movers in that regard and that the scars still show…
Never seen so many typos in a Firm Spy post…
Anon, you have to be pretty naive to think that HR have any real power in a law firm. I’ve been there and there are absolute limits to changing partners’ behaviour or influencing their decisions. That’s why I moved out of prof services. In my experience, we genuinely did what we could to advocate on behalf of staff when it was appropriate to do so. The reality is that some staff will never be happy and HR are rarely valued for the good things they do. And they do do good things, but often don’t get the credit. You might like to remember that we are staff too, and we have our own issues and grievances.
Also, for what it’s worth my feel is that people are pretty happy with Corrs’ payrises. Of course we all would like more but compared to the rest of the industry we’re paid well.
I found this entire article really distasteful. It’s one thing to attack law firms, or Masterchef contestants who put themselves in the public eye.. but a personal attack on a HR manager is quite another kettle of fish.
Low blow.