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2 The context of wellbeing support in legal workplaces
2 The context of wellbeing support in legal workplaces
It is important to contextualise your role by understanding how wellbeing support in legal workplaces has developed in recent years. This will help you understand where your workplace is situated in relation to such developments, how this might impact the goal you set, and the initiatives and outputs you choose to deliver.
Traditionally, wellbeing concerns and mental ill-health have been stigmatised within the legal profession. Some people associate admitting to poor wellbeing or mental health issues resulting from work as a sign of weakness and/or indicating unsuitability for the profession (Jones et al., 2021). Over the past few years, these attitudes have increasingly been challenged and there has been growing interest in supporting workplace wellbeing appropriately. However, the extent to which employers and organisations have engaged with this has depended on a range of factors, including the levels of financial (and other) resources available and the views of individuals within key positions. The following video discusses some of the common barriers to change.
Transcript: Video 2 Common barriers to change
Common workplace interventions now typically include:
- Offering an Employee Assistance Programme or other related benefits (for example, private health insurance).
- Appointing a Wellbeing Lead and/or supporting the creation of a Wellbeing Committee and/or placing responsibility for wellbeing with the Human Resources function.
- Developing a workplace Wellbeing Programme.
- Encouraging individuals to upskill themselves around wellbeing and self-care.
Next, go to 2.1 Critique of common workplace wellbeing interventions.
2.1 Critique of common workplace wellbeing interventions
Each of these approaches has some value. However, it is important to be aware of their limitations. Criticisms of these approaches commonly focus on the individualisation of wellbeing issues that often occurs within them.
For example, as mentioned above, many law firms have now introduced workplace wellbeing programmes. A typical wellbeing programme may focus on getting employees to eat healthily, adopt regular fitness routines, take up hobbies, get involved in social activities and try out relaxation techniques, such as mindfulness. While there is value in encouraging employees to undertake these activities, these programmes sometimes neglect to consider the employer’s role in creating a healthy workplace. It may sound obvious to say this, but eating healthily and doing mindfulness will not relieve the stresses of someone who works very long hours in a demanding role.
There's something I read, and it really did chime with me, that you can put all these initiatives in place, you can have a talk on whatever it is, you can go to these talks whether it's about time management or sleep management, you can come away and you can almost feel as if you've been kind of mis-sold it. That the company are trying to put these initiatives out without really addressing what the actual problem is, so you need the sticking plasters…
So, when people have a problem, you go for the policy, and you have all these systems to help. What about looking at it from the point of view of ‘don't let it get there’.
To prevent wellbeing issues, such as the impact of unmanageable stress, it is vital that employers look not only at asking employees to take responsibility for their own wellbeing, but also to consider the wider environment and role that they have created for the employee.
As someone who supports workplace wellbeing, it is important to be aware of this. It may be that you are able to highlight the importance of some of these wider aspects such as workplace culture, the expectations placed on teams and individuals, levels of resourcing and the way policies and procedures are designed and executed.
It may be that you do not always have the remit and opportunity to change these aspects within your role. However, consistently emphasising the value of an evidence-based approach to wellbeing which encompasses the broader workplace environment can still have a positive long-term influence.
2.2 Perceptions of conflicting priorities
It has already been noted that wellbeing was traditionally disregarded and stigmatised in legal workplaces. These attitudes still remain in some parts of the legal profession. For example, there are still concerns that an over-emphasis on wellbeing could be damaging to other aspects of legal practice:
I think, to be honest, there's always some concern I would say at a senior level that when you start talking about wellbeing, people are going to start saying ‘my target is too stretching’, you know, ‘the hours are too long’. And I think particularly at senior level, people have come up through the ranks, you know, and felt like this is what law is, this is how it's always been, this is how it always will be.
This attitude is largely based on a lack of understanding over how enhancing wellbeing can also benefit productivity, performance and other important metrics in many legal workplaces. Indeed, several individuals and organisations have begun to emphasise the wider benefits of promoting wellbeing (MBC, 2025; Reich, 2020).
When I think about well-being for lawyers, it’s very much around their performance and their productivity and the links it has to ethical behaviour.
... if people don't care the staff turnover is huge.
It may be possible to identify at least some of these benefits by utilising data collected by your workplace, for example, on levels of sickness leave relating to mental health and wellbeing, or on connections between high levels of work intensity and individuals’ experiences of burnout. More broadly, it is important to advocate for wellbeing as part of the core business of your organisation, rather than as something which is an ‘optional extra’.
Activity 2 Understanding your workplace context
Answer the following questions based on your perceptions of your workplace.
Discussion
Your answers to the questions above will help you assess your starting point when trying to improve workplace wellbeing. For example, it may be that your workplace does not yet acknowledge wellbeing-related issues. In that case, your overall goal may be to educate leaders and managers on the relevance and importance of wellbeing, setting out a ‘business case’ to prioritise it.
Conversely, your workplace may state that it prioritises wellbeing, but you may feel it is not doing so in reality. If this is the case, your overall goal may be to obtain recognition of this gap and implement practical wellbeing-related measures to address it.
If your workplace is genuinely prioritising wellbeing, it is valuable to consider whether they have fully engaged with the experience of their employees and are aware of the key challenges being faced. If not, it may be that your overall goal is to collect sufficient data to obtain a full understanding of the challenges your colleagues are experiencing. For example, are their differences between particular staff groups (e.g. seniority, professional focus) or demographic groups (gender, age, ethnicity, disability, parental status) that need further attention.
If there is already a sound understanding of these challenges, then it is important to explore whether they are being responded to proactively, in a strategic fashion. If the current approach is retroactive, tackling crises as they arise, this suggests your overall goal may need to be creating and implementing a clear Wellbeing Policy and Strategy to avoid so many crises arising in the first place.
If your workplace has a well-developed Wellbeing Policy and Strategy, your goal may be to ensure this is being evaluated in a way which will demonstrate its impacts and enable changes and adjustments to be made where necessary.
When you have considered the questions above, make some notes in your ‘theory of change’ record about what stage your organisation is currently at in addressing workplace wellbeing and how this might influence the overall goal for your work.
Next, go to 3 Equipping yourself to support the wellbeing of others.