About Foot Anstey

Being a multi-site firm, whilst online communications flow freely, nothing beats face to face interaction. Foot Anstey's Managing Partner, John Westwell travels either weekly or fortnightly to each of their five offices and endeavours to talk to every new recruit and staff. Their offices are all open plan and they have a system of hot desks for people who are working in different offices that day. Therefore, John or any member of staff could be working alongside anyone that day and builds relationships with people at every level. He strives to build relationships with everyone and amongst all his duties as Managing Partner, still will make time to send a personal card when necessary and needed. As mentioned before, his blog is popular and supported and his accessibility to all across a multi-site firm. He is driving the firm forward and promotes and encourages any entrepreneurial activity. Anyone at Foot Anstey can suggest an idea, improvement and it will be listened to and absorbed. John’s longevity at the firm is also commendable, having been with the firm for over 20 years. He has a passion for Foot Anstey and is taking it into the future to the benefit of numerous stake holders; Partners, employees, their families, their local economy, their suppliers and above all their clients. In an uncertain economy, which has seen others in their industry sadly fail, it is a responsibility that John takes very seriously.

A key element of Foot Anstey's strategy is to support the development of their lawyers as business advisors. This requires lawyers to develop broader skill sets alongside their pure technical capability to help them build effective business relationships and show insight with their clients. Foot Anstey have been working with their Partners and Associates on a varied and interactive programme of development activities to support this. The spirit has been to give their people an ‘exceptional’ and different learning experience. Highlights have included: - Engaging with a major Business school to run facilitated group discussion sessions based on three ‘transformational change’ case studies. This provoked discussion and debate as well as awareness of the impact of change. - Business Games scenario – the Associates worked in teams on a business board game scenario. Each group acted as ‘business owners’ running a business with suppliers, customers, stock etc. and different scenarios based on the complete financial life cycle of running a business. There was healthy competition between the teams to see who could be most daring and entrepreneurial as well as successful in business and lots of practical learning too. Feedback from these activities has been very positive with high levels of engagement and participation. Foot Ansty are building on this further in 2014 by offering a one day MBA programme for Partners. All these activities have been using a different and interesting approach to developing key skills for the future and aligning these with the Firm’s own strategy.

Senior Board members of Foot Anstey annually undertake a roadshow across all five offices. Even with sosphicated online communication methods, nothing works better than face to face communication; Foot Anstey's Managing Partner together with four Directors - HR, Finance, IT and Client Development, present to their staff the vision for the firm over the next year, with the opportunity to ask direct questions. As this style of discussion can be intimidating for some, staff were encouraged to write questions down anonymously after a few moments of relaxed conversation. The questions are collated and the HR Director puts the questions direct to the Managing Partner ‘live’ in the room. This helps with the conversation and debate enormously and enables people across the firm to have a genuine voice and contribute. This has improved the interaction levels at the office presentations and the audience has seen potentially ‘sensitive’ questions or suggestions asked and responded to. This has contributed to improved trust, engagement and communications at all levels. The questions and answers are then posted onto the Intranet under their Managing Partners blog, to ensure longevity and a maximum audience. Hosted in the morning with coffee and pastries, for a chance to talk, share and enthuse about the future – they are popular and productive for all and are now an ingrained part of the firm’s culture.