Carey Olsen and Dominion Corporate Services Limited

Simon Nash Human Resources Director

The Organisation

Carey Olsen prides itself on being the Channel Islands law firm. This means for us that we have a clear strategic focus on the Channel Islands rather than spreading ourselves thinly around other jurisdictions, on practising law rather than attempting to run several different business lines at once, and on being the first choice for sophisticated clients with complex legal needs. 

The firm has over 130 lawyers in Jersey and Guernsey, and a small office in London. It is led by two Managing Partners, one in Guernsey and one in Jersey, supported by an Executive Board and an Operations Board. The firm's people and performance strategy is led by Simon Nash - Human Resources Director.

The Challenge 

When the firm started to look at IiP it was in fact three separate firms; Olsen's in Jersey and both Carey Langlois and Olsen Ferbrache Morgan in Guernsey. The merger of these firms in 2003 was a first in many ways and set the ball rolling for the wave of offshore law firm mergers that we have seen in the past five years. The merger made a lot of strategic sense for the firm, and was a great improvement for clients, many of whom had operations or disputes in both Channel Islands. It was not without its challenges though. The rivalry between Jersey and Guernsey runs deep and no organisation had successfully implemented a "merger of equals" in the past.

In addition to all its other benefits in improving employee engagement, development and participation, Carey Olsen saw the IiP standard as a valuable and practical way of harmonising practices in both jurisdictions to a common standard of excellence. 

The Strategy 

The firm's People and Performance strategy places a strong emphasis on "Enabling Carey Olsen's success through best people management practices". The strategy includes a major emphasis on both Employee Engagement; "winning hearts and minds around an inspiring vision and a common way of working to gain greater commitment and motivation" and Employee Development; "Increasing the economic potential of every individual performer to meet future business needs through learning, qualifications, succession and talent development." 

For Carey Olsen, an effective People and Performance strategy is more about the pragmatic application of best practice principles in an organic and commercial way, as opposed to the creation of elaborate and sophisticated programmes that don't actually address real business needs. As a result the firm has invested in training, coaching, appraisal systems, employee comms initiatives and an employee survey. These activities have been focused on those business areas which will make the most use of them, rather than being applied with an unthinking uniformity.

The Results     

In the time that Carey Olsen has held the IiP standard we have seen profitability and turnover increase, at a level way beyond the growth of our competitors in the market. We have also seen employee measures such as voluntary attrition or failed offers of employment fall, to below the benchmark of our peers. The firm has been nominated for many prestigious awards, and has become both the firm of choice for clients, for employees and prospective employees. We are justifiably proud of our achievements, but also relentless in our pursuit of yet higher and more challenging standards.

For us the journey of continuous improvement goes on and we look forward to working with the new IiP standards to enable the next phase in the firm's growth and development.