BLM Law Employee Reviews about "city centre location"

We are very sorry to hear that you are unhappy in your role. We would encourage you to discuss these issues with your line manager and to take advantage of the internal employee forums put in place to address any of your concerns. Please also note that our managing partner welcomes direct confidential chats if you prefer to discuss your issues direct with her.

As a current employee, we understand you are experiencing issues with management; we would strongly encourage you to raise this directly with a member of the HR team in confidence so that we can understand more about this issue and address your points appropriately. These are matters that we take incredibly seriously and can only be resolved if raised with us, in confidence. We have a system in place whereby all staff are required to complete a personal development plan, including managers which assess performance and targets on a monthly basis, for their own benefit and personal progression at BLM. If there are underlying problems such as the individual’s workload is too large, or targets aren’t realistic, then it is addressed at each monthly 121 meeting where you can share your concerns. Managers are also required to meet with their individual team members each week to offer support, give advice or have general conversations about the workload where required. These are all outlined on your personal HR portal on the intranet – if you are not sure how to use this or track personal development please contact a member of HR and you will be supported through the process. As you know the firm has embarked on a period of business improvement and this includes a focus on ‘workplace 2020’. You will have seen that in April we relocated BLM in both Leeds and Edinburgh to bring the office environments in line with our 2020 vision and all other BLM locations will continue to be reviewed.

BLM takes developing our colleagues very seriously and trainee solicitors are an important element of our future success. It is therefore important to us that we undertake an open and transparent process when recruiting and we ask our internal and external candidates to complete the same process. We launched a dedicated section of our internal intranet to provide internal candidates with all the information that they require and many colleagues have taken advantage of seeking feedback on unsuccessful applications from our internal graduate recruitment and team. Some of the figures quoted here are inaccurate as from our 2016 intake, over 60% were internal candidates and in our 2017 intake we have offered over half of the spaces to internal candidates. During our last recruitment cycle we received 35 internal applications not the 150 stated here. We have launched a vacation scheme programme to give the firm exposure to a wider variety of candidates. As part of our first scheme, we offered a space to an internal candidate who wanted experience in a different area of law and they have subsequently secured a training contract with the firm. Further details of our vacation schemes can be found on our website here http://www.blmlaw.com/2795/pages/vacation-scheme-.html We appreciate that securing a training contract can sometimes be a difficult process, however we do have resources to help identify the best route for people to develop their careers and we are always happy to assist where we can. Alex Holmes Head of Learning & Development