A two-year pay deal pushed through by the Government Legal Department last year has led to a “significant” drop in attrition and boosted recruitment, the department has said.
Last year, GLD announced that junior and senior lawyers in the department would receive a 16% pay rise over the next two years.
The pay rise was the result of a long-running effort by GLD to get approval for a pay business case designed to address dissatisfaction with pay that was pushing lawyers to seek out roles in the private sector.
GLD’s annual report says the department still faces a risk that it will be “unable to attract and retain sufficient legal and other professionals necessary to deliver against the demand for GLD’s services” in the upcoming year.
But it says the success of the pay business case had “significantly reduced our attrition”.
“Alongside other changes such as a new employee value proposition and opening up our new national locations, we have seen improvements in numbers recruited too,” it added.
The pay rise – along with other steps such as implementing a diversity and inclusion delivery plan, health and wellbeing action plan and talent and succession framework – has enabled GLD to “reduce the impact and probability” of the risk of being unable to attract and retain staff happening, according to the annual report.
However, the report said the department is still seeing higher levels of attrition and vacancies in its corporate services group, particularly in some specialist areas such as digital.
“This is being mitigated by the use of temporary/external resource to meet demand, alongside work to improve the employee offer, which includes consideration of a future case for pay reform,” it said.
The pay deal reached last February, which came months after nearly a third of GLD lawyers said they planned to leave the organisation within a year, covered 65% of GLD staff below senior civil service level. Grade 6 and 7 lawyers across the department received an 8% pay bump for both 2023-24 and 2024-25.
However, the deal received a mixed response, with one official telling CSW at the time that it was “welcome news for the lucky few”.
GLD permanent secretary Susanna McGibbon told staff the offer had fallen “short” of the business case GLD had submitted to the Treasury and Cabinet Office, which she said "sought significant improvements for all colleagues".
But she said the offer – which did not cover executive officer or administrative officer-grade staff – was “the best overall outcome” the department was going to get.
Writing for CSW in December, McGibbon said she was "thrilled" to secure the pay case for lawyers at delegated grades but "sad that we were not successful on behalf of our other professions"
"I am committed to continuing to work to make improvements through our pay and reward modernisation project. Our corporate services colleagues are vital to our effectiveness as a legal organisation, and I want them to be valued for the contribution they make," she said.
She said she was planning to appoint a chief operating officer who would "unify our legal operations and corporate services support in one directorate, providing the leadership to champion everyone’s contribution".
Richard Cornish was appointed as the department's first COO in March. He was previously chief executive of Defence Business Services in the Ministry of Defence and COO at Natural England.
Other risks flagged on GLD’s risk register included failures to manage its buildings properly and that its project-delivery capability, capacity, culture and controls “do not keep pace with departmental appetite and demand, leading to an inability to deliver a coherent portfolio of benefits through the successful delivery of programmes and projects”.
To address the latter risk, the report said GLD’s project delivery team is “beginning to grow capability”.
“The increase in project-management capability and growing understanding of project disciplines with business leaders lowers the impact of the risk as problems with projects are more likely to be identified and addressed earlier, limiting adverse impacts,” it said.
It added that “close working with the strategy team” to align its 2024-25 portfolio of work with its business plans “reduces the likelihood of the risk of undertaking projects not aligned to business priorities”.