Cultures often aren’t workshopped and developed but evolve over time, bolstered by senior teams recruiting in their own image, sticking with attitudes and personalities that “work” but perhaps also perpetuating the same and even bad habits and points of view over the years and across the firm.

Much has been written in recent years about the importance of improving diversity and inclusion, and at the heart of inclusion is an open, accepting workplace culture. But how do you change workplace culture? Especially when it can be so hard to pin down what a workplace’s culture actually is. Writing in Forbes, diversity consultant Dr Pragya Agarwal said, “A workplace culture is the shared values, belief systems, attitudes and the set of assumptions that people in a workplace share. This is shaped by individual upbringing, social and cultural context. In a workplace, however, the leadership and the strategic organisational directions and management influence the workplace culture to a huge extent.”

And why is culture so important to a business? Answering this question, Brian Chesky, the co-founder and chief executive of Airbnb, put it neatly: “Here is a simple way to frame it. The stronger the culture, the less corporate process a company needs. When the culture is strong, you can trust everyone to do the right thing.”

Holding a mirror to examine these issues can sometimes be an uncomfortable task for law firm heads and HR teams but this is an essential first step. Gaining insights through surveys and conducting focus groups and executive interviews to gauge a baseline on cultural opportunities and challenges is key. Additionally, consultation with employees on ways to move forward and then monitoring progress with both quantitative and qualitative data is important.

While there is a well-intended instinct to move straight to developing and rolling out values; cultural change requires incremental behavioural change. When fostering culture change, we draw from change management methodologies to influence behavioural change at an individual level (this starts at the top), at a team level and at the organisational level. In our work we think across the organisation’s system, applying cultural nudges to integrate tools and resources to existing frameworks that support people to recognise and foster the desired behaviours. This is important to bring intentions to life.

Cultural change takes time – there’s certainly no overnight fix as often, these behaviours and values have been built up over years. However, crises that influence our lives such as the pandemic and recession can be opportunities to accelerate and/or provide focus through change. For example, many law firms in Australia have announced revised working-from-home policies in light of the pandemic, creating a more agile workforce and hopefully, a profession which is less concerned with presenteeism but output. Working from home also means a greater need for connection and a sense of belonging, which will naturally cause a cultural shift over time.

As mentioned, at the heart of a good diversity strategy is an inclusive workplace culture where everyone feels valued. All too often we see companies struggling to go beyond tokenistic statements to apply a strategic approach to increase diversity. There needs to be an integrated and strategic approach to driving inclusion as crucially, improving diversity without working on a firm’s inclusivity will not generate the many benefits of increased employee engagement, closer customer connectivity and diversity of thought. Worse, employees can feel excluded and eventually leave an organisation as they feel they don’t fit in.

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With global movements like #MeToo and Black Lives Matter shining the spotlight on diversity and inclusion like never before, workplace cultures too have been put under more scrutiny than ever before. We’re seeing companies across the board taking a hard look at their own values and practices to ensure they’re equitable, inclusive and innovative. This requires hard work, time and effort and sometimes an uncomfortable reckoning – but it’s vital to encourage progress.

Katie Williams is a partner at Pinsent Masons. Justine Cooper is the head of Brook Graham APAC for Vario by Pinsent Masons.