Harmers has developed a suite of policies to encourage this balance between a staff member’s work and personal life, including:

• outstanding parental leave provisions. These provisions include paid parental leave for eligible staff members (male and female) of 14 weeks at full pay or 28 weeks at half pay, and six weeks’ special paid leave for illness related to pregnancy or birth;
• study assistance and paid study leave;
• carer’s leave;
• part-time or flexible work hours to accommodate personal circumstances where possible;
• access to extended periods of leave without pay in some circumstances;
• Harmers Day;
• regular social and sporting events; and
• access to the firm’s email and voicemail systems from home.

Harmers attempts, where possible across a working year, to keep working hours at reasonable levels to enable staff to pursue their outside interests.

The firm places a strong emphasis on team work and aims to distribute heavy workloads across the firm. The following policies set out the firm’s team work ethic and guidelines for periods of heavy workloads:

• All Hands to the Pump Policy;
• Best Practice Teamwork Model; and
• The Do’s and Don’ts of Delegation.

Harmers’ remuneration policy strongly focuses on rewarding quality output rather than a large numbers of hours worked. The profit share component of Harmers’ ERS also reinforces this focus by providing financial rewards for overall firm performance, rather than individual performance. This is intended to encourage sharing rather than hoarding of clients and the even distribution of workloads.

Where, in the opinion of the TLs, long term and excessive overtime has been performed by a staff member, the firm may elect to make available to that staff member time in lieu.