The Law in Lockdown and Beyond, with Hannah Beko
A series of conversations with those in the legal profession navigating the ups and downs of the law during and after lockdown. How has this changed the profession as we've emerged from the global pandemic?
The Law in Lockdown and Beyond, with Hannah Beko
Friday Conversation with Helen Rendle, Events Manager for the Legal Industry
In these strange times, where the events industry has been one of the hardest hit, Helen shares her thoughts on how the industry has evolved and taken advantage of the technology available, so that events can still go ahead, safely.
Podcast host Hannah Beko is a self-employed lawyer, coach and creator of the Lawyers Business Mastermind™ (the place for entrepreneurial lawyers to grow).
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Hello everyone and welcome to another Friday Conversation. Today I'm joined by Helen Rendell who is an Events Manager specialising in the legal sector. So I'm very excited to speak to Helen because as we were just talking about before we started the events industry is obviously an industry that's been hit really hard this year with the pandemic but I know that Helen's been doing some great work so we're going to hear all about that today. So come and introduce yourself Helen, tell everybody a bit more about who you are and what you do.
SPEAKER_00:Thanks, Hannah. So as Hannah mentioned, I'm Helen. I work for Gunna Cook as the events manager. I'm very lucky to have kept my role as events manager throughout lockdown. And we'll go into a bit more detail about what we've been up to at Gunna Cook. I, in normal times, organise internal networking events for our partners, ranging from simple drinks events to a two-day conference in Oxford for all of our partners. I also organize external events for our partners to host events for their clients to attend and training sessions and web seminars and catch-up events so my role is quite varied and obviously with lockdown my role has become even more varied so yeah that's a little bit about me.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, thanks, Helen. So just before we talk about the events industry specifically and lockdown, tell us a little bit about your personal experience of lockdown. Were you familiar with working at home a lot before? Was it a big shock to the system? What's it been like for
SPEAKER_00:you? Yeah, of course. So before lockdown, I did have the option to work from home some days if I wished. I didn't tend to work from home because I'm quite sociable. Normally, working from home days, if I'd had a long day in London, I would then decide to work from home and catch up on some emails the next day or if I was traveling to an event in the morning and driving come back home park my car and then just work at home so I didn't work that much at home it was more sort of a convenience if I was doing an event whereas now during lockdown I've been at home since the start really um working from home so it's been a steep learning curve to transform from from working in the office to working predominantly at home.
SPEAKER_01:And how have you found that? Because you said, obviously, you're a sociable person. So how has it been with that transition?
SPEAKER_00:It's been hard. From a personal point of view, I had lots, as I'm sure everyone else did, of summer plans, lots booked in. And as lockdown hit in March and said, oh, you know, it should be over by summer, I was still hopeful of events that I'd booked outside of work carrying on. And then as it got into April, things started to cancel. more and more and more and sort of your um you change your sort of I was really positive at the start that by summer we'd still be able to get away and we'd still be able to you know carry on as normal and as it got further into lockdown it sort of was a bit of a shock to the system that it wasn't going to be normal and we weren't going to go back to it. So I did struggle with the social aspect and the social side. However, I didn't let that stop me. It's actually been quite nice with all the Zoom quizzes that everyone sort of loves to hate. It's been quite nice catching up with people that you would normally only catch up with once or twice a year because of distance. Actually in lockdown, it's meant that we can catch up more frequently because everyone's free for an hour for a catch-up rather than having to take out a whole weekend to go down to see somebody so in some ways it has been nice um having lots of spare time that people can jump online for a catch-up but it has been hard not going out and being sociable as well
SPEAKER_01:and as you say the constant changing of plans isn't it because in March people were saying oh you know maybe by June things may be slightly more back to normal and then maybe by September and it's just it's been that constant shifting hasn't it that you know your industry has had to get used to never mind all of us individuals
SPEAKER_00:I know it has been hard I think it started to look up a little bit when they were saying the 3rd of October events are going to be starting to come back And then as it got closer to September, it was looking less and less likely again. And especially in Manchester where I am, with the tiering system coming in, that made it even harder for our industry to work out what was going on and what we can plan to do.
SPEAKER_01:I mean, I might be putting you on the spot here, but do you as an industry have a sense of when you think things might be different? Do you have a sense of, well, I'm definitely not going to book any events before X date, but maybe
SPEAKER_00:after that? I'm thinking really March. Very topical, it's just come out that the furlough scheme is going to be extended until March. So I'm thinking that maybe in the background, the government have some sort of idea that by March, the testing tracing system is going to be in place so they'll be able to do more in like live events um but I I'm not sure but I think maybe March hopefully I'd love it to be sooner I just can't see if with Christmas um people hopefully allowed to see each other then hopefully by March, hopefully, we'll be allowed to put events back on.
SPEAKER_01:There you go. You've heard it here. Helen says March. Let's go for March. Fingers crossed. So you started touching on some of them there, Helen, but what have been your highs and lows for this lockdown year, I
SPEAKER_00:suppose? Definitely on a personal level, they're catching up with friends and family that, you know, you normally don't see as often. But during lockdown, it's been great for and catching up with people more often. Highs in work, I have learnt a lot about Zoom, a lot about different events platforms. As you can imagine, I've become a bit of a whiz on lots of different platforms that I didn't even consider before. So that's definitely been great, learning lots of different things. I think what's been difficult, both personally and work-wise, is the longer it's gone on, the realise you can't see people and the realisation sort of when it got to May and it was my mum's birthday and couldn't see your mum for a birthday and then when again when it got to May, June and we couldn't then organise outdoor drinks because it just wasn't quite appropriate to do that so I think it has been really hard not physically seeing people tried so many different ways of keeping everyone in contact but A low definitely has been the physical, seeing people in the flesh. It's great on screen. It's lovely to see everyone, but, you know, one person can only speak at once. It's tricky. You can't have multiple conversations going on. You can't wonder about chatting. Yeah, that's been tough. But there are obviously lots of positives, catching up with people. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:No, I agree with you. Absolutely. I mean, it's, it's given the chance for us to network, not just within our local areas, but you know, nationally or globally, even, you know, and opened up those opportunities. But I totally agree with you, there's something about meeting up in person and the physical distance between people. I mean, I'm a big believer in sort of energy. And I've noticed that when I'm, you know, doing a workshop or something in a room, there's an energy within a room, there's an energy of, you know, enthusiasm between people. and sharing ideas and it is just a different energy when there's people in the room as opposed to to zoom but it's you know it it does well I think
SPEAKER_00:yeah
SPEAKER_01:but definitely
SPEAKER_00:it fills a little a little hole not not the whole thing but it's a good second yeah
SPEAKER_01:no I agree with you absolutely and there are there are positives to it in terms of the reach and being able to to get involved with more people and you know less travel less commuting that's always a positive I think as well yeah so what I'd love you to share with us is some of the really innovative ideas you've come up with this year so when you couldn't have your drinks events or your seminars in the office or you know all the things that you would normally have planned the the big party the symposium in Oxford every every September what innovative plans have you had to come up with this year?
SPEAKER_00:quite a few for those of you who don't know Gunna Cook we're a remote working model so lots of our partners really rely on the face to face social events in the office to come together to network and meet each other and we normally hold quite a few drinks events and social lunches for them to meet but obviously we can't do that so we've tried a lot of different ways some quite fun ones we've done some networking which i think is absolutely fantastic and really recommends um events people giving that a go and hosting them for their clients for their colleagues it's just quite a simple thing of breaking people out into separate meeting rooms and um giving them a chance to chat for about five minutes before coming back in and then mixing them up again. So it's brilliant, really. We've also been doing something called Coffee Roulette, which is where we give people a different partner each month to chat to and get to know somebody in a different way. We do lots of Meet the Teens events, so partners chatting to each other and finding out about different practice areas. So we've been doing that lots of different ways of trying to connect the partners and lots of innovative different ways of doing that. So it's been a learning curve to work out how to do that but it's definitely had some really great response.
SPEAKER_01:yeah so how have you found it what has the response been have you have you found that um partners who perhaps wouldn't see many other people because they perhaps don't travel they don't come into the office they choose to work from home all the time have they maybe interacted more
SPEAKER_00:yeah no it's been really interesting um we have the main offices in manchester leeds and london that people come into um but quite a few live you know in birmingham or in south manchester or north london places that aren't that easy to get into the office whereas because it's online they can now just log in um and you're there with everybody else especially we've noticed with things like the speed networking we're able to connect the two offices or the three offices sorry and together a lot better and partners in london and manchester normally only get one opportunity a year to meet up in oxford however now all events are open they always were but Obviously with travel it's not as easy, but now all events are a lot more accessible with the click of a button. And I think it's fantastic to see partners you don't normally see because they're so busy and they don't get a chance to take that time out of the day to travel. The travel time's gone. All they need is to commit to that hour. So it's brilliant seeing that.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, no, that's fantastic. So Christmas is coming up. Have you got plans for what you're going to do virtually?
SPEAKER_00:Yes, we've got lots of plans. It's really exciting to see what other events companies have been doing we work with a lot and the events industry is massive it doesn't just cover events managers and we have lots of people that we work with to put on events normally physically so and we've been in contact with them to see what they're doing virtually and things like carol services virtual wreath making virtual christmas cracker making anything that you can kind of think of you can do in the flesh you pretty much can do online just have to have a little bit more organization on them making sure that everyone gets the right materials if we're doing something a bit more practical but yeah there's been loads um really exciting things from different events companies that and they've come up with new and unique ways to um to put on events still. So we're thinking of some really exciting ways of getting people together in a bit more of an informal, but fun and festive way.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Oh, it sounds great, Helen. Sounds brilliant. And have you just finally, have you found that people have been able to do client events at all
SPEAKER_00:virtually? Yes, actually. With some quite great success, in all honesty, we've, as Hannah, you will know, we run a top 10 tips in 20 minutes session, which is very much what it says on the tin. It's 10 tips on a particular topic in 20 minutes. So it's really great. And the idea when we started them in January was to have one every month in the office, which is fantastic. And it was before where really quick, snappy sessions, and then you're on with your day and you get the added value of networking in the Manchester office however very soon into that lockdown struck so we thought let's move it online and we've noticed that hosting these events online has such a bigger and such a larger reach it's brilliant we can post it on social media we can invite our entire network and again it doesn't matter where you are in the world you can log in as long as you've got that link um so we've had a lot of people um that come to our events in london that are actually um logging on to these events that's run by a group of um partners from Manchester who would never normally meet really um day to day so it's really great actually and it's something that I think myself and a lot of other people in the events industry will be looking at is sort of hybrid events going forwards events where yes you can come and network beforehand and you come and listen to it live in the office but also have the opportunity to log in and watch it remote from your computer you know you've still got the chat function you can still interact all right it's not as much as having a cup of tea and a bacon bomb in the morning before it starts but you still have that chance to interact and meet and network not quite as easily but it's definitely something I think we're all going to be considering to reach more people with our events.
SPEAKER_01:I think you're absolutely right and well like so many things that are going to be different after this pandemic is the hybrid events as you say because like you and I have already said you know there's can't really replace that in-person energy you get in a room but at the same time there's fantastic opportunities to still network online so I think you're right it will be a hybrid going forward and I look forward to seeing what you've got planned for Christmas and I look forward to in-person events again next year hopefully in March yeah you heard it here in March oh well thank you so much Helen it's been great to chat to you oh thank you so much for having
SPEAKER_00:me Hannah