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Thursday is World Mental Health Day and we couldn’t be more proud to share that on Thursday evening Radiant Law will become a formal signatory of the Mindful Business Charter.

If you haven’t heard of the Mindful Business Charter, it’s worth looking at their LinkedIn page and website. The Charter began as a collaboration between leading banks and law firms committed to driving change in how we work, and in the past year has grown to include 36 (and counting) organisations who all aim to promote a culture of openness about mental wellbeing, along with the support of mental health charity Mind, the Law Society, Law Care and the Solicitors Regulatory Authority.

In 2015, Paul Gilbert of LBC Wise Counsel released a lawyers' wellbeing survey report. His introduction has stuck with us: “The survey, interviews and focus groups … show a shocking picture. If this is representative of the in-house sector as a whole we are sleep walking to a crisis where some people are being significantly damaged and many more are being undermined.”

At Radiant Law, we’re determined to make a difference for the people in our team who put so much of themselves into the support they give our clients. When we agreed as a team to sign up to the Charter, we had some great conversations around what it meant for us - what are acceptable working practices, what aren’t. Here are just a few of the things we have in place, some we've been doing for a long time and some we've initiated as a result of our thinking around the Charter. It’s ongoing and evolving as we learn what works for everyone in our network:

• turning off all notifications on personal devices in the evenings and at weekends
• taking quarterly feedback surveys and openly discussing the results
• implementing thoughtful meeting practices
• facilitating flexible working
• designing technology that we believe makes work more efficient and less stressful
• encouraging everyone to take holidays without interruption
• structuring working hours to minimise interruptions
• adopting lean thinking, with an experimental and mindful approach to the work we do. 

We believe that all of these things can remove a lot of the stress that comes from being constantly under pressure and distracted, both in work and outside it, and in turn can enhance the lives of the people who work at Radiant and the service we can deliver. In fact, we’ve made it part of our 10-year plan and a core part of our business strategy.

Even more inspiring is discussing it with clients, where there hasn’t been anything other than positive feedback and welcome agreement to ensuring their teams and ours put mental health front and centre.

So, on Thursday night we are pledging our commitment to abide by a set of principles centred on improved communication, respect for working hours and considerate delegation of tasks. What are you doing?