Jodie Hill is the founder and managing partner at Thrive Law and host of the first Yorkshire Legal Webinar. Jodie discusses her passion for employment law in the lead up to the event on 6 March.
What inspired you to specialise in employment law, and how did you enter this field?
I really wanted to specialise in employment law after doing a mini pupillage with a barrister and getting to go to a tribunal. I always wanted to advocate for people who were more vulnerable and really took an interest in disability discrimination and discrimination legislation more generally within the employment field.
I eventually secured work experience at a law firm and, off the back of that, they offered me a job and to cross-qualify me. At the time, I was looking for pupillage and hadn’t appreciated that I could cross-qualify and become a solicitor. I’ve never looked back.
Can you share any personal lessons learned from your career that have shaped your perspective on work, life, and the intersection of the two?
When I launched Thrive Law in 2018, I wanted to set up a law firm with a unique brand and identity that best reflected the change I wanted to effect: a bigger and better focus on mental health and wellbeing in the workplace. I wanted mental health to have parity with physical health and to have a place much higher in business agendas.
This was because, in 2017, while working full-time as a solicitor, I started to experience a serious decline in my mental health. This decline was the result of a build-up and combination of life events, work issues and a feeling of being completely overwhelmed, unworthy and unable to cope.
As a result, I had to take a significant amount off work on sick leave. I needed to be off work to recover but, conversely, it made me feel awful; I was filled with guilt and shame—it was the first time I had been ‘off sick’ long-term. Worse still, all I could think about was getting back to work.
This is why I am so passionate about mental health and wellbeing in the workplace. I wanted to create a place where I could be psychologically safe and where I could thrive in the hope that other lawyers would share the same values and I could grow my team.
How do you foster a supportive and healthy work culture within your own practice, and what steps do you take to ensure the well-being of your team members?
In the six years since I launched Thrive, we have prized the mental health and wellbeing of our employees, implementing reasonable adjustments above and beyond what most employers would do, encouraging employees to work ‘smart’ and from anywhere they wish (so long as tasks continue to be completed to a high standard), and introducing the latest products and services to help colleagues better understand one another, reduce their workloads, and improve their health.
We are also committed to maintaining and enhancing the mental health and wellbeing of our employees. We are working on the introduction of new products and services internally that will support this, including behavioural insights and analytics to help colleagues better understand one another, admin automation to reduce their workloads, and health-focused platforms that measure and support their physical and mental health.