What motivates Employment solicitors to leave their roles?

It’s perhaps a contradiction in terms when we talk about Employment solicitors leaving their roles, but it’s also true.  

While Employment solicitors might usually deal with employer/employee relationships that have broken down, the reasons why Employment solicitors decide to leave their roles are not quite as dramatic. In fact, a lot of the reasons are echoed across the legal profession, although there’s one interesting statistic to pull out of all of the data our salary survey collected.  

Across the legal sector, we’ve seen that progression is the number one motivator behind leaving one role and going to another. And this adage holds for Employment solicitors – a quarter of respondents to our survey said they would leave to progress further up the legal ladder. The vast majority of respondents were also looking to become a partner or manager in their careers, so this is clearly an ambitious sector. The other major moving factors were an increase in salary and benefits (a perennial primary reason - at 12%) and workplace culture (also at 12%). While people would move for money, salary dissatisfaction was not a common issue in this group. Sixty-two per cent felt they were being paid the market rate, and 67% had received a pay rise in their current role. So, while people may move for a higher salary if offered, it isn’t a significant concern. Indeed, 59% were perfectly satisfied in their role, with only 26% of people saying they weren’t. So, while there might be some who don’t feel they are being paid at market rate, it doesn’t necessarily mean they are instantly unhappy and looking to move. 

However, we did find another statistic that might shed some light on what might cause some people to move. As part of our salary survey, we also asked people about their hybrid working arrangements and whether they were concerned by recent reports that a number of high-profile firms were considering reviewing their policies. And our data showed that, if hybrid working arrangements were to change for them, Employment solicitors would indeed be tempted to look elsewhere for work. 39% of respondents would move if changes were implemented. Hybrid working was also easily the most valued benefit for this group, with a quarter of them citing it as their most valued benefit. Therefore, it seems that, while progression and salary might still be the key motivators, for Employment solicitors, at least, there is another factor to consider. In fact, it might be one that, in the right circumstances, could override them and be a direct factor in people leaving their roles.  

So, while Employment solicitors might be one of the most settled groups of lawyers in the legal field, there are still some things that are motivators for them to move. Both salary and progression are the two major contributing factors behind the movement of people in this group; however, the third factor, changes to hybrid working, might be a significant one It remains to be seen how these might play out in the future, and it will be interesting to see if there is a significant deviation from those two major factors going forward.