McLeish Orlando believes in recognizing employees’ efforts

Rewarding employees for a job well done is an essential part of ensuring staff members feel valued, which can then lead to higher satisfaction levels and lower turnover rates, Toronto critical injury lawyer Dale Orlando tells Lawyers Weekly.

“Turnover is such an expensive thing to deal with. It doesn’t take much to move people from a mediocre level of satisfaction to a much higher level,” Orlando, a partner with McLeish Orlando LLP, says in the legal publication.

“You’ll never keep 100 per cent of people happy. We strive to really value the employees and make sure they know how valuable they are for the role they play.”

Bonus for innovative ideas

In an article discussing retention strategies, Orlando says a matching program for RRSPs, a discretionary bonus of up to 20 per cent for innovative ideas, and incentives for bringing in new files are all ways the firm keeps its top talent.

And the strategies are not only focused on lawyers, Orlando says in Lawyers Weekly.

“You can be the best lawyer in the world but if you don’t have great staff behind you, you can’t get the job done for the client,” he says in the article.

“If we’re looking at issues with legal assistants, I’ll meet with every one of them because they know the job better than I do. They’re doing it every day. I think they feel like they’re really part of the organization because they have so much input in our systems and how we do the work. I think they take a lot of pride in the fact that we do a great job. If you can come up with an idea that can help us do our job one per cent better, I want to hear it,” he says.

In the firm’s early days, Orlando tells Lawyers Weekly, it was easy to plan social events for the team of around 12.

But with today’s more than 80 lawyers and staff members at the firm, creativity is sometimes necessary in order to get people together, says Orlando, noting outings have included catered dinners at his home or weekend retreats at his family cottage.