We spoke to Bola Gibson, Head of Responsible Business at Osborne Clarke, about how the firm used Pirical On Demand (POD) to get more from its people data.

By digging into its numbers, Osborne Clarke was able to pinpoint problems, overhaul its strategy and create lasting organizational change.

Uncovering issues

Sometimes internal data isn’t rich enough to tell a clear story.

By comparing its data with other firms, Osborne Clarke was able to diagnose issues and tailor its response.

The challenge

When it comes to diversity and inclusion, Osborne Clarke has been ahead of the curve for some time. After receiving the National Equality Standard (NES) accreditation in 2019, the firm set a range of ambitious targets. 

A few years later, Bola’s team wanted to better understand how Osborne Clarke could set new, more meaningful goals. Pirical gave the team access to a wider range of analyses, including a clearer understanding of attrition among its ethnic minority population and a longer term view of attrition & promotion trends which they were able to marry with other qualitative data. “There’s only so much our old data could tell us,” Bola said. “By combining the deeper analysis from Pirical with what our people were telling us, we were able to get closer to understanding why it was happening and plan to take action.”

Bola also felt they weren’t seeing the full picture because the firm wasn’t able to benchmark its data against the market. “We were comparing ourselves to ourselves,” Bola said. “I wanted to probe the why, not just the what.”

The solution

Osborne Clarke used Pirical On Demand (POD) to look at its projections more closely. POD showed the firm was having to effectively over-recruit, due to the fact they were struggling to retain minority ethnic employees.

Importantly, Osborne Clarke used POD to compare itself against other firms’ diversity data. These insights paved the way for the firm’s new Race Action Plan, which aims to increase diversity in senior roles by overhauling trainee recruitment, in tandem with a range of progression and inclusion schemes. 

But before Bola’s team got these programmes off the ground, they had to convince practice group leaders. “Pirical enabled us to build a really strong case for our Race Action Plan,” Bola said.

“Let’s face it, lawyers love evidence. Pirical allows practitioners to add weight to their recommendations.”

"For me, Pirical’s biggest selling point is its usability. It’s like a bunch of nerds have designed a system for people who are not nerds. Whoever designed the UX was (thankfully) thinking about D&I or HR people, not technical specialists."

Goals dashboard

With the Goals Dashboard, you can load up your firm’s diversity targets to see if you’re on track with your targets, which was key to the analysis Osborne Clarke carried out.

Whether you’re looking firm-wide or by practice group, this feature allows you to set custom goals, organize your projections and return to this data whenever you need it.

Recruitment and retention screens

Recruitment is a bit like pouring liquid into a bucket of water. As you add in something new, it’s important to monitor how you dilute or concentrate what’s in there already. 

By browsing Pirical’s readymade recruitment and retention graphs, Bola’s team could measure exactly how the makeup of Osborne Clarke was changing, then take action.

Pirical's people analytics software equips law firms with the HR, rewards and diversity data they need to make smarter and fairer people decisions.

HR data is messy, hard to analyze and difficult to distribute to people leaders. With Pirical On Demand (POD), it's a lot easier for people leaders to get value out of it, without the need for an army of analysts and engineers. With Pirical, you can save time, get people engaged and take a more sophisticated, data-driven approach.