A blog by Amy Hartshorn, Business Support Manager, Legal team.
The importance of well-being is a focus throughout our Moneypenny culture, from free access to the Calm App and fitness classes to healthy subsidized lunches and regular team catch-ups.
Bernadette Bennett, Head of Legal Sector always encourages the team to take the meetings away from screens. Be that plugging in your headphones and taking your meeting for a walk or even cooking your lunch whilst chatting away.
We were approached by Neil Lloyd, a client of ours and Managing Director at Top 200 law firm FBC Manby Bowdler, and asked to take part in his new passion and company Tech Time Out – of course, we said yes!
Neil set up Tech Time Out with Stephanie Henson last year after noticing that a lot of noise was being made about the amount of time people were spending on tech, and certainly, COVID just made it worse.
As a Managing Director of a Top 200 firm, he noted increased anxiety levels, a drop in sleep & productivity and silly hours being worked among his team– especially by junior lawyers.
Stats show screens are taking over our lives; In the UK, mentalhealth.org.uk reports that 38 million adults access the internet every day. That’s 76% of the adult population.
Atomik Research claims the average UK adult spends more than 6 hours on a screen every day – that’s over 90 days per year.
On average, internet users aged 16 and over spend more than 20 hours online each week, and more than 70% have a social networking profile.
Furthermore, The Telegraph reports that one in five of all adults spending as much as 40 hours a week on the web and a 2019 study by Ofcom found that nearly every adult in the UK uses a mobile phone (96%).
We took to Workplace from Facebook to gain the team’s thoughts on joining the Tech Time Out 10-day challenge and it was no surprise that lots of our Moneypennies wanted to be involved as they too noticed an increase in the amount of time they spend on tech, especially over the last twelve months.
Everyone set their own challenge of how long each day they would go without their phones or screens and do something they’ve been putting off or experience something new.
We’ve seen our team take on new hobbies, crafting and baking but lots have turned to exercise too! Joanna Swash our Group CEO got involved, horse-riding.
The benefits have been amazing and as a team, we are going to continue and set ourselves a new challenge, Techtimeout Tuesdays!
Here’s more on how we got on:
Amy Hartshorn is Business Manager on the Legal team at Moneypenny, a team dedicated to supporting over 1,000 law firms, including 70 of the Top 200. Find out more about our tailored legal services, here.
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