What a year that was – a Buckles retrospective
Over the past year, Buckles has experienced significant growth as a business, achieving record annual results. It is crucial to transparently communicate our successes, areas for improvement, and future plans.
It is far too important to contain these messages in emails or the intranet, so we invited everyone to hear them first hand at the Leonardo Hotel, Hinckley Island, with its stylish guestrooms and modern conference facilities.
The location was chosen as it’s equidistant to most of our offices, sitting reasonably central to our main Peterborough office and the recently added new offices in Bristol, with easy travel for those based at our Stamford, Nottingham, Cambridge and London offices.
Our past, present and future
Our CEO Duncan Jackson, gave an overview of the last 18 months, detailing our successes and what we have been doing as a firm to grow and develop our offering, whilst explaining how we have reached the good position we find ourselves in today.
He was followed by Partner James Maxey, who offered an overview of the current market for legal services in England & Wales, but with a special mention for the increasing importance to Buckles of the European market.
James also outlined where we believe we are in the market as a nationally recognised firm and of course where we want to be within the market, as we develop our business to better reflect the changing needs of our clients.
Head of Compliance, Laurence Howland, chaired a panel discussion that sought to understand why people choose Buckles, what makes us unique for employees and clients, and why people want to work with us.
Sarah Jolly and Laurence Howland offered an insight into the projects linked to our success and continuous development, which often go on in the background, without anyone being too aware of the important work undertaken by our support teams.
They included, implementation of Elite Workspace and MatterSphere, decommission of Citrix, setting up our innovation committee, numerous HR Programmes, the relaunch of BUCKLESconnect and the launch of our new CRM system.
Chairman of Buckles, Colleen Gostick, and our Head of HR, Sharon Sheriff, detailed how important it was that as we continue to grow and develop our business, we remain aligned to the authentic values, behaviours and culture that has served the firm so well to this point.
Inspiration borne of tragedy
In a highlight for the assembled Buckles team, our special guest speaker was Richard McCann, who suffered the loss of his mother in October 1975 when she was the first victim of the notorious serial killer, Peter Sutcliffe.
From this unimaginable low, Richard overcame adversity in his life and learned to think positively to change his life for the better. He now spreads the message of what can be achieved with a Growth Mindset, to help people discover their true potential.
It was a truly inspiring presentation and will undoubtedly help people within our business face the future with a new perspective, able to communicate their message authentically and with confidence, so they achieve more effective results. What an inspiration.
We learned that with a can-do mindset, anything is possible. This is immediately apparent, with our own Chantelle McDonald taking part in the Big Half Marathon in London on 1 September, to raise funds for the Free Kicks Foundation – a nationwide charity that provides football-related activities for ill, bereaved and disadvantaged children. It would mean the world to her and to us if a few people were inspired to support her efforts: Free Kicks Foundation: Chantelle’s page (enthuse.com)
And finally…
Naturally, there was a lot of important information shared and a need to explain the direction in which the business is going. But this was also a great opportunity to get everyone together and for many to meet each other for the first time, as we looked to re-affirm the special culture that has helped Buckles succeed. What happens on AR day, stays on AR day.
