As teams work in high pressure and extremely challenging circumstances to move clients before the holiday ends in March next year, conveyancers have never been busier. Most of them are working long hours with high levels of stress, knowing that the hopes and dreams of their clients rest on their shoulders. For residential conveyancers and solicitors, and indeed their support staff, the usually high pressure role they fulfil of helping people to make the biggest purchase of their lives, often within complex and time sensitive circumstances, in a highly emotionally charged transaction, has reached new heights. It is no surprise that many working in residential conveyancing may feel like an emotional rollercoaster that’s left the tracks.
Our adaptations over the past eight months, have seen the creation of home offices in almost every home, sometimes in wardrobes, often at the cost of the ‘spare room’, stressful commutes often replaced by stress from increasingly blurred lines of work and home life, together with more flexibility but also worries about job security and income. But there can be no doubt that everyone has become more dependent than ever upon technology and this is the single most significant feature of 2020. The boardroom table has been replaced by the virtual forum offered by Zoom, Teams and a plethora of other video conferencing software and the way we communicate with each other day-to-day has completely changed. When you combine this with the pace generated by the SDLT holiday, the lack of clarity about what happens next with the residential property market and the added logistics of moving with almost no notice between office and home working, it’s no wonder residential conveyancers are feeling the pressure.
We all know what it’s like to feel stressed – being under pressure is a normal part of life. Pressure is healthy for humans, we need it to thrive. But becoming overwhelmed by stress can lead to mental health problems or make existing problems worse.
Recently, awareness days such as mental health awareness week and National Stress Awareness Day are a timely reminder to take a moment to think about our wellbeing, identify the triggers for stress and learn how we can deal with it.
This is particularly important right now because of the dramatic increase in the adoption of new technologies as the legal sector had to rapidly adapt to working from home and engaging with clients remotely. Microsoft quoted 2 years of digital transformation in 2 months due to the pandemic. That’s a brilliant illustration of what can be achieved but in real terms, that pace of change in such a short space of time can be incredibly stressful for the end user.
Many firms of solicitors offering conveyancing services tried to shift, almost overnight, to a fully online, 24/7 accessible service to remain accessible through this turbulent time and allow clients to feel connected. Due to the social distancing guidelines, almost every sector had to roll out digital solutions to compensate and regroup, and these changes had to be filtered down to home buyers. During this state of flux, there was no opportunity to gently ease into the changes, it was a sink or swim moment, and the need to cope with the wave of new technology, in many cases whilst in a state of virtual isolation, and finding ourselves constantly connected has created high levels of stress for many.
The plethora of new communication tools, management and reporting systems, the quick pace of change (with almost instant adoption needed in many cases), insufficient training, lack of direct IT support for employees, lack of standardisation and total reliance upon technology is overwhelming some employees, causing stress, being labelled ‘technostress’.
So how can you identify if any of your conveyancing team are suffering from technostress and what can you do to help address it?
Technostress isn’t about specific tools or apps. To truly understand how your team is getting on with all the new technology and processes implemented in your firm, why not develop a forum, give employees buddies so they can help and support each other, undertake surveys or at least carry out 1-2-1s to gather honest feedback that you can act upon.
You can then categorise that feedback in a number of ways, to allow you to identify the causes of that stress and prioritise support for staff most at risk.
Here are a few suggested groupings to consider, when finding out how team members are feeling:
You can also look out for tell tale signs in how people are acting or symptoms being mentioned:
Behavioural changes
Bodily changes
To regain equilibrium on an individual and company-wide level, technology use needs to reviewed. There is no one-size-fits all solution, input will be needed across the board and the findings reviewed regularly.
Here are a few key steps to consider:
If you consider the inCase mobile app, from Lavatech, for example, this is a prime solution for taking away some of the communication pressures around liaising with clients – streamlining processes to simplify everyone’s lives involved in the complex conveyancing process. For example, inCase reduces calls & email volumes by up to 80% for firms currently utilising the app – with milestone updates to all parties throughout the life of each transaction. Additionally, with integrated TR1 document signing, conveyancing clients can effortlessly complete the digital signing of deeds within the app, no matter where they are during this pandemic.
Addressing technostress is not about ditching technology, it’s about working out which lawtech will work best for the people using it and implementing and supporting them in it’s roll out and use. In an ideal world, you want to get to a point where you are working with the least amount of digital interference that still enables you to deliver a smooth and stress-free process for staff, clients and all stakeholders throughout the conveyancing process.