A partnership for sustainable change
MinterEllison, a leading Australian law and advisory firm, initiated a strategy to enhance its performance culture and people engagement.
In 2015, under new leadership, the firm launched a comprehensive effort to align its workforce with its strategic vision and effectively measure people engagement. MinterEllison needed more than a generic, off-the-shelf solution. They needed a highly customisable, agile listening solution that could match the complexity of a partnership model and evolve with the business.
That’s where WTW came in.
From listening to action: A 10-year journey
WTW partnered closely with MinterEllison’s leadership to design a survey approach based on our research into engagement and high-performance organisations. The survey design, analysis and recommendations were developed to enhance both client and people experience, supporting the firm’s strategic ambitions.
Between 2016 to 2021, MinterEllison conducted annual firm-wide engagement surveys, with additional check-ins during the COVID-19 pandemic to monitor the wellbeing and engagement of its people. While the pandemic brought a temporary decline in engagement, the firm’s proactive response, listening closely to its teams and focusing on its culture of client excellence, helped engagement levels rebound strongly.
By 2021, MinterEllison evolved its approach by adopting WTW’s Engage software to support a more agile and continuous feedback model across the people lifecycle. Engage enabled MinterEllison to design and run its firm engagement and lifecycle surveys, while getting expert advice on understanding and using the results to inform action. In 2024, the firm developed a new listening strategy organised around three targeted surveys in the year, covering firm strategy, team culture and emerging priorities like wellbeing.
The results: Sustained engagement, elevated culture
Through consistent listening and action, MinterEllison has developed and sustained levels of people engagement and retention that exceed legal and professional services industry benchmarks and achieve Global High Performance (GHP) in several areas.
From 2015 to 2025, MinterEllison built on its already strong engagement and achieved a 2% increase in employees’ willingness to recommend the firm as a workplace and a 4% rise in intention to stay, both exceeding benchmarks for the professional services sector.
