Welcome to the MBC members area. This is your gateway to all the news, updates, events and resources you will need to support you and your organisation in embedding the Mindful Business Charter.
Thank you to everyone who was able to join us in person or on line for our annual event on Tuesday evening. And a big thank you to Freshfields for hosting us so splendidly. We will be posting on LinkedIn about all this over the next days, but we wanted to share news of our award winners with you all as our MBC community.
We were honoured and delighted to recognise the following organisations and individuals:
Sustained commitment to meaningful change – Lewis Silkin and Morais Leitao
Contribution to the MBC community – Jane Freeman of Womble Bond Dickinson and Steve Ramsey of Harmeston Consulting
Most innovative new idea – Matheson and Shoosmiths
MBC champion of the year (individual) – Richard Hinwood of Enriched Leadership
MBC champion of the year (organisation) – the EDF legal team
We will be asking some of our worthy winners to share with the community more detail about the work for which the awards were given over the coming months but for now we hope you can all join us in celebrating their work and success.
We also recognised a number of other members who, based on a number of factors, we felt had demonstrated sustained support for and engagement with the MBC community over the year. For details see our post here. If you would like your organisation to make the list next year, the factors we will be looking at will include the following:
• Attending the annual conference
• Attending the annual event
• Presenting on a member call
• Running internal workshops
• Completion of the annual member survey
• Hosting an event for us
• Attending signatory calls and Insight sessions
• Engagement with specific projects
• Encouraging other members to join
We will continue to refine this as we move forward and we would love to be able to recognise you!
Finally, as we said last night, while it is important to recognise and celebrate the work of our award winners, it is the work all of you are doing every day, often behind the scenes and under the radar, to create healthier and more effective working cultures that is at the heart of MBC. We absolutely salute you all!
You can view the recording of the event, here.
Who is it aimed at – While it is open to all employees of MBC member organisations it will be of particular interest to those in the legal sector.
This session explores how the O Shaped approach and the principles of the Mindful Business Charter combine to reshape how we close the gap between law and business.
In an age of generative AI, expectations on lawyers to deliver efficient, effective services have never been higher. In-house teams are under pressure to do more with less, while law firms are being pushed to provide innovative, cost-effective solutions.
For people to thrive in this environment, the industry must look beyond just training and relying on technical expertise. The true differentiator lies in leadership, culture, mindset, and behaviours. By working more closely together, law firms and legal functions can strengthen relationships, unlock better outcomes, and deliver greater value for their businesses.
Dan and Richard explore these challenges, share your perspectives, and discover how O Shaped thinking can help the legal profession thrive in times of unprecedented change.
Dan is founder of O Shaped, an organisation that exists to make the legal profession better for those who are in it, those who use it and those who are entering it, by closing the gap between law and business.
He has 25 years’ experience in the legal sector, both in private practice and in-house, most recently as a General Counsel at Network Rail. O Shaped started out as a passion project for Dan in 2019 and in April 2022 he decided to leave his role at Network Rail to focus exclusively on driving the O Shaped mission forward. His innovative approach to delivering legal services regularly saw him and his team nominated for awards and receive widespread industry recognition.
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We were incredibly lucky to be joined by Imogen Carr of the 93% club who hosted a session for our members today on Social Mobility and Accent Bias.
On the panel was Jenn Barnett, head of Inclusion, Diversity and ESG at Grant Thornton UK, Helen Dallimore FRSA, head of training for byrne·dean and Winona Chan, legal counsel for Moneybox.
As well as looking at the negative impacts these issues have on individuals, including a class pay gap of 6k a year and reduced chances of promotion, we also looked at the negative impact on teams and businesses who ignore the competitive advantage of embracing diverse opinions, skill sets and experiences.
We also looked at what we can proactively do about the issues with ideas including -
📶 Use organisational data to tell the story of what's going on - who is getting in, and importantly, who is getting on - because this isn't just a recruitment issue!
🏦 Consider your organisations social events. Are formal dinners unnecessarily intimidating and off putting? Are there ways you can adapt things to be more accessible and welcoming?
❓ Be curious about biases - you can be an ally by challenging yourself, and by challenging what is going on around you - what assumptions do you make when you hear a foreign or regional accent? Who is being spoken over in meetings? Can you encourage more equal dialogue? Are questions about where you went to school or what hobbies you have putting people in awkward positions if their answers don't "fit"?
💡 You don't have to wait - a lot of the change can be done by each and every one of us!Thank you to all of our wonderful speakers, it was an excellent session.
View the recording here - Social Mobility & Accent Bias: A Panel Discussion
Here you can find toolkits to get the ball rolling – straightforward guidance on how to embed the MBC principles into your organisation.
A large part of implementing the Mindful Business Charter is really about enacting behavioural change in your workplaces. As we appreciate that this can often be a sensitive and complex task, we have worked with the University of Central London and their Centre for Behavioural Change to bring you a variety of resources to help you. We were also delighted to work with them in completing some ground breaking research into MBC implementation - in both legal and non-legal sectors, a report of which you can find below.
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The more organisations that understand what we, the MBC and all its signatories are trying to do, the more effective we can be. It really helps if you can talk to your partner organisations about the MBC and how it supports your employees and their ways of working. To help you with those discussions we have created some resources for you.
Developed by digital wellbeing experts Shine offline, these six bite size modules allow you to develop your understanding and gain practical tips to improve your relationship with your tech. It includes expert opinions from authors, psychologists and thought leaders, along with challenges, quizzes and accompanying written resources.
As you travel along your MBC journey you may find you want to explore things in more depth, enrol Champions to help you strengthen the message across the organisation, or pick up some tips from organisations who are a little further along than you. This section provides you with a wealth of resources, so you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Feel free to use them as a starting point to adapt them to your organisation.
As you travel along your MBC journey you may find you want to explore things in more depth, enrol Champions to help you strengthen the message across the organisation, or pick up some tips from organisations who are a little further along than you. This section provides you with a wealth of resources, so you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Feel free to use them as a starting point to adapt them to your organisation.
As a signatory you can use these Logos and Visual assets on internal and external communication to help send the message that you are committed to reducing unnecessary stress through aligning with the MBC.
The latest MBC news in the media.
Signatory calls are where we allow our member organisations to give us updates on how they have been implementing the Mindful Business Charter, giving us all an opportunity to learn from each other. Here you can find an archive of past Signatory Calls. To view and join upcoming calls, subscribe to our Events Calendar.
Our Insight Sessions are brought to you by external speakers on diverse topics such as Neurodiversity, Stress and Burnout. Here you can find an archive of our past Insight Sessions. To view and join upcoming Sessions, subscribe to our Events Calendar.
Our Trustees provide strategic guidance, governance and support for the MBC, enriched by their years of experience in a variety of areas. This section provides a short introduction to them all and outlines their areas of responsibility.
MBC is a charity; we take our governance responsibilities seriously and want to be open and transparent. In this section you will find documents about that in practice - our constitution, details of our AGMs and the reports the trustees produce annually to describe our activity.
The intention of the Mindful Business Charter is to remove unnecessary sources of stress and promote better mental health and wellbeing in the workplace. There will be times when long hours and stress cannot be avoided, but this isn’t always the case, and we want it to become the exception rather than the rule. As a business community we have a responsibility to do things differently.
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