People-led
performance
in professional
services
Your firm has a culture. An independent view tells you how well it's working.
Talent attraction, partner-track development and hybrid working are the conversations every professional services firm is having. An external assessment turns those conversations into something concrete: a clear view of what your people actually experience, and where to focus next.
What accredited organisations report — Investors in People Community Impact Survey, 2024
report improved employee engagement
report improved quality of leadership
say IIP positively impacted training and development
report improvement in employee wellbeing
The Professional Services Challenge
The challenge every
professional services firm knows
The best people in your sector have options. They choose firms where they feel supported, where their development is taken seriously, and where the culture matches what was described at interview. Keeping them, and attracting the next generation, means building something real and being able to show it.
At the same time, the way clients buy professional services is changing. ESG commitments, supply chain standards and procurement criteria increasingly ask about how firms treat their people, and an external assessment carries weight in those conversations that an internal one cannot.
of organisations say engaging and retaining people is their top challenge.
Retaining senior talent
The three-to-seven year experience level carries the highest attrition risk and the highest replacement cost, and partner-track economics make every departure expensive. The firms with the strongest retention are rarely the ones paying the most. They’re the ones investing most deliberately in development and culture.
Hybrid culture and connection
The broad pattern of hybrid working is settled. The practical questions aren’t. How do you develop junior colleagues when senior people are in the office less? How do you build the social fabric of a firm across distributed teams? These questions show up directly in retention data.
Client procurement pressure
Corporate, public sector and increasingly SME clients are asking more about the firms they engage. Working practices, people development and culture are becoming part of procurement criteria, and an independent assessment is what those questions are looking for.
Partner-track development and succession
Developing the next generation of partners is harder in hybrid environments, where the informal mentorship that built careers in previous decades is harder to replicate at scale. Structured, externally assessed development helps fill that space.
None of this reflects a lack of effort. These are structural challenges, and they respond well to structure.
How it works
Independent evidence
you can use
We assess how your firm leads, supports and develops its people across all three principles of the We Invest in People framework. Assessment is practitioner-led and draws on an assessment survey, conversations across your firm, observations and your own data, all gathered and analysed externally.
You get a clear view of where your people practices are strong, where the gaps sit, and a structured roadmap for what comes next. It's something you can use in a procurement response, share with candidates and take to your board.
Why it works for professional services firms
The framework maps to what professional services firms already know matters. Empowering and involving people, giving colleagues ownership, development and real decision-making authority, is the success factor the sector identifies most often. It's also where an outside view most often finds distance between what a firm believes about itself and what its people experience.
Our practitioners bring experience of professional services contexts. They understand partnership structures, trainee and associate development cycles, the competing pressures of billable hours and people investment, and the hybrid dynamics reshaping how firms operate.
How Burges Salmon built a culture that keeps its best lawyers
Burges Salmon is a commercial law firm based in Bristol, with more than 1,300 people across three offices. They have worked with Investors in People for 29 years and hold We Invest in People Platinum.
Turning a school leaver into a fully qualified lawyer takes years of sustained investment. Burges Salmon uses Investors in People to keep refining onboarding, feedback and seat rotation, so that investment carries through to careers built at the firm.
Working with Jenny and Investors in People is an incredibly powerful relationship, one that has built up over the past 29 years. It feels like a true partnership rather than just an accreditation because we get that objective review and discussion around what we're doing and how we can improve things.
Roger Bull, Managing Partner, Burges Salmon
Using the Investors in People framework almost like a diagnostic tool, the senior leaders here have been able to ask themselves how they are leading and if activities are empowering people. It helps them identify what they are currently doing and any gaps they can then fill.
Jenny Goward, IIP Practitioner
of newly qualified lawyers stayed on in 2025
of current partners trained at the firm
years as an Investors in People accredited organisation
people across three offices, grown from 900
Four levels. One direction.
We Invest in People accreditation levels
Accreditation is awarded at four levels, each building on the last. The level you achieve is determined by your assessment across nine indicators, and what matters more than the starting point is the direction you're moving.
Standard
The foundation
The essentials are in place: clarity, fairness, steady leadership and a supportive environment.
Silver
Building on Standard
The essentials happen more reliably across the firm. Communication is two-way, development is intentional, and leaders are more proactive.
Gold
Building on Silver
Consistency creates alignment. Leaders, teams and systems pull in the same direction, and continuous improvement becomes part of everyday life.
Platinum
Building on Gold
Everything that was strong before is embedded, lived and sustained. People have a genuine voice, and the firm keeps adapting as things change.
Insights for professional services leaders
Further reading
Ready to find out where your organisation stands?
An independent view of your people practices changes the conversations you can have internally, with clients and with candidates. Tell us about your organisation and a member of our team will be in touch.
Statistics: Investors in People Community Impact Survey, 2024 unless otherwise stated. Burges Salmon case study data sourced from Burges Salmon, 2026.