Firm lauded for sending staff home for a snooze

Anna Longdill says Meredith Connell gives her time off and accepts that she 'pops out at lunchtime' for a run. Picture / Dean Purcell

A law firm that allows its solicitors to go home for a nap when they need it has won the country's top award for "work-life balance".

Meredith Connell, which acts as the Crown solicitors in Auckland, has agreed to working patterns that take account of non-work commitments for 52 per cent of its female staff and 31 per cent of male staff.

One of its solicitors, Anna Longdill, has taken advantage of the flexible regime to train for up to 20 hours a week for ironman competitions on top of a gruelling working week of 50 hours or more.

At the peak of her training just before a big event she gets up at 4.30am to put in three hours' running, swimming or cycling before work.

"After a few weeks of that, it gets to the point where you are hitting the proverbial brick wall," she said yesterday.

"I recall more than one occasion when the boss said, 'you need to go home, you need to go and sleep'."

Ms Longdill, 25, won her age group at last year's national ironman championships and took two weeks' leave for the world championships in Hawaii in October, where she came 12th in her category.

"In terms of training leading up to Hawaii, the firm was really accommodating in giving me time off and accepting that I came into work dressed in some unusual clothes and sometimes popped out at lunchtime and came back very sweaty," she said.

She takes extended lunch hours when she needs them, and makes up the time at night via remote access to the company computers from home after training.

"It's part of the team I'm in that they're aware of what events are coming up."

Meredith Connell profited from its flexibility by cutting turnover of professional staff to 5 per cent in the latest year, half the industry average. It has won the Equal Employment Opportunities Trust's Work and Life Award for the large organisation category. Some other winners announced last night were:

* Auckland market research firm Conversa Global (formerly R Cubed), which won the small-to-medium business award for letting its 18 staff define their own commitments and organise their lives around achieving those outputs rather than working any fixed hours.

* ABB Kinleith, which won the First Steps award for giving its maintenance team at the Kinleith paper mill the option of four 10-hour days.

* Auckland University, which won an innovation award for a mentoring and training scheme for female staff.