Jodie Hill, a passion for mental health in the workplace

Jodie started her own law firm, Thrive Law, at 29 and 15 months later she has 10 staff. Thrive Law is a specialist law firm, based in Leeds. The company specialises in employment law, with a focus on HR and mental health in the workplace.

She graduated from Leeds Beckett in law in 2009, trained as a barrister and a solicitor, became qualified while working for Milners and at the same time started lecturing in law part time. She has worked pro bono for Mind and has been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society for Public Health for her contributions to mental health in the workplace. At the same time as setting up Thrive Law, she has set up two networking groups, Thriving Minds and Thrive Women.

Her prolific output is partly the outcome of a prodigious amount of energy and partly motivated by her personal experience, specifically a breakdown in 2017. Jodie has started a campaign for mandatory mental health risk assessments for workplaces. Anyone can sign the petition, which can be accessed via the Thrive Law website under mental health.

Thrive Law is going to be trialling a four-day week based on the condensed hours model in August. This is all part of Jodie’s goals to empower women and to empower people with disabilities. Flexible working helps both of these categories (everyone has a disability at Thrive). If it is successful it will be introduced for all staff next year.

Jodie manages people the way she would like to be managed. Authenticity is important to her – “I practice what I preach.” She is honest about her own struggles. The outcome is high productivity, high engagement, low sickness and great client feedback.

Setting out on her own at 29 is quite an achievement, especially in the legal field, where the average age of qualification as a solicitor is 35 and the average of a partner 65.

The greatest learning challenge has been recruiting the right people. This made her re-evaluate her processes. Now she has a two-phase process with a telephone interview followed by an interview that explores both technical capability and attitude. Getting the induction process right is important to her.

Jodie’s personal development plan combines learning within the business with the parallel development of her general wellbeing. She does a lot of reflection and journaling. She sets herself short term and long-term goals every year. At present she is learning Spanish. Prior to setting up Thrive she was “consumed” by the world of work. Now she has a life outside of work.

Every member of staff has a personal development folder and Jodie has a 360-appraisal process where her staff give her feedback on her own performance.

Then we talked about Thriving Minds and Thrive Women. Thriving Minds was born out Jodie’s own experiences. She wanted to empower employers to deal with mental ill health in the workplace. It offers various bespoke training. There is an associated Facebook group, a series of breakfast and an annual conference. This year’s conference on 19^th September will feature over 150 employers, will take place at Leeds Civic Hall and be opened by the mayor.

Thrive is a networking group that meets quarterly. The group is open to men, providing those men empower women. Once again there is a Facebook group. The group only started in March this year but already has 200 members.

She has been inspired by Lady Hale, President of the Supreme Court and a fellow Yorkshirewoman, and Baroness Mone, founder of Ultimo: she “came from nothing” and sold Ultimo for £39m.

Other aspects of Jodie’s self-care regime includes daily exercise: netball, yoga, weightlifting, or walking her dog. She also meditates using Headspace. She eats well, sleeps well and drinks plenty of water. She says “I understand what my triggers are and what helps me and doesn’t help me.”

One key ambition for Jodie is to be able to change the law in relation to mental health.