Team size: Five

Could you share an example of a time when you came up with an innovation that improved how your legal team works and did not come at a large expense?

When we switched to a shared mailbox for the legal department and to an agile way of working, it made my day-to-day work in particular, a lot easier. There is now “self-service” within the legal team for tasks sent to the legal department and colour codes make it clear who is processing a task. But it is not just me who benefits from this way of working; I also hear from my team members that they really appreciate this independent way of working. Self-organisation and transparency are the benefits – and these did not cause any additional costs.

Another tool that supports us in the agile way of working, is a project management software in use that accompanies the implementation of our legal tech projects. The legal tech projects we have implemented over the last three years have taken a massive amount of pressure off our legal department – and have also involved internal effort and external costs.

Apart from legal matters, has the team worked on other company initiatives?

In implementing a compliance program, my team independently developed an e-learning program very specific to the business. Compliance e-learning available on the market turned out to be too generic, which is why we have everything tailored to our range of activities and compliance risks, both in terms of content and quiz questions.

TÜV AUSTRIA is in the testing, inspection, and certification (TIC) business, and our role as independent third-party providing conformity assessments requires tailored compliance training. The core of the e-learning is an avatar that is recognizably based on the female compliance officer. This clear visual language is used not only in the training, but also in compliance communication in general.

In the design phase of the e-learning, we asked our colleagues in the operational areas about their compliance issues, their experiences, among other questions, and incorporated our findings into the training.

To ensure that our colleagues in all subsidiaries worldwide understand the compliance training, the e-learning was implemented in 16 languages for three target groups each. This means the avatar speaks not only German, but also Chinese and Portuguese, among other languages. The next step is to implement the training in Arabic.

Can you sum up the team culture/ethos in one sentence? 

If I must sum up the team culture in one sentence it is “Help here you get”.

We have a strong service orientation towards the business and are very much appreciated as business enablers, translating legally complex issues into understandable language, and providing support in finding a solution, all within a short response time.

The service mindset is something that also comes strongly from leadership, because just a few years ago, our legal department was not known for the service mindset, but rather for making things complicated, communicating difficult to understand concepts, and taking a lot of lead time.

But we do not just help the business; we also support each other within the team. A recently joined team member has already noticed in the first weeks that the helpfulness and mutual support within the team is a distinctive feature and worth emphasising.

On the other hand, we have a keen sense of humour. The more stressful the work becomes, the more humorous the team becomes. We tackle challenges with humour – this is also why I included a sense of humour as a requirement in the last job posting.