Almost one year to the day after becoming employee owned, Chester firm, Oliver & Co Solicitors have won a prestigious industry award for the Best Place to Work.
Celebrating excellence in the industry
The sixth annual British Wills and Probate Awards was hosted in Manchester on 11th October recognising and celebrating excellence in the industry. The awards are increasingly recognised as a badge of honour for practitioners who must demonstrate adherence to carefully selected category criteria. Each submission is scrutinised by a panel of expert judges drawn from across the legal services spectrum who independently score the entry.
[Pictured: Annie Somerville and Sarah Ayliffe from Oliver & Co, with Pippa Shepherd from Estgro, the category sponsor]
Championing happiness and positivity
Annie Somerville, Marketing Manager at Oliver & Co, who authored the award submission for the firm said “We are proud to have won the Best Place to Work category in the British Wills & Probate Awards 2023 and be recognised nationally as a leading employer in the legal sector. Oliver & Co has always championed happiness and positivity with its staff. The progression to employee ownership has brought further benefits to us as employees and subsequently our clients.”
Sense of trust and shared responsibility
“In the last 12 months, since the change of ownership, there have been significant changes in the way the company is run including the appointment of employee representatives, who meet with the Board of Trustees regularly throughout the year, giving us a voice in the way the company operates. We are all that little bit more invested, having a stake in the business, building a sense of trust and shared responsibility firm wide. You can imagine, there was plenty of material to write about in the award entry.”
One of the best submissions ever marked
Oliver & Co was pitted against some of the top law firms in the country in the category. The judges on announcing the winners of Best Place to Work said of the Oliver & Co entry that it was one of the best submissions they had ever marked.
Excited for the future
Commenting on the triumph, Sarah Ayliffe, Head of Wills & Probate at Oliver & Co said “We are delighted to win the Best Place to Work category, which reflects the hard work and commitment of all our employees in the last 12 months. The move to employee ownership has been a significant change for us and we are all looking forward to what the future will bring.”
[Pictured: the Wills & Probate team from Oliver & Co Solicitors]
October 18th marks the one-year anniversary of Chester based firm Oliver & Co becoming 100% employee owned. The 76 employees of Chester-based Oliver & Co Solicitors now own 100% of the business through an employee ownership trust and enjoy an equal share of the firm’s profits and many more benefits.
