Founded in 1988 by Danny Gilbert and Tony Tobin as a small team of lawyers focused on providing excellent legal advice on high-profile, complex matters, Gilbert + Tobin (G+T) is now recognised as one of Australia’s leading transactions, regulatory and disputes law firm. With staff numbering beyond 1000 handling some of the most complex transactions in Australia, advising acquirers, targets and financiers. Trusted by clients on sensitive regulatory investigations and approvals, litigation and Royal Commissions. They are also committed to outstanding citizenship and champion important causes, such as marriage equality and reconciliation with Australia’s Indigenous peoples. Among major Australian law firms, they have the highest proportion of women partners.
Before launching Workplace, Gilbert + Tobin had no one channel to connect all its employees. Email was in high use and the intranet had become a place to find policies and procedures rather than communicate and collaborate. G+T wanted to provide a platform to enable two way dialogue and greater leadership visibility, a space for employees to come together, learn from one another and innovate. With the announcement of the world pandemic G+T took the decision to close all of its offices, instructing all employees to work from home. This immediate change in working patterns meant that G+T needed to get a solution in place rapidly.
“Over night the need to communicate and connect employees became more important than ever before. With the deployment of Workplace from Facebook underway, we sort to launch six weeks ahead of plan to bring our people together, connecting them through any device, from any location at any time – an essential to maintaining business practices and service continuity.” Mitch Owens, CTO
“With the outbreak of COVID-19, and many of our people dealing with multinationals, managing the risk to their safety and wellbeing became our primary focus. We needed to find a way to maintain business as usual while navigating new ways of working overnight. Workplace provided the glue to bind us as a team, bringing leaders and employees closer together.” Anna Sparkes People and Culture.
Gilbert +Tobin needed a platform that was:
Six weeks ahead of plan POMT supported Gilbert + Tobin deploy Workplace to 1000+ employees. Every employee, from para-legal to partner was invited to begin collaborating on Workplace with 90% of the organisation creating an account and actively using the platform in just four business days.
“POMT responded to our request to launch six weeks ahead of plan without hesitation. They became an extension of our team and by working collaboratively and flexibly helped us deploy Workplace rapidly. The POMT team were on-hand every step of the way, helping us navigate the technology and adopt Workplace features in unique ways that resonated with our people.” Mitch Owens, CTO
