Dentons wellbeing program delivers results. HR director Emma Gibbins says leadership coaching and psychological safety data helped make this possible
Dentons New Zealand's staff turnover has fallen to its lowest level since 2021, a result the firm's HR director Emma Gibbins credits partly to a leadership, culture and wellbeing program launched by the firm with a clinical psychologist in 2025.
Gibbins, who has led human resources (HR) for the global law firm's New Zealand arm since 2018 and has worked in the profession for more than 20 years, said the firm's most recent turnover statistics showed turnover at its lowest point since the disruption of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2021, while noting other factors, including a shifting geopolitical landscape, have also reduced staff appetite for relocating overseas.
Wellbeing findings shaped the response
Dentons New Zealand operates from Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch, having opened its Christchurch office after acquiring a boutique health law firm roughly two and a half years ago. The push to formalise wellbeing support followed several signals gathered through employee engagement surveys and exit interviews after the pandemic, Gibbins said, including reports of heightened anxiety among new starters, perceptions of a generational gap between older and younger staff, and calls for more inclusive leadership.
Those findings echoed a national picture of poor wellbeing across the legal sector. A three-year longitudinal study by Life Squared Trust, conducted by the University of Melbourne's Centre for Wellbeing Science, surveyed nearly 800 New Zealand lawyers and law students between 2021 and 2023 and found elevated rates of psychological distress across the profession.
Gibbins referenced this body of research directly, saying, "the research showed that lawyers had experienced higher levels of psychological distress, depression, anxiety, burnout, drug abuse compared to other professions in the general population. We wanted to do our bit to turn this around."
A partnership with a clinical psychologist
Dentons New Zealand partnered with clinical psychologist Jacqui Maguire in 2025 to design a 12-month leadership, culture and wellbeing program. All partners participated in the programme.
The program involved four workshops across the year and three individual coaching sessions per partner. Gibbins said the goal was to build shared leadership practice, describing the aim as work "to build modern leadership skills for our partners and our management team to equip them to be able to empower their teams."
The firm is continuing its commitment to this work. Seven new partners who joined the firm last year and the firm’s senior business services professionals are now participating in the program. Partners who completed the full course in 2025 are continuing the work to lock in and build on their developing skills.
Engagement data points to a shift
To track impact, Maguire helped design new engagement-survey questions specifically measuring psychological safety, giving the firm a baseline before the 2025 program began. A follow-up survey run in March 2026 showed movement across every measure.
"We have moved in a positive direction on each of the indicators when compared to 2025," Gibbins said. She added that exit interviews probing culture and the relationship with a supervising partner or manager have also trended positively.
Gibbins said the profession's demands make sustained investment in wellbeing necessary in a way that differs from many generalist HR roles. "The legal profession does have some particular pressures on its people that are not necessarily reflected in other organisations," she said.
Mentoring as a retention lever
Gibbins also pointed to structured mentoring as a factor in retention, saying she has drawn on her own experience of being supported early in her HR career at Dentons' New Zealand in this regard.
She cited one staff member who progressed from HR coordinator to being an HR business partner under the firm's internal development approach. The comments come as New Zealand employers more broadly report a continued focus on culture inclusion and wellbeing initiatives amid workforce pressures, and as new research highlights a persistent mental health plateau across New Zealand workplaces.
