North East independent law firm for businesses Muckle LLP is celebrating having renewed its IIP Gold status and Health and Wellbeing accreditation until 2022, after 92% of its people agreed Muckle was a great place to work.

Investors in People has over 14,000 accredited high performing organisations across 75 different countries worldwide. As part of the process, assessors listened to the feedback of 120 Muckle employees and held one to ones with 30 people, as well as reviewing documents, evaluation metrics and observing team meetings.

Muckle achieved a score of 787 out of 900 – 63 above the IIP benchmark and 66 above the industry benchmark in all nine indicators. Compared with other IIP assessed law firms of the same size, Muckle ranked third across all 75 countries.

Jason Wainwright, Muckle managing partner, said: “We’re delighted to have achieved gold status in our recent IIP assessment. This is a tremendous achievement and a testament to our people. We couldn’t have achieved this award without their help and it is our people who make Muckle such a fantastic place to work.

“To rank number three for law firms of our size globally is remarkable. To our people, it shows we care; to future talent, it indicates a high performing culture; and to our clients it reflects quality and service.

“I have always believed clients have better experiences when they deal with happy people who feel valued. So to be the North East law firm of choice and give clients an outstanding service, we have to attract and retain the most talented people.

“In the last 12 months we’ve introduced a number of initiatives which further enhance employee engagement and I’m particularly grateful to our HR Director, Nic Leyden, who’s leadership and support has been invaluable.

“We’ve relaunched our core values – Trust, Teamwork, Responsibility and Care – and challenge each other to live by those values every day.

“We’ve focused more on agile working and work-life balance and developed the Muckle Way, a set of guiding principles to ensure that, no matter who clients speak to, they receive the same personal, high quality experience that is unique to us.

“We’re also pleased to be recognised once again as operating best practice in health and wellbeing. Our healthy living weeks and running club were singled out by the assessors for praise, alongside our initiatives to support mental health and social wellbeing.”

He added: “We’ve created a special place to work that’s different to other law firms. We recognise that the sector is simply asking more of its workforce, so we’re also asking our people what Muckle can do for them.

“Our people’s ideas matter, their ambitions matter, their wellbeing matters and now we’re seeing a step change in performance and engagement levels with more fantastic results to come.”