Jørgen Breddam, Head of Legal Office at the Danish Agency for Digitization
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Jørgen and his Legal Office
Denmark is currently setting records for the number of job changes in the public sector. This trend was no exception when Jørgen Breddam Breddam took up the position as Head of the Legal Office in the Danish Agency for Digitization in 2020. Here, employee turnover was around 50% annually. annually. However, a persistent focus on psychological safety, well-being and unity has reduced employee turnover to just 5%.
During the first long period of Jørgen Breddam's employment as Head of Office for the Legal Office at the Danish Agency for Digitization, not a month went by without a termination notice. When employees walked through the office door, he would look at the date and think "Oh no, it's that time again".
This is a common experience among public sector managers. A large number of public sector workplaces have significant employee turnover, where employees quit during their first year. In the government, some departments have an employee turnover rate of up to 30%.
Media outlets such as Zetland have repeatedly highlighted that poor working conditions and a general 'hurry up, hurry up' culture are part of the reason for the high employee turnover. The trend is also seen abroad, and there is a consensus that the problem requires a rethink of how to make public sector jobs more attractive.
However, some companies are already succeeding in creating workplaces with room for development, well-being and productivity. Workplaces where employees want to come and stay. Among them is the Legal Office at the Danish Agency for Digitization, which consists of 20 lawyers, a deputy head and the head of office, Jørgen Breddam. Here, a systematic and structured management effort has managed to overcome the high employee turnover. But it hasn't always been like that.
When Jørgen Breddam took up the position as Head of Office on September 1, 2020, he had several years of experience managing legal professionals behind him. He was therefore looking forward to leading an office whose core task is to support the agency's specialist offices and management with legal advice and task resolution. However, Breddam quickly sensed that something was wrong.
Two weeks into the job, he received the results of the employee satisfaction survey. It showed that the office had the absolute worst job satisfaction in the entire Agency for Digitization. The office had also seen several rapid changes in leadership over a short number of years, and most people were probably thinking "how long will he last?". It came as a shock to Breddam, as none of the initial interviews for the Head of Office position had painted a picture of an unhappy employee group.
Multi-faceted problem
From the start of his employment, Jørgen Breddam had to take an interest in what was causing the low job satisfaction and high employee turnover. This meant that he curiously observed and engaged with employees, both in plenary and in 1:1 conversations. The question was whether the problems were due to several specific causes or whether they were rooted in more fundamental, structural challenges.
A thorough analysis showed that the problem was multifaceted. However, it was clear that there was a general confusion of roles, a lack of identity and a lack of meaning in the work. According to Jørgen Breddam, there was a kind of identity crisis in the office, where unattainable success criteria were vaguely defined by the individual employee. This meant taking on goals that went far beyond the role description.
In addition to providing professionally competent advice to the specialist offices, the lawyers felt an obligation to ensure that the advice was followed to the letter by the specialist offices. If this didn't happen, the lawyers saw the work as wasted and pointless, and a perception of the specialist offices as "defiant and unwilling to cooperate" emerged. In addition, the culture was characterized by a strong focus on objectively correct legal task solving, while there was significantly less focus on whether the recipient could actually understand the message and experienced the advice and collaboration as valuable.
It became obvious to Jørgen Breddam that key work definitions and clarity on roles, collaboration and value were missing. For example, was the office's core task to advise or instruct? What was the office created for? And where did the unclear and unattainable success criteria come from?
From 50% to 5%.
Over the past few years years, employee turnover in the department has dropped from 50% to just 5%. They have also created a clear work identity and core mission that they continually return to. When measuring the success of the office or solving tasks, the office aligns success criteria and tasks with the core function of the lawyers. Their guiding principle is that they should be an advisory office that provides legal sparring and advice of high professional quality and with an understanding of the recipient and the business needs of the agency.
Recognizing that the responsibility for the actual decisions based on the legal advice does not lie with the office's employees has moved the success criterion of the work closer to them. In other words, success is no longer dictated by what is done afterwards, but by whether the advice provided was of high professional quality, giving the recipient a well-informed legal basis on which to make the necessary decisions.
Another success criterion that is measured is the value creation that the professional offices perceive the Legal Department to provide. This is not only about whether something is legally correct, but also about how it is communicated and presented to others outside the office. It's a goal in itself that the professional offices also feel that the advice they receive is responsive and understanding of their business needs - even if the advice may not have resulted in the desired legal outcome.
Already in the recruitment process, Jørgen Breddam clarifies the purpose of the Agency for Digitization, and he makes it clear that the success of the office is determined by whether they are perceived as adding value to the entire agency. Candidates are selected on the basis of high professional skills, but just as much on the basis of the human qualities that enable them to collaborate across departments, communicate to the right audience and create a good culture.
Identity, direction and psychological safety
Even when the cause of high employee turnover has been identified, it can be difficult to know what specific management actions to take. Jørgen Breddam started by wanting to improve wellbeing. It was a pressing issue, so the ambition was to create a strategy that helped the team move towards an environment where everyone felt fun, safe and fulfilled at work.
Then there was the high employee turnover. Working as a lawyer at the Danish Agency for Digitization is not necessarily unique, and competition from others - especially private companies offering higher salaries - is high. It was therefore about creating a sense of belonging through team spirit, where there was collaboration both internally and externally, and where there was a high degree of psychological safety.
The work on psychological safety was about asking: What is crucial for well-being in the Legal Department? The answer was unequivocally that they should work together to strengthen psychological safety, unity and job satisfaction. It was clear that there was widespread mistrust and lack of confidence in the collaboration. It was the most dominant employees who pushed through their own opinions. This created an imbalance where a few employees defined everything and the rest held back. The goal was to get to a point where everyone would feel they had something to contribute that made work fun.
"I have employees who say they go to work with a huge smile on their face and go home with an equally big smile at the end of the day. I knew psychological safety as a slightly distant management concept, but I had never needed to work strategically with it. There was no focus on it back then, when I entered the labor market as a recent graduate. Now there is," says Jørgen Breddam.
What is psychological safety in the workplace?
Psychological safety describes an environment where people feel safe enough to take interpersonal risks by speaking up, coming up with new ideas, asking questions and making mistakes. A psychologically safe team is better at developing each other's ideas and they work more effectively together.
Psychological safety is often linked to Professor Amy Edmondson, who discovered the phenomenon through her research project on medication errors in healthcare.
Amy Edmondson discovered that the teams that performed the best were the ones that reported the most errors. However, this didn't mean that these teams made more errors than average. Instead, they were characterized by a high level of mutual trust and respect that made members feel comfortable speaking up about their mistakes.
The first 100 days
The question is what specific managerial action is needed to tackle employee turnover and create psychological safety, unity and job satisfaction. Jørgen Breddam shares his concrete measures here.
A
Stay in the problem phase: Be curious and patient
The first thing Jørgen Breddam did was to stay in the problem phase. He was even given carte blanche by his then deputy director to spend the first long while doing just that.
"I said to my vice president: 'For the first 100 days, I'm just going to observe and analyze the problems'. She guaranteed me that I would be left alone to do that and she wouldn't interfere. It gave me the peace of mind to stay in the problem phase rather than thinking that they would see quick results and that I should strive for a quick fix," says Breddam.
It's important to stay in the problem and resist the urge to move on to problem solving immediately. Leaders are used to having to make decisions quickly, but in change management, problems can rarely be solved immediately. If you stay with the problem long enough, you have the opportunity to understand the problem in depth and create long-term solutions.
Jørgen Breddam openly communicated to his employees that he wasn't going to implement changes in the office in the first 100 days, but instead observe the working methods, collaboration and culture to understand the challenges before implementing possible solutions. This was partly to counter impatience and partly to give them confidence that he would get to the root of the problem before taking action. Everyone in the office also had the opportunity to provide input.
B
Present your analysis of the problem and invite employees into the solution
After the first 100 days, Jørgen Breddam presented his analysis of how he experienced the problems. At an office meeting, he explained that the office lacked a clear identity, clear roles and a clear core task. It was also clear that psychological safety needed to be addressed. The main goal of that office meeting was to invite employees to collaborate on the solution phase.
"I was honest and recognized that I would have to take responsibility, but that I couldn't do it alone. It would require a joint effort. If you want to achieve psychological safety, where employees dare to admit mistakes, doubts and limitations, you have to start with yourself," says Jørgen Breddam.
C
It starts with the leader
Jørgen Breddam found that when he dared to show his own mistakes and be honest about them, so did the rest of the team. The openness and honesty made the employees trust Jørgen to support them in situations where they made mistakes. And the very fact that they had no doubt that he had their back in unsafe situations helped shape a culture where they dared to admit doubts and mistakes, and together they created psychological safety. It's a trust that needs to be built between people, and it's a long-term investment.
"My strategy has been to recognize my own strengths and weaknesses - simply admit what I find difficult. Sometimes it turns out that you're wrong, and it's important to have the courage to say that I should have done things differently," says Jørgen Breddam.
On a day-to-day basis, Breddam invites the views of his employees. He listens to their input and dares to change direction. However, it is also important to have the courage to stand firm on his decisions as long as employees feel that suggestions and objections have been heard and understood. He does this primarily in plenary sessions, but also in 1:1 relationships. Psychological safety only arises when the group feels that they are allowed to expose themselves.
From collaboration difficulties to job satisfaction
Today, the employees in the Legal Office at the Danish Agency for Digitization have sky-high job satisfaction scores in the annual surveys. If you ask Breddam why the office has become an attractive workplace with significantly lower employee turnover and higher job satisfaction, he points to the psychological safety that has also created a highly efficient office. However, the management work doesn't stop here, because even though employees now look forward to going to work and feel a clear connection to the workplace, it takes a sustained effort to maintain wellbeing and results.
Previously, other departments in the Danish Agency for Digitization found the Legal Department difficult to work with. Through the efforts they have made over the last few years in the Legal Office, the other specialist offices now find that the lawyers add value and often praise the collaboration and their efforts. This has contributed to the increased well-being and job satisfaction in the office, because who doesn't want to feel that their efforts are appreciated and that they are making a real difference to others?
