Russell-Cooke hires HR boss from Osborne Clarke

Russell-Cooke has hired former Osborne Clarke (OC) senior HR business partner Anna Richardson as head of people.

Richardson joined the firm on 12 October and has more than 20 years’ experience in the legal sector, working in both Paris and London.

Richardson has joined Russell-Cooke with overall responsibility for human resources, graduate recruitment, learning and development and employee engagement across all three offices.

She has taken on overarching responsibility for supporting the senior management team in delivering the objectives of the people strategy to ensure close alignment with, and support of, the overall business strategy.

At OC, Richardson led the human resources function in the firm’s corporate, commercial and financial institutions practice group, she latterly led on the employee engagement aspects of a major project to refurbish the firm’s head office. This involved a move to agile working, transitioning from allocated desks to hot desks, going paper lite and overseeing a significant change in working habits in general.

Initially, her key areas of focus at Russell-Cooke will be on culture and values and employee engagement as well as developing the firm’s employer brand. Her experience with an agile working project will be put into practice as Russell-Cooke reviews the move towards increased flexible working that has been accelerated by the pandemic lockdown in March 2020.

She joins the firm’s Putney headquarters, reporting to director of people, risk and standards Anu Kapila.

Kapila said: “Amongst many other tasks on her to do list, Anna will work with our recently appointed Equality, Diversity and Inclusion partner and our Wellbeing partner to ensure that we are doing all we should to ensure inclusivity and engagement at all levels and to maintain a strong, mentally healthy, happy community as we move into another challenging time for us all.”

Richardson added: “I’m looking forward to getting stuck in and hopefully being able to bring my experience from across a number of different law firms and applying it to Russell-Cooke’s very strong and distinctive culture.”