CIPD Branches - London Consortium proposal
You may have heard that we have recently (since April 2011) been liaising with the other London area CIPD Branches to see how we can collaborate more effectively in the future to offer you, our members, a better service.
As a result of our discussions we have now formed what we are calling a "London Consortium". The 5 branches involved currently are ourselves (South East Thames), Central London, North London, West London and South London. The other 2 branches covering the London region have been asked if they want to participate but at the moment they are not contributing to the Consortium discussions.
The South East Thames Branch will remain in its current structure and the idea is not to create one large London Branch as there is general agreement that members are best served by retaining a local focus and local branch committees.
Having said this, there is also general agreement that it would be beneficial for us to work together on certain of our activities, especially in terms of improving member communications and managing Branch events. The Consortium has therefore developed a business case which proposes that we establish 2 FTE Co-ordinator/administrator positions who would be responsible for supporting branch committees and publicising and supporting branch events across the London region. As you know we currently employ Kate Lee as our Branch Administrator on an ad-hoc basis and other branches have similar arrangements in place. Kate has been a fantastic administrator and has assisted us over the past few years to build our levels of communication and improve the consistency of approach to event administration. We now believe that building on Kate's successes, if the CIPD centrally employed 2 administrators for us to share across the 5 branches, we would be able to offer members an even more proactive and responsive service.
In addition to continuing to offer locally focussed events in each of our areas, the Consortium would be able to produce a London-wide programme of events which would be circulated across the whole area probably twice per year, so making it easier for you as members to access a wider range of events and activities at locations across London. We hope that by improving access opportunities to a wider range of activities we will increase overall attendance at events and encourage more member involvement with Branches as well as being more efficient and potentially offering us greater economies of scale.
The posts will of course be advertised and the appointment of shared co-ordinators will be open to competition. Those appointed will be employees of the CIPD but will report to Branch Chairs.
We hope that you will, as we do, see this as an exciting development. Currently the proposal is being considered by CIPD and we will be discussing it with them at the end of this month. We will come back to you again after this with an update of progress and if approved, we hope to have new administrators in place early in the new financial year. In the meantime if you have any questions or queries about this proposal do please contact either of us for a chat.
Sarah Harvey, Branch Chair
Julia Tybura, Vice Chair
Next event
22 February 12
18:30 for 19:00 start
South East Thames Branch
Venue: The Cavendish London, Electra room, 81 Jermyn Street, London, SW1Y 6JF
Speaker(s): Julia Tybura, Steve Toft
Have your say
To get involved in future policies contact Anna Patterson our Branch Policy Advisor
To find out more about recent events that have taken place in the South East Thames region please click here
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