Hey, I said there was more to come on the subject of SCVO – that’s Sandwell Council of Voluntary Organisations and not the Scottish Council of like acronym, BTW - and I’m always as good as my word.

Now if you’ve read the last article – and if you haven’t, you’ll need to read it anyway as some of what follows won’t make a whole lot of sense if you don’t – then you’ll have noted that at one point in proceedings the organisation ended up bringing in a firm of solicitors to help out with the odd employment issue or two… or four… or five… hell I can’t remember the exact number but it was a lot…

… more than you might reasonably expect in an organisation with less than 30 employees.

And since then, they’ve taken it all a step further and signed up with a specialist personal and employment law consultancy, just to make certain they have everything covered.

Which on the whole is a pretty smart move on the organisation’s part…

… especially if, as I do, you know the kind of situations some of its managers were capable of getting into is left to deal with employment issues without the benefit of a solicitors in tow to keep an eye on them.

To understand exactly how, and why, I can say that we need to look at three examples of what can only be described as ’screw-ups’ when it came to dealing internally with employment issues.

Why?

Because this is an organisation whose role, in the local Voluntary Sector includes, amongst other things, capacity building other organisations, promoting good practice and generally supporting other organisations to be, and become, good employers. Whether that same organisation can claim to practice what it preaches is, therefore, a matter of public interest given that it receives public money to enable it to fulfil that role.

I might also point out, before anyone starts worrying unduly, that none of the managers who feature in these examples are actually involved in providing advice directly to local organisations. That responsibility falls to a small number of specialist officers, of which I used to be one, who actually know what they’re doing so if you’re thinking of contacting them for a bit of help, go right ahead – you’re actually in pretty safe hands as long you don’t go asking certain managers for help – you’ll get to know which ones if you read on.

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