GFTU BGCM Minutes 2017

IAN RICHARDS: Good morning, everybody. Ian Richards, as you know, Operations

Manager within the GFTU. I have to disagree with Ben when he said he has

got the best job in the world, because I believe that I have. It is a very busy job

and it is a job that draws on lots of experiences for me, I have worked in

advertising, I have worked in different settings and I can bring some of that

knowledge and skill to the GFTU, so reflecting on shared services was a fairly

easy dialogue for us to start going. I have seen most of you at Quorn and

everybody is going flat out, everybody is trying to make a big difference to the

lives of working people. It is what we do, isn’t it? That is what the movement is

all about. But every now and then it would be good to either say to somebody,

“Can you help us do this?” or “You’ve got some knowledge that I haven’t got,

can we share it?” or “Is there a better way of doing it?” and a lot of this is about

that.

As we think about shared services there are some things that are worth almost

re-stating. The shared service agenda for the GFTU is not about merger

through the back door or anything threatening, it is about finding a way of

collaborating even further than we already do. We have to recognise that no

two organisations or their priorities are ever going to be the same. Different

people will be at different points on a journey. That does not mean, a bit like a

travellator, that you can’t get on to the moving pathway of making it more

efficient. We all want to be more sustainable.

There are different models and I am not suggesting that this one that we are

following is the only way of doing things. There are other ways to get things

done and one of the skills that we have got is that skill of critical reflection and

hearing feedback and learning from opportunities, learning from mistakes,

learning from each other. The reality is that sustainable partnership relies on

honesty, transparency, really effective communication and sometimes being

big enough to say, “Is it right? Are we doing it right? Have we got the right bits

in the right place?” Why would you do a shared services model? If you have a

magic wand and you could “Ping!” change the moment, there might be different

ways why you would do this. You might choose to be going in a slightly

different strategic direction. It might be dipping a toe in water for something

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