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Guest Writer - Barry Phillips

For us here at Legal-Island, the first week in September is officially the start of the 'silly season'. This is when bookings start to pour in for our big five events (fingers crossed) and we all keep our heads down and charge forward best we can. Every year we say we can't maintain the pace. But we do and almost without fail we put on a better Annual Review than ever before.

This week most of the staff are busy with internal meetings, performance reviews, or simply tasks they're hoping to clear before the rush starts.

Our training centre is booked all week bar and reservations for the next few months are coming in nicely too.

Wednesday is likely to be our most important day this week because this is the day we're expecting our first e-learning module to be delivered by our developers.

Bring it on!

Guest Writer - Kerri Bradley

GREASE LIGHTNING, GO GREASE LIGHTNING!

Legal-Island staff had such an exciting weekend... On 
Saturday, we all headed off to Belfast on our staff day out. 
We had a delicious high tea at Ten Square. We then went to the Waterfront to watch Grease the musical, with Eugene proving a big hit on the day, especially for Scott. Staff then headed to Benedicts to enjoy a cocktail making class, coctail challenge and a three course meal. We get spoilt here on the Island. See some pics of our fun day out!

Boys v Girls Cocktail Challenge:  Unfortunately the boys won but Debbie scored 10/10 for her cocktail making, I don't think any of the boys matched that skillful score!!!  Made all Debbie's organising worthwhile... Well done Debs!

 

Staff movements this week:

Barry: Our CEO, Barry Phillips, has a busy week of meetings 
including Gerry Gilpin, John Andrews and Joe Blair not to mention 
one-to-ones with staff. Apparently he’s back in training for his next 
tri-athlon which means early starts for him at the Antrim 
swimming pool.

Scott: Scott has internal meetings today and tomorrow. He says he has almost recovered from drinking Chartreuse liqueur after the cocktail challenge on Saturday. Chartreuse was lovely, according to Scott:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chartreuse_(liqueur)

However, it left the old boy somewhat delicate. “Never again until next time,” he vowed. And certainly not after four cocktails, three beers and two glasses of wine. Drink sensibly, kids, when you’re on a work’s outing.

Scott’s right arm is sore after two competitive games of donkey against Maxine Murphy-Higgins’ 10 year old son, Josh, the day after drinking Chartreuse. Scott was beaten in both games. He haw, he haw, he hawlays gets beaten at donkey but not usually by 10 year olds.

Scott has meetings scheduled this week to meet Ciara 

Fulton from Tughans in Belfast and Sheena Murphy, an 

employment solicitor based in Holywood. He hopes to 

work from home on Thursday.

Heather: Heather will be volunteering for CLIC Sargent at the NI Open in Galgorm on Friday.

Training Centre: Schrader will be using the TC on Tuesday and Thursday.

 Hope you have a lovely week!

Kerri

Guest Blogger - Scott

Just back from holidays with Legal-Island's Faccenda Fowler and my wife, Avril:

Avril's on the left, by the way. That beautiful sunny day is in Scotland, unbelievable as you may think.

Also got to see Hearts beat Hibs at the famous Edinburgh castle. Tynecastle, that is, home of the mighty Jambos, who now have amassed -11 points in their quest to maintain premier league status at the end of 2013/14 season.

I'm in the office today, tomorrow and Wednesday, with a wine tasting in the office tomorrow afternoon. On Saturday, it's team bonding time, as Legal-Island staff hit Belfast for lots of fun at Grease and cocktails afterwards.

Our CEO, Barry Phillips, has a busy week making up lost ground after his holidays. No doubt he'll be wading through hundreds of emails sent to him whilst away honeymooning. This week he also has a meeting with the Belfast Speakers' Circle and Frank Cassidy of ASCL.

MD Jayne is in the office all week. She has the usual internal meetings plus a few extra, Friday morning off to Orchardville Society to meet the board.

Conference Managers, Heather and Kerry  will be attending the ‘Review of National Occupational Standards for Event Management’ on Wednesday at the Titanic Building, Belfast.

 

Guest Writer - Julie

It's a bit of quiet week here on the Island, what with a number of staff on leave.  So I thought I would let you know about our travelling chicken " Faccenda Fowler ".

Many of you will know that we keep free-range hens in the grounds of our head quarters.  Lovely little Mexican hens that lay turquoise eggs that we use for marketing purposes. (The eggs, not the hens).

Inspired by this genius piece of marketing we have adopted another hen, who goes by the name of Faccenda Fowler. Each week Faccenda will be posting a photo of herself in a different location on our Legal Island Facebook page.
As per photo, why not log on to our Facebook page and see if you can find/guess where Faccenda has been on her recent travels.....

Staff movements for the week are as follows:

Debbie - On Tuesday Debbie is meeting with Sorcha Chipperfield from Northern Ireland Cancer Fund for Children to hand over the cheque for all the money rasied at our successful Family Funday.


Heather - has a breakfast meeting at BITC on Wednesday morning.


Peter F - alongside Pamela and Peter G are visiting our website designers this week to learn how to use the new content management system.  The new site is going live on Thursday evening, so there's alot of excitement around the office this week (we've all had a sneak preview - it looks fantastic!).


Have a good week!

Boys V Girls: Let the games begin........

Now that the Family Fun Day has passed this week has seen the return of the boy’s v girl’s challenges here at Legal Island.

We made our way out to the battlefield at 12pm today to play Boules!!

Great fun was had by all and huge congratulations go to the boy’s team who have taken the victory this week, they are now in the lead overall, beating the girls 7-5 but I’m sure the girl’s can make an excellent comeback!!

Pictures of today’s challenge can be seen below.

This week’s staff movements:

Allison is in Belfast for most of Friday as she has meeting with Social Enterprise NI, MaST Ireland and Pinnacle Computing.

Pamela is in Belfast on Tuesday morning at Clever Fulton Rankin shooting a video of Michael Black to complement the 6 monthly case law review that we email out to our Premium email service subscribers.

Last week Scott attended the LRA conference on employment relations at the Stormont hotel in Belfast. It was very good and well run, with an excellent panel of speakers from across the globe. This week Scott is meeting Maryna Wylie – Secretary of the Healthcare People Management Association (NI Branch) and Assistant Director Resourcing in the Northern HSCT at 2.00pm on Tuesday.

Then Scott is off back home to Edinburgh and is back on 19 August. Scott hopes to see his beloved Hearts beat the village idiots this weekend in the Edinburgh derby at Tynecastle Park. That should cut Hearts’ deficit to -12 points and their goal difference to something as high as zero. Come on everyone, “One Pat Fenlon, there’s only one Pat Fenlon...” Let’s hope lucky Pat is still there on Sunday.

He’ll also be going on the ‘Harry Potter’ steam train from Fort William to Mallaig, hopefully stopping at the Glenfinnan viaduct: http://www.westcoastrailways.co.uk/jacobite/Jacobite_Details.html

And maybe a wee traipse up the Ochills or the Pentlands (hills to the north and south of Edinburgh. Very north of Edinburgh, in the case of the Ochills, but the ones you see when you look south from Edinburgh in the case of the Pentlands).

Not the most obvious things to do when you’re in Edinburgh during the world’s biggest arts festival but he’s been there before and is a jaded old fool.

Onwards...

Guest Writer – Peter G

FAMILY FUN DAYYYY! We are all currently still feeding off the adrenaline that was our Family Fun Day, which took place here at Island House Training Centre on Friday. It was a fantastic day which was enjoyed by over 550 visitors from the local community. Our visitors enjoyed the 4 bouncy castles, Aunt Sandra’s chocolate workshop, zumba dancing, a BBQ from Moe’s Grill, Mickey, Minnie, Buzz Lightyear and a fantastic array of stalls painting nails and faces....You name it, we had it!

It was a great day which raised an amazing total of £1649.28 for the Northern Ireland Cancer Fund for Children! A massive thanks must go to each everyone who contributed to the event, especially Debbie and the other members of the Legal-Island team and McGee's Butcher's who donated the meat for our BBQ.

Please see below for a selection of pictures from the day.

This week's movements are as follows:

Our CEO, Barry Phillips, has a busy week before taking a few days' leave soon. He has meetings all day today. Tomorrow he has a meeting with ASDON in Lisburn and with Trainingsolutionz on Wednesday. On Thursday he's back in the office and out again Friday helping with the great Antrim river clean up.

Scott is a red-looking 51 years of age tomorrow and will be taking the day off, in line with our policy of every employee getting an extra day off on their birthday. That means his pink haired daughter, Kirsty, will have the shortest work placement in history – just one day – before she gets a break.

Kirsty is a rebellious child and dyed her hair pink specifically so she would clash with her old man’s napper, a frightening shade of crimson after spending the Legal-Island family fun day directing traffic. A lovely hot and sunny day proved a blessing to everyone but Scott, who really should have known better than to go outside in temperatures of more than 12°C without a hat and sunscreen. He is Scottish after all and is old enough to remember the damage done by the strange big yellow thing in the sky from 1976. Just as well he spent a while dressed up as Mickey Mouse on Friday or he would have looked even more like a proboscis monkey.

Scott is back in the office with daughter in tow on Wednesday and Thursday, thereby tripling Kirsty’s work placement in just two days. On Friday Scott will be attending the LRA conference on international perspective in employee relations at the Stormont Hotel in Belfast. Kirsty might just need another day off. And they say kids are pampered nowadays...

This week we are all very busy as places are starting to fill up at our NI and ROI Annual Reviews, as well as all of our other season 2 events. We are also heading down to a river clean at the Six Mile Water with local companies Text Help, Robinson Cleaning Services and The Six Mile Water Trust. We are praying the thunder and lightning leaves us to get on with it!