Merry Christmas Blog! Guest writer: Peter Gilpin

Having been part of the Legal-Island team for a almost a month now (I know, time flies when your...working really hard!) I have the privilege of writing the final blog of the year and reporting on a very civilized Christmas lunch.

Last week saw our team take the short journey down the road to the Hilton Hotel in Templepatrick for the annual Christmas lunch. This was an afternoon of tasty food and great craic, accompanied by a very prestigious awards ceremony. On behalf of us all at Legal-Island, I would like to congratulate John on his award-winning smile.....and red face that accompanied it. The Secret Santa’s amongst us proved not so secret with a table full of detectives finding the source of the exciting gifts shared amongst the group; all of which I’m sure will come in very useful over the festive period. All-in-all a great afternoon, with some familiar faces attending to share the festivities!

This week, the final movements of the year are as follows:

Barry

Our CEO has a quiet enough week this week for a change. He's in the office every day until Friday with the exception of tomorrow when he's meeting Gillian Esquivel for breakfast, attending a prize giving at Antrim Grammar school at lunchtime and then meeting a hoster in the afternoon for a careers discussion. On Tuesday evening he's firing over to Derry/Londonderry to help an old friend with his marketing strategy for his new Derry law firm

We are all looking forward to a well deserved feast of turkey and mince pies, to prepare ourselves for a busy year ahead.

Guest writer: Debbie

The end of a busy year is approaching fast and i can not wait for Christmas.  We had a busy week last week with Strategy Days, Training Week and volunteering our services to paint the premises of Home Start in Antrim.  Oh don’t we look the part in this picture!

Now that we have set the brushes down from last week, we are ready to pick them right back up again as we are off to paint the town red on our staff Christmas lunch at the Hilton Hotel on Thursday.  Party Time!!

Staff movements for this week are as follows:

Barry

Today our CEO is recovering from both a cold and a weekend in London. He was on a two day coaching course which he managed to do apparently by having Lemsip applied intravenously throughout the weekend.

For the rest of this week he has mainly internal meetings to do although on Wednesday morning he’s attending a BITC breakfast meeting about healthy living in Northern Ireland. On Friday he’s in Dublin all day meeting a few mediators.

Scott

Scott has a busy week in his last before his Christmas break. He will be chairing the final HR Network meeting of the year on 13 December. Guest Speakers will be Dr Alistair Black from Futures NI and Shirley Blair from A&L Goodbody.

On Wednesday, Scott will be in Dublin to meet the HR Symposium speakers at Arthur Cox’s offices. He also has meetings with MOP and McCann FitzGerald.

Thursday is Christmas party lunch and Scott will be meeting Tom Evans from DEL on 16^th December.

Donna

Donna is attending a meeting at Antrim Grammar tomorrow with BITC, Parkhall, Translink and Tidy NI with the intention of arranging a “litter prick” up at the railway crossing in January.

On Thursday she will be at our Christmas lunch delivering presents from our Secret Santa and will be hosting the much anticipate Legal Island Staff Awards ceremony.

She also has the HR Forum members using the Training Centre tomorrow.

Onwards until the countdown to Christmas……..

Guest Writer: John

Now that our customers have received their essential training for 2011 through our Annual Review of Employment Law events, its our turn at Legal-Island as we take part in our twice yearly Training Week. This gives us a chance to reflect on the past year, plan for the year ahead and get involved in teamwork at the same time.

Monday will see us all receiving the wisdom of Mark McAllister from the Labour Relations Agency as he speaks on 'Dignity at Work', of which some members of staff may claim to have more than others! This is followed by a review of the year and the Corporate Strategy for 2012 in the afternoon.

On Tuesday, we are leaving the office and donning our ragged trousers to become philanthropists for the day, painting the premises of Home Start in Antrim. This is where we get to add a splash of colour to our work and find out who amongst us is the Van Gogh (creative, crazy and lacking an ear?)

We are back in the Legal Island Training Centre on Wednesday, with a packed agenda including

Networking Update, Disc Profiling,Team work - Communication skills, Staff Charter and Customer Charter, Policies – Update on policies for 2012 and Certain software update!

There is no training planned for Thursday as Kerry has an event taking place in the Training Centre- the second day of the Mediation course, which gives the rest of us a chance to catch up on work.

We end the week with a visit from the Ulster Cancer Foundation, who will be following up on our health audits from earlier in the year to check if we have improved our health levels and if we need to go on the naughty or nice list. Jayne will then be giving a presentation on Meeting Faciltiation Skills in the afternoon before we head home for the weekend.