Guest Writer: Scott

On Tuesday Scott will be helping on the Learn to Earn programme as part of our volunteering work with Young Enterprise NI: He'll be based in Parkhall College, Antrim, for the day.

On Thursday he turns trainer and will be facilitating sessions, along with Lorraine Toolan of the EEF, on discipline and underperformance at work.

He'll be leaving early on Friday to go to Scotland to get his eldest daughter, Catriona, from university. Do you remember when summer holidays seemed to last forever?

Barry the CEO has an easy enough early part of the week with nothing more than internal meetings planned until jetting off to London for a couple of days on Wednesday. In the big smoke he's attending a conference delivered by Peter Thompson. He's also meeting a representative at Squires Saunders Hammonds and then Colin Carrol for drinks and a chat Wednesday evening. On Friday he's with coach Richard O'Rawe in the morning and has an "Ompa lumpa" lunchtime meeting on Friday.

Ainsley will be at Ballycraigy Primary School on Wednesday afternoon coaching the kids football and then on Thursday afternoon he will be meeting Cleo Devaney from Tibus to discuss our website.

Pamela will be attending a National Training Awards Information Seminar at DEL Offices in Belfast from 8.30-10am this Wednesday. We are not entering the awards this year but it is all for preparation for an application in 2012.

Donna is in charge of the de-clutter day in the office this Tuesday.

On Friday Debbie will be volunteering at Antrim Library, helping out by teaching basic computer skills at the Silver Surfers’ Day.

Heather will be attending the following women in business event on Thursday: WIB NI BUSINESS FORUM 2011

Jayne is meeting Anne Dargan on Tuesday, decluttering and then meeting Kerry and Ainsley for one to one meetings. On Wednesday am – she has a photo shoot then finance meeting, then Heather meeting. On Thursday Jayne is covering hosting of Mediation 1 in Training Centre then 2pm Donna meeting.

On Friday – Jayne is attending hockey tournament from 11.30am with Ballycraigy Primary, followed by a 3pm meeting on email service.

Onwards!

Guest Write Barry Phillips CEO

I'm so lucky to feel so proud of my staff. Here’s one employee who stood outside Tesco last Friday collecting money for a good cause. That takes bottle. Well done Vanessa say I.
As a company we’re up to two really important but quite different things this week. We’re all “de-clunking”. In otherwords, we’re going through files and folders, drawers and cupboards to see what we can throw away. No doubt we'll feel we have an office twice the size once done. We’re also working on our application to the Irish News for the Champion of Champion award. We’ve won an award over the last few years six times including “Best Place to Work” twice so the pressure's on. We’ve got something a bit wacky in mind. But then we do wacky. And rather well I might add.

On Tuesday our conference executive Scott will be meeting Rosie Smyth from Ulster Supported Employment Ltd. USEL was established in 1962 with the aim of providing supported paid employment for people with disabilities within its Belfast manufacturing base.
Our MD (sporting a fine new hairdo incidentally) is in meetings all day today. Tuesday evening she's attending the B4B event "Generating income and good customer relationships" at the Wellington Park Hotel, Belfast. Thursday and she’s attending the CforC course on Facilitation Skills at Holiday Inn Express Antrim. She’s in the office rest of week, internal meetings etc with no doubt something spectacular planned for the weekend.
Our conference manager ROI Heather is off to England covering the TUPE seminar in London on Wednesday. Bon voyage Heather.
Our conference manager NI Kerry is hosting the second day of the Internal Mediation course on Tuesday in the Legal-Island Training Centre and is attending an 'Art in the Garden' networking event at the Culloden that same evening. Apparently she knows these gardens well having visited these and many others in the summer when playing her tuba in the local silverband for 6 years. On Thursday she will be presenting Ballycraigy Primary School with their sponsored hockey kits and will be helping out at a small local tournament in preparation for next weeks Antrim Sixes Tournament. Come on "Anrim"!
Ainsley our marketing and sales manager has a busy week too. Tomorrow evening he’s attending a B4B event with Jayne at the Wellington Park Hotel. On Wednesday he’s volunteering at Ballycraigy Primary School coaching football. On Thursday he’s running the innovation club. In between times like the rest of us he’s busy de-clunking.

Me, myself and I are busy this week with a combination of internal staff meeting and networking meetings. On Monday I have the usual one-to-ones with senior staff. On Tuesday I'm meeting Clive Byrne from NAPD and Michael Lantry from Certification Europe after that. I’m seeing Hannah Carney from Hannah Carney Associates for lunch and finally Marion Courtney late afternoon. Later that same day I’m attending “Generating Income and Good Customer Relationships” with other Legal-Island staff at the Wellie Park in Belfast. On Friday of this week I’m attending a Sales seminar at the Hilton and afterwards meeting Jim McBain of ASCL and George Wilson of the Centre for Competiveness and finally the company account Mike Nangle for lunch.

Onwards Islanders!

Guest writer: Debbie Wilson




Now that the confetti has settled and the "I do's" have been said welcome back to Legal-Island from a glorious Bank Holiday. The Royal Wedding has passed and William and Kate are now husband and wife.



I would like to take this opportunity for wish the new Duke and Duchess of Cambridge a long and happy life together and I think I speak for everyone when I say Kate was absolutely beautiful!!



Staff movements for the forthcoming week are as follows:


Barry is busy this week. He's just back from a few days in Moscow. What's the Russian for "pay back time" I wonder? He's meeting Mike Jones from Penna here on Friday but other than that he's fairly office bound all week for a change.


Scott will be assisting at the 'Managing Underperformance in the Public Sector' workshop on 5th May and will be meeting with Penna representatives on Friday to discuss the feedback from the HR Conference.


Jayne is in Strategy day follow up meetings today and will also be meeting with Barry. On Wednesday she has a a marketing meeting and is also attending a meeting with the Irish News.


Heather will be in the office all week involved in planning 2012 meetings.


Vanessa will be volunteering for Marie Curie on Friday, working in the charity shop in town in the morning and collecting donations from kind shoppers in the afternoon.


Here's to another busy week at Legal-Island.......

Guest writer: James

I was reminded by Barry not to forget the photo; so in keeping with the 1981 theme on 5 Live this morning I thought you'd all enjoy a circa 1984 version of me. Thank God there were no camera phones in those days and only a few closely guarded records of my exploits remain.

1981 was of course the last big Royal Wedding and if there's any fluffed lines this time they'll never hear the end of it with YouTube et al. We all know the horror that can be The Wedding Video! Scott has yet to watch his and is banned from Friday viewing unless it gets an airing first. Sounds like Scott will be doing the housework on Friday...

Talking of housework: we are all tasked with an office spring clean in the next few weeks with Shred-it coming in on the 17th May to take care of all our confidential clutter. I see Barry has got the jump on us over the holiday weekend so he can dictate the clear-desk policy with a clear conscience (for once). He even claims to have given the hen house a deep clean on Saturday.

As always Barry has big plans even for this reduced working week:

Tomorrow he's meeting Alva Brangam QC to pick his brains on mediation in NI. He's also meeting Melanie Donnelly from Full Circle too. On Thursday he's back in the office with internal meetings and on Friday he's off to Dublin to meet Gerry Rooney of Baker Tilly and John Hogan of Lemans Solicitors. Obviously he'll be watching the big event on his i-phone? For the long weekend he's off to Moscow (as you do) to stay with some friends. Now they do May day in style!

The rest of us who are here this week will be trying to catch up on paperwork with the brief hiatus in conference work. Quick, better go, I think I hear the paper police coming!

Enjoy the holiday - however long you get.

James

Guest writer: John, 18th April 2011

After seeing this photo of the HR Conference last week and how well the tables looked, it is rumoured that the Middletons may be asking Legal-Island to help organise the Royal Wedding! However, with a few staff off on holidays from Thursday, we may have to wait until Harry finds his princess before before we get invited to do the job.

With everyone looking forward to Easter and hoping the good weather lasts, its another active week on the Island.

Now that our CEO, Barry Phillips, I guess we wont be able to use his office and we'll have to get back to looking terribly busy again! Barry's in internal meetings pretty much all of today. He is meeting Julian Simpson of Exped8 for lunch. On Tuesday he's attending the Payroll Matters conference in Belfast albeit very briefly. On Wednesday and Thursday he is in strategy meetings with certain staff members. On Good Friday he is in doing a lot of work while others are off enjoying themselves.

Scott will be chairing a meeting of the Antrim/Ballymena HR Network on Tuesday the 19th April. The meeting will be held at Decora Blinds in Lisburn and the guest speaker will be Emma-Jane Flannery of Arthur Cox solicitors, who will be discussing employment law and social media.

Ainsley will be involved in the strategy meetings this week, and has a lunch meeting with Anne Monaghan from Inform PR tomorrow.

James is busy preparing for the finance meeting tomorrow and then strategy meetings on Wednesday and Thursday.

Jayne has her usual meetings this week, as well as the strategy meetings later in the week. Tomorrow she has a Business in the Community meeting at 4pm, and she has volunteered to come in to the office on Good Friday to cover the phones.

In what sounds like an exciting meeting, Heather will be speaking to Bertrand from Supernova Productions tomorrow afternoon.

Have a nice week.

Monday 11th April 2011

Guest writer Phyllis McMahon

We had exciting news here at Legal-Island on Friday afternoon. Julie rang to let us know -Baby Grace Lynn McCloskey was born at 11.05 and has sandy hair with blue eyes and in her mother’s words is “just perfect”. Congratulations to Julie and Peter I'm sure all the sleepless nights will be worth it.

It has been a glorious weekend, spirits are high as we go into another very busy week.

Today Barry is meeting the company coach, Richard O’Rawe and then has internal meetings with senior staff this afternoon. Tomorrow he’s off to London for a business growth seminar. On Wednesday he has a meeting in the City and Thursday and Friday no doubt he’ll be out networking or working on a business development idea.

Today Jayne is off to Manchester for Agency and Data Protection meetings which will run tomorrow. On Thursday she is hosting at the HR Conference and for the rest of week she has internal meetings.

Peter is volunteering with the Ballycraigy Primary School footballers on Wednesday afternoon and looking after the exhibitors at the HR Conference on Thursday

Scott will be chairing the NI HR Conference at the Ramada on Thursday 14 April.

Heather is at a meeting on Tuesday with Antrim Borough Council to discuss their fundraising for McMillan Palliative Care Unit. On Wednesday she is at Corrs Corner for the Education Law Update On Thursday she is attending the Women In Business Membership Information Seminar and then she will be taking the hockey at Ballycraigy Primary School.

Kerry has the NI Education Law Update on Wednesday in Corrs, which Heather will be kindly hosting for her. She will be out at the NI Annual HR Conference on Thursday at the Ramada with Peter, Jayne and Scott as chair.

Enjoy your week.

Guest Writer: Jacqui, 4th April 2011

It's hard to believe that the first quarter of the year has already passed.

We finished off the quarter with Age & Retirement event in Belfast, which by all accounts was a very successful day and well done to all those concerned. We are also holding this event in Dublin on June 2nd.

I would like to welcome Allison Sutherland onto the Island. She previously worked for Duncan Bannatyne and left his employ to move over to N.Ireland, so she comes with high credentials. Allison will be joining us for the next two months in a marketing consultancy capacity.

This week we have Schrader making use of the Training centre on Thursday and as far as staff movements go, we are busy as usual.

Barry is off to Dublin today and will be back on the Island tomorrow.

On Tuesday, Scott will be meeting Invest NI representatives, along with Penny Thornberry of P Thornberry Solutions. On Wednesday, Scott will be in Dublin to meet lawyers from both ByrneWallace solicitors and Hayes solicitors about some of our Republic of Ireland events. Scott will be working from home on Thursday and Friday.

Our MD, Jayne is leaving today and jetting off to London for 2 events, Data Protection and Agency Workers which we are running in conjunction with Squire Sanders Hammonds. Then Jayne is back in the office on Thursday, when she and Ainsley will be interviewing candidates for a Marketing Internship.

Heather is again, heading to Dublin where she will be hosting our Essentials of Employment Law and Dealing with Teacher Misconduct on Wednesday and on Thursday she will be at Discipline and Underperformance Matters.

Peter is volunteering with the footballers of Ballycraigy P.S on Wednesday afternoon. And on Thursday evening he is attending a social media event at Citi Golf.

Donna is at the launch of Safe Place Initiative in Antrim on Thursday which has been organised by Women's Aid.

From everyone here on the Island, have a great week ahead!!