Guest Writer - Peter G

We've all made it back safely to the ‘The Island’ this week after a crisis weekend of lock-down as we soaked up some severe snow storms. However it’s not all bad, Easter is on the horizon and a long, chocolate-fuelled weekend awaits us all.

Our sights certainly aren't blinded by the weekend ahead, with a jam-packed calendar of events over the next few months. In NI we welcome the Northern Ireland HR Conference for 2013 and our annual Data Protection in the Workplace Conference, amongst many others. In ROI we are looking forward to our first Conflict Resolution at Work conference and our annual All About Absence from Work event, both of which allow delegates to bring a friend along for free.

The team’s movements for the week are as follows:

Our CEO Barry has a busy week ahead. Today and tomorrow he has internal meetings pretty much all day. On Wednesday he’s meeting Martin McKay from TextHelp first at their offices and then at ours. On Thursday he’s meeting David Robinson here at Island House for lunch. Friday Easter or not he’ll be in taking advantage of a quiet office no doubt.

Peter F and I are attending an Invest NI Pay Per Click workshop on Tuesday in Ballymena. He’s also manning the office on Friday while everyone else starts their Easter holidays with a well deserved day off.

Allison has appointments with Midland HR on Tuesday morning and Capita on Wednesday afternoon.”

Scott has no appointments set for this week and hopes to work from home on Tuesday and Thursday. Just like everyone else, Scott is looking forward to the double bank holiday weekend this Friday and Monday. And, just like everyone else, he’s not really looking forward to decorating. However, She Who Must Be Obeyed has spoken and he has understandably changed his mind. Nothing now excites Scott more than standing back after a hard day’s graft and looking at the ecstasy on the face of his beloved as she admires his brush strokes and plumb work, especially in those hard to reach parts.

‘The Blind Artist’ is this week’s Boys v Girls challenge, which involves blindfolded drawing and probably lots of shouting. The scores are currently sitting at 3-2 to the girls, but confidence is high in the boys’ camp (as always!) and we are looking to take the point this week!

Guest writer Arnold

Welcome on the island. After celebrating St. Patrick’s long weekend we are all back to the office to work hard before the Easter holidays.

This week we are hosting Discipline & Underperformance at Work event at the Dunsilly Hotel, Antrim on Thursday 21^st March. Our TrainingCentre is fully booked this week with Social Services Training in today and day 4 - 6 for the 8 Day MII Certified Mediation in from Wednesday.

Networking

Jayne will be out on Thursday visiting BITC and meetings in Belfast

Heather will be out with Kerry at 'Worldhost Customer Service Training - Customers with Disabilities' on Thursday morning at Beechlawn House Hotel, Dunmurry

Allison is inundated with requests to either register for, or, appear in our 2014 Legal-Island HR Yearbook.  The purpose of the publication is to provide each individual within the HR function both control and ownership of their individual role, position and personal career. A team of some of the best practitioners will be contributing to sections aimed at assisting HR through 2014. If you have a case study/scenario that you believe would be of interest to other HR Managers we would love to hear from you. To request further information contact her here in the office 028 9446 3888 - email Allison@legal-island.com

Scott is not very well and has a sore tummy and is working from home today and hopes to be in the office tomorrow, if the brave little soldier feels up to it. At the moment, it doesn't look good. He really does have a very bad tummy and his mummy is in Edinburgh and can't rub it for him, but he definitely hopes to be fit enough to carry out the discipline and underperformance training on Thursday at the Dunsilly Hotel, with Lorraine Toolan of the EEF. Depending on how the invalid gets on this week, he'll either be working from home or the office on Friday. That will teach him for bragging about going to Barcelona when the rest of the office was working. It's a special quality of food poisoning you get in Catalonia, presumably. Get well soon, sick boy!*

Peter Gilpin will meet Joel Kerr from Synergy Learning this afternoon, to discuss a potential e-learning platform.

Our CEO Barry has an easy enough week being in the office for most of it with the exception of an InvestNI seminar to attend in Belfast on Thursday

* NOTE: Legal-Island would like to point out that Scott, as usual, wrote the above summary of his movements this week and it does not indicate the thoughts of an uncaring employer.

Guest writer Jacqui

 

From left to right: James, Arnold, Peter F and Peter G

From left to right: Heather, Jenny and Kerry

Just a few photographs of the latest "Boys V Girls" tournament that we have going on here on the Island.

The latest round involved a frog race which was won for the second week running by our NI Conference Manager Kerry, who saw off stiff competition from James in the semi-final.

Kerry's latest win puts the girls ahead and we look forward to the next crazy event Debbie has lined up for us.

Congratulations also go to our other Kerri, who has taken on the new part-time post of Conference Assistant. She will split her day by continuing with her reception and, her PA duties for Barry in the morning before moving upstairs to work alongside Scott in the afternoon.

As for the work taking place this week...

BARRY (CEO)

Has internal meeting pretty much all day today.

Tomorrow he's talking to Andy Bounds author of "The Snowball Effect" and has a meeting with his coach, Wendy McCullough.
On Wednesday morning he's attending a seminar at InvestNI whilst in the afternoon he's meeting Switch New Media in Belfast.
On Thursday morning he has an Irish lesson with the rest of us and an ST meeting that same afternoon.
Friday and its R&D all day.

SCOTT

Scott returns from Barcelona on Tuesday. Did he mention he was going to Barcelona?

On Wednesday he chairs a meeting of HR conference speakers and facilitators at the offices of Carson McDowell in Belfast:
http://www.carson-mcdowell.com/

The HR Conference this year takes place on 15^th May:

http://legal-island.com/events/all-events/412/northern-irelands-5th-annual-hr-conference-winning-in-business/

On Thursday Scott returns to the office for some training on how to pronounce Irish names, with Colm O’Neill. Colm pronounces his name Colm, like column but without the uh and the n. Seems easy enough.

Friday will see Scott working from home before seeing him fly off yet again on Friday evening to see his beloved Hearts play the mighty St Mirren (2^ndbottom plays 3^rd bottom of the league) in the Scottish League Cup final at the weekend.

http://www.hampdenpark.co.uk/events/hampden/scottish-communities-league-cup-final.html

Could it be two cups and insolvency in only 12 short months? Living the dream, boys, living the dream...

JAYNE

Before heading off to Stormont with Heather for 12:00pm at Long Gallery, Parliament Buildings, for the NIABT Women in Business networking event, Jayne will have some internal meetings, which is what she has planned for the rest of the week except Friday when she will be starting a long weekend for her birthday!

DONNA

On Thursday I will be attending the Ireland Excellence Awards at the Clandeboye.

KERRY

Will also be attending the HR Conference meeting at the Carson McDowell offices, Belfast on Wednesday afternoon, along with Scott.

TRAINING CENTRE

We are hosting an Advanced Coaching event today and tomorrow and then the first 3 days of the 8 day Certified Mediation course starting on Wednesday. 

Gonna sign off now and find out what whacky carry on ... we will be partaking of this week...

Enjoy whatever it is you are all doing this week.

 

Guest Writer- Donna Kirkpatrick

Photo (right)- Kerry Murphy,  Legal-Island Hoola-Hoop champion 2013.



                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              In 2009, Aaron Hibbs, USA, managed to hula hoop continuously for 72 hours. Well Mr Hibbs you had better watch out because right here in Legal-Island we may have a contender for the title, in the form of Kerry Murphy, Conference Manager NI.  Hours (well maybe minutes) of dedicated training meant that Kerry "out-hoolled" all other staff members to win the next round in the series of Boys v Girls - one for the girls Kerry we salute you!

Enough chat of hoola-hooping, here is what is going on this week.

Tuesday
We have introduced a new booking software into the company and on Tuesday, Vanessa and Debbie will be giving us an overview of the program. 


The boys v girls challenge this week is entitled "LeapFrog" but the logistics have been a closely guarded secret and will be revealed by Miss Fun (aka Debbie) on Tuesday.

Who knows by next week, we could have a contender for the leapfrog category in RIO 2016 - if it isn't a category, maybe it should be. 


Wednesday 
Heather will be leading the team for the Education law Update in Dublin -she will be ably assisted by Vanessa, Jayne and Peter.  

On Wednesday Scott  will be meeting Shauna Hughes from Caterpillar.

Pamela is meeting Allan Nelson from Forth Communications in Bangor who is coming over from Edinburgh to see if he can help us with a new email service system/members portal.

We are looking forward to John Byrne of Signability coming into the office on Wednesday and he will be be writing our mission statement "We believe in making the lives of HR Professionals easier" in the foyer for all to see when they enter the building. 

Thursday
Allison, Peter and Jayne will be signing off on the "Legal-Island's Yearbook 2014".

Heather will also be hosting the Mock EAT event in Dublin - no rest for the conference manager this week. 

Barry will be meeting with David Robinson and in the evening he will be attending a dinner at Stormont. 

Thursday morning Scott flies to Barcelona for a short break and will return on Tuesday 11^th March. On Saturday Scott will be at the Barcelona v  Deportivo La Coruna game and will be hoping Barca play better than they did against Madrid.

Other highlights of a trip to Barcelona will doubtless include the Montjuic magic fountains:

http://www.barcelona-tourist-guide.com/en/albums-en/magic-fountains-montjuic/

Restautante Sinatra:

http://restaurantemyway.com/en/

And Sagrada Familia:

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=gaudi+cathedral+barcelona&hl=en&rls=com.microsoft:en-gb:IE-Address&rlz=1I7AURU_enGB499&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=l2I0Uee1NOmY0QXl04HIDg&ved=0CFAQsAQ&biw=1280&bih=874

Friday
This is International Women's day and Jayne and Kerry will be attending the IOD Women's Leadership Conference at the Ramada hotel Shawsbridge.

Barry will be attending a Crowd Sourcing event at the Innovation Centre.

Looks like there will be no time for hula-hoop practice as a busy week lies ahead. 

25th February - Guest Writer Jayne Finlay

Good day one and all from a sunny if not slightly chilly Antrim and the team at Legal-Island.

It's the final week in February and where has the year gone already?? Hard to believe we are stepping into Spring in the not too distant future.

As ever the team are busy on various ventures this week.

First up, the Training Centre are hosting Schrader – Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.

Our Ceo, Barry, has a busy enough week. Today he has internal meetings more or less all day. Tomorrow evening he’s attending a business lecture at Queen’s University. On Wednesday he’s meeting Neasa Hunter about ISO work. On Thursday he’s speaking at Strathearn School to business pupils. On Friday he’s working on an R&D project.

Heather and a number of the team including Debbie, Peter G and Pamela will be heading to Dublin tomorrow afternoon in preparation for the HR Symposium this week in the Radisson Golden Lane. Heather recently attended an Irish Language Class and has been coming back with lots of lovely pronunciation for us - best wee saying for the week is ‘Doras feasa fiaraí’ - translation "the door of knowledge is to ask". Let's hope the delegates find the door of knowledge open at the Radisson Golden Lane. 

Also in attendance at the HR Symposium and taking on role of Chair for the day is Scott.

Allison will be in the office all week finalising details of the HR Directory.

Vanessa and Donna are meeting with George Wilson from CforC re the “role model” status for customer service.

As for me, I'm in meetings most of today, this evening I go to the MLA Networking event with the Institute of Directors (IoD) Young Directors' Forum. Tomorrow evening I'm joining Barry at QUB lecture. Wednesday I'm meeting Linda from the Iod to discuss the Annual Lunch. Thursday I'm working on Investors in People all day with the goal of getting a team set up and in place within the month.

Most importantly (some might argue!) though this week is the ongoing Battle of Boys v Girls on the Island. Head Judge Debbie Wilson will be assessing the 2 teams on their Hula Hoop skills in a Hula Hoop competition in the next round of Boys v Girls tomorrow. Come on the Girls!!!!

Guest Writer - Heather Stewart

Well the Boys v Girls challenge is well under way with our third week completed. Our ring leader/master/judge Debbie is doing a great job with the weekly competitions we started off with an antiques challenge, continued on to a movie music quiz, last week was the golf challenge and this week it is hula hooping. At this point it is only fair to mention that Arnold clinched it for the boys last week putting 9 holes in a row and so putting them in the lead with 2 games to 1 but us girls are simply lulling them into a false sense of security!

Other than hula hooping we do have plenty going on in the office this week:

Barry

Our CEO, has a busy week. He has internal meetings pretty much all day today. He's attending a seminar tomorrow morning at the Waterfront Hall. On Wednesday he's delivering some DISC training to staff whilst meeting representatives from Northgate and Fathom that afternoon. On Friday he's at an innovation seminar in Belfast.

Scott

Scott is meeting Stewart Miller from NorthgateArinso on Wednesday and hopes to work from home on Tuesday and Thursday. He is on annual leave on Friday and will be attending the wedding of Mark McAllister from the LRA to his fiancé Sonya Boyle from Belfast City Council at Tullyglass Hotel in Ballymena.

Jayne

As usual Jayne has a busy week of internal meetings along with attending Barry's disc profiling, joing Scott to meet Stewart Millar and then finally on Thursday she will be going to visit NACCO.

Marketing

The marketing team are meeting with Barry and Jayne on Tuesday afternoon to discuss their learning outcomes from their recent training from marketing consultant Paula Milligan and marketing guru Grant Leboff. 
Peter F, along with Jayne and Barry, is meeting digital consultant Gareth Dunlop from Fathom about a new Legal-Island website on Wednesday afternoon. He and Peter G are also attending an Invest NI run Google Analytics workshop at the Tullyglass Hotel, Ballymena on Thursday. Allison’s meetings appear to be internal this week apart from Thursday when she will be attending an 8am meeting hosted by the Northern Ireland Chamber of Commerce in The Europa entitled “Networking and Bitesized HR.

I will be working towards Ireland's HR Symposium 2013 which we are running next week and on Saturday I will be attending an Intensive Irish Language Course in St.Patrick's College. Other than that I may fit in a little bit of hula hoop training when I can!

Tá súil agam go bhfuil lá breá agat

Guest Writer - Allison Sutherland

Ball Boys and Girls!

It’s common knowledge that we’re a fun bunch of people here on ‘The Island.’  2013 has seen us start as we mean to go on with a heady mix of thumping hard work interspersed with great big dollops of cheer. 

This is good old fashioned ‘Boys v Girls’ amusement.  This morning saw me kick off my shoes as I began the ‘putting’ practice of a lifetime.  Really, it’s just the same as Flushing Meadows – only this ‘green’ is slightly to the right of the upstairs fridge. 

Whichever team putts the most balls tomorrow will win.  It’s rather annoying, as the boys aren’t picking their balls up after them – I think it’s called making an issue of theirs being in the ‘holes’ and mine being in the bunkers!

It was announced today that the girls won the Music from the Movie’s task from last week and we’re racing neck and neck into the middle of February.  Personally, I don’t know why we bother; everyone knows that girls are better than boys!

Back to the work theme - Jayne will be mostly in the office this week although later today she will be attending the IoD Steering Committee meeting in Belfast.  Also, on Thursday she’ll be chairing our HR Network meeting which is taking place at Arthur Cox’s offices in Belfast.  Friday sees her catching up with Gareth Dunlop from Fathom alongside Barry and Peter F.  More about this further on.

Our CEO, Barry, has a very easy week by his standards. He’s in the office all week with just one visitor tomorrow. No doubt a time for him to catch up on some R&D not to mention some paperwork

Peter F is meeting Philip Bain from Shredbank on Wednesday afternoon at the Hilton Hotel, Templepatrick and on Friday, Gareth Dunlop from Fathom is coming in to meet with Peter, Jayne and Barry to discuss the design and implementation of our new corporate website. Exciting stuff and loads to think about after our sessions with marketing genius Grant Leboff last week!

Kerry Murphy is hosting 2 day Managing Difficult Conversations tomorrow and Wednesday and Redundancy Selection on Thursday.  Both events at taking place in the Training Centre.

Scott hopes to work from home on Tuesday and Friday this week. Wednesday sees him in Dublin for meetings, including Barry Reynolds, DAC Beachcroft; Wendy Doyle, solicitor; Mary Rafferty of Consensus Mediation; and Hannah Carney of Hannah Carney & Associates.  He will then be in Belfast this coming Friday to meet Michael Black and Aisling Byrne of Cleaver Fulton Rankin – followed by a Strategy Team meeting in the afternoon.  No peace for the wicked (or our Scott) because Saturday sees him back in Dublin, where he will be giving a presentation on workplace alternative dispute resolution at the National College of Ireland, along with Ger Deering, Director, Department of Jobs Enterprise and Innovation.  We still let him have Sunday’s off!

I’m looking forward to meeting Melita Williams on Wednesday who is the Director of Bespoke Belfast.  A great organisation that creates fun day’s for you and your staff.  I wonder what she’ll think of our Boy v Girl theme?  I will then be heading into Belfast on Friday to meet up with David Storrs from MaST.  I will also begin work on a very exciting project aimed at helping those involved in the HR function simplify their tasks/year.  You will hear more in relation to this in the coming weeks and months.  Mind you, if you can’t wait then give me a call and I’ll tell you what I can!