Tuesday, 2 December 2008

In the two and a half years I have been at Watford CVS, our annual staff turnover rate has been around 5%. I hope this reflects a reasonably content staff team and I am certainly pleased that we are retaining skilled, talented and experienced individuals. The loss of natural turnover has been more than compensated for by people’s keenness to develop new skills and their willingness to work flexibly. Nevertheless, stability inevitably restricts opportunities for change.

But now we face the prospect of Maria Waszkis being off on maternity leave. Maria’s good humour and her “can-do” approach to everything mean she has been a delight to work with and I will miss her terribly. While I am delighted for Maria of course, her impending absence on maternity leave is not a prospect I face with any enthusiasm.

But even a temporary absence offers an opportunity for some natural growth in roles and responsibilities and today I addressed how these gentle shifts might work.

Later, I attended a meeting of the One Watford Local Strategic Partnership. Given my comments of yesterday, I am pleased to report that this was a good natured and business-like meeting.

Later still, I sent off the draft contracts for three independent bits of work to explore options for our possible future engagement with the Holywell Community Centre. One bit of work will focus on identifying the needs and expectations of groups that currently make use of the centre. Another bit of work will consult with CVS members about their concerns and aspirations. A third bit of work will ask local residents about their wishes. And a fourth bit of work will be to see if / how CVS services can be relocated to the site. And then at some point we will need to bring these things together to see if they are compatible. And then see if the any balanced solution is physically and financially viable. Hopefully we will have a pretty clear idea of options by the end of February next year.