A guide to third sector trading - WCVA

It’s an idea, but is it business? A guide to third sector trading
1: Getting
started
2: First steps 3: Business
planning
4: Legal and
governance
5: Funding
and
resourcing
6: Financial
controls
7: Managing
growth
8: Management
and
governance
9: Social
enterprise
10: Sources
of support
• not appointing anyone until you re-advertise, in case you make
a terrible mistake.
There is no simple answer, except that many successful
social enterprise leaders emerge naturally from within their
organisations, and internal candidates who know what is at stake
may be able to grow into management roles more successfully
than outsiders.
Pay and conditions: No one sensibly advocates low pay – it has
adverse social and economic implications for social enterprises as
well as for individuals and communities. But it may be impossible
to retain levels of pay and conditions in struggling new businesses.
It will no longer be grant funders but contracts, customers and
markets (including your competitors) who determine wage and
salary rates. If accepting this is a moral problem, groups may
prefer to concentrate on new activities where entirely fresh staff
posts are created, rather than trying to preserve existing jobs
where workers take pay cuts.
Training and support: Trading enterprises cannot afford to have
poorly trained and poorly supported staff.
• Staff appraisal and supervision: Standard appraisal systems for
assessing staff needs, and supervision arrangements to identify
employee’s personal needs and organise ways of meeting them
are no less important in trading organisations than in the nontrading
third sector. But the pressures of business may mean
that there is even greater risk that agreed arrangements will be
bypassed and staff will be let down. It is better to scale back
the intensity or bureaucracy of your systems, rather than retain
arrangements which you know will not work.
• Induction and training: The demands of quality control mean
that proper training is totally indispensible. Much of it will be
on-the-job because of the pressures on time. But enterprises
should continue to take advantage of relevant courses whenever
possible.
• Customised training and development: Where there is a team
of staff in a social enterprise organisation it can sometimes be
extremely valuable to organise sessions for the whole group,
including managers and volunteers. Apart from team building
benefits, this can help the review of systems and procedures
and aid communications.
219