Lol Shaun

Well its nice to be nice don't you think? I am sure your mischief days will soon return, will be posting another job on here in a mo. It is always nice to be involved in getting someone a job even if it is just making a little post.

Good luck with the CPD and have a good weekend my friend

Dave

Now thats an interesting twist Theresa.

Basically that means that the ICB works on a closed shop policy of only employing their own.

By that logic and extrapolating it, they're saying that no qualified accountant should ever hire any ICB people as they are not from the same professional body. (well, can't have one rule for one and a different one for everyone else).

Seems strange to include something like that when ICB are desperate for bodies some as ACCA, ICAEW, ICAS, CIMA etc to notice of them but are effectively saying that people with other professional bodies are not good enough to work for an ICB employer (#1).

This seems a similar mindset to protectionist trade policies and they've never worked particularly well.

The question of course has to be is it just something thats included that would never be enforced? You know like some excessive notice periods and non compete clauses where the hope is that those signing them will simply accept them rather than challenge their content which in many cases would not stand up in court.

I think that all of the professional bodies have the occassional silly thing in their bye laws where the consequences of such inclusion have not been thought through properly. Maybe the mention of this one from the ICB will get comment from James as to whether its something that they would enforce on their members (if not why not just remove it?).

talk later,

Shaun.

#1 I'm thinking here of perhaps an ACCA student that is allowed to do bookkeeping under regulation 8 so the scenario would not cause them an issue. Or maybe an AAT bod looking to get their 12 months experience to get MIP status.

Hi Theresa,

so in the case that you do know of was the bookkeeper fined for hiring outside of ICB or forced to get rid of the non ICB employee?

One can sort of see the ICB's mindset when making this policy, probably sat around a table brainstorming idea's and in that environment I'm sure that the question would have come up of how does one ensure the quality of the people working under an ICB banner meet ICB standards.

I would also imagine that those rules were also fashioned when ICB was the new kid on the block where they were still attempting to take market share from the IAB.

Now that they have grown and carved their own niche maybe its time for divisive rules such as this to be retired as ultimately protectionist policies will do more damage than good with members large enough to hire others being able to choose the best people for their business rather than their choices being restricted by their potential employee's chosen professional body.

I am not saying that the best person for a role may not be ICB qualified. As an example, If he would work for me I would choose Bill (Wella) over most others. Thats nothing to do with his professional body (ICB), just that he's one of the best regardless of the professional body that he is associated with.

What I am saying is that employers should be free to choose their own staff as the best available within their budget.

Anyway, issues are not just in the ICB's camp. I've just written this after writing a long letter to the ACCA trying to get them to fix regulation 8 which I think is another one of those things that sounded great all sat around the table making policy decisions but application in the real world didn't translate quite as it was first envisaged (i.e. regulation 8 see's no differentiation between a student, an affiliate, and a member (who must have at least three years signed off experience). Also there is no differentiation between students at the fundamental, skills and professional levels!).

Its frustrating isn't it being in this position where you can see that our various professional bodies that we are so proud to be parts of have very nearly got it right but for this bit here and that bit there that doesn't quite translate to the real world as it should.

Then again, one always has to consider the kerplunk syndrome in that change one thing incorrectly and the whole lot can come tumbling down.

Fingers crossed though, between us we'll eventually be able to fix the profession Theresa.... lol, I think that James may change it just in the hope of shutting me up for five minutes.

All the best,

Shaun.

Think that I would have dropped ICB before dropping a good employee as finding the right employee that really fits with one's busness on both a personal and professional level is right up there with attempting to locate a Unicorn.