Chairman's Blog

As I write my third blog as chairman I am on the way down to London for a Business in the Community (BITC) event hosted by Stephen Fry with a keynote speech by Prince Charles who celebrates 25 years of involvement with BITC. Hallmark have been awarded platinum status for their corporate social responsibility work and are also in the running for a number of national awards particularly for our environmental work. Although most of my contact with BITC has been Hallmark related I am keen to see if there are any links for BIFM too so I am sure I will be ?swapping hats? at some time during the evening.

Whilst in London I will also take the opportunity to meet with one of my deputies, Ismena and the CEO of BIFM, Ian Fielder. It is important that I communicate regularly with my deputies and that they develop in their roles should they want to be chairs of BIFM in the future. Whilst Ian and I have known each other for some time we also need to continue to build our working relationship over the next couple of years, this can only benefit the continued growth and development of the Institute. Living in North Yorkshire and working in West Yorkshire can be challenging in terms of getting to meetings in London but with good diary management it does work, indeed managing to combine BIFM/Hallmark meetings often makes a trip to London more worthwhile.

Wednesday and Thursday will see me in Bradford catching up on regular day to day issues and then on Thursday evening I will attend a meeting of the school governors at Belle Vue Girls School in Bradford. The school is adjacent to our head office site and the relationship we have built has been a key part of our community strategy at Hallmark. This is a true partnership in action, whilst the school benefits in many ways we also receive many benefits and learning from the arrangement.

On Friday I will sit on the operational board at Hallmark, a meeting that is scheduled to last for most of the day, luckily in the evening I have a cricket match to look forward too, Lancashire vs Yorkshire, and as a Lancastrian living in Yorkshire its an important date in my calendar.

Looking to the future I have many dates already planned in my diary, next week I attend a fellows event in London and I have the Scottish, Irish and London conferences to look forward too as well as a trip to Atalanta and world workplace not forgetting TWM and our very own BIFM awards.

Don?t forget you can offer feedback on my blog, this week I received feedback from Dubai as well as a suggestion to change my picture, apparently I look like a liliput man next to the large pen and laptop! What do you think?