Company secretaries are often seen as enablers – after all if you want something done, best to ask a busy person, right?
As Company Secretaries, we are lucky to have very varied and wide ranging roles. Whilst this means that our roles are interesting and no two days are the same, it can mean that extra responsibilities are added to the team without any consideration being given to resourcing.
However, there is only so much ‘extra’ responsibility that a team can take before something eventually slips. Unfortunately, due to the profile of the Company Secretary role, the importance of the item which slips is usually amplified due to the audience (the Board/Shareholders/Senior Management) or nature of it (legislative breach). It doesn’t matter how great or strong your team is though, if you are not aware of your team’s capacity, slippages will occur. We are only human after all.
This is easy to comment on as an outsider of course. When you are in the thick of it, things become murky and it can often be challenging to think of a way out…more resource may be the obvious solution for many but without assessing where the crunch points are in your team, extra resource may become a costly expense without value add. It is also easy to get stuck in the firefighting loop that many of us will have experienced at one time or another.
Beyond Governance offer this external viewpoint. We can provide teams with clarity on where the crunch areas are and offer solutions on how to perform better.