The British Councils encouraging learning curve

The British Council is an 'executive non-departmental public body' . It is partly funded by the British Government but the bulk of its income comes from teaching English to well over a million people each year. Its 7500 employees in over 100 countries around the world are not civil servants.
The British Council established an EWC in 2006.

Its start was not entirely flawless. The first negotiations only resulted in a ‘default’ agreement being signed: the set of statutory rules one falls back on when no agreement is reached which reflects an organisation's own needs. Moreover, there were problems which resulted in asking a tribunal to decide on some employees’ right to vote.

But soon enough things developed for the better. EWC-member Nigel Haines speaks of a 'learning curve', on both sides of the table. 'The British Council has existed for 75 years and has had a history of top-down management. At the beginning, both management and employee representatives were not quite sure what to expect.' To complicate things further, the establishment of the EWC coincided with a painful reorganisation of European activities. The British Council may be non-governmental, but as it spends tax payer's money it has to scrutinize costs.
’Our select committee decided that it was time to sit down and find a way to get things working better', Haines says. 'When we suggested it I think management was quite relieved.' The BC's employee representatives felt that there was no better way to rebuild relationships than to 'redraw' some of the Agreement laid down in UK-law. One of the things they emphasized most is that one annual meeting with management is not enough. 'Especially since in some countries there is very little dialogue at all', as Nigel Haines adds.

The whole process took no more than a year and a half, and resulted in the signing of a new agreement in the form of a ’Code of Conduct’, in presence of BC's CEO. 'Our own Treaty of Lisbon', Nigel Haines calls it, after the city where the happy occasion took place.
The BC's EWC now feels that it really has the senior management's ear, even when local situations are concerned. And better still, that it can exert influence. 'At the beginning', Nigel Haines recalls, 'management told us that it fully understood that it had to inform us about its decisions. Our answer was that in the future they would have to consult us, before decisions were to be made.' Although it is still early days, he is optimistic that 'Lisbon' is a genuine turning point.

One of the most important factors in the BC's remarkable learning curve, we hear from Nigel Haines, is that all EWC-members are proficient in English. No wonder, in an organisation like this. But still: 'It really makes a huge difference', he stresses.