UK Stewardship Code updated

The Financial Reporting Council (FRC) has responded to the criticisms of the UK Stewardship Code levelled by Sir John Kingman.  The revised Code incorporates environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors for the first time, encouraging signatories to take material ESG issues, including climate change, into account when fulfilling their stewardship responsibilities.

Deterioration in quality of charity accounts

The Charity Commission has reported a continued deterioration in the quality of charity accounts. 

Process reconstruction sounds grandiose; it is really quite straightforward. Its objective is equally simple to improve how an organisation goes about delivering what it does.  Business Process Redesign (BPR) is the structured, process-driven approach to improving the performance of an organisation.

Third-sector organisations can benefit greatly from looking at their business processes and ensuring that they are effective.  Examples of benefits that can be obtained easily include, but are not limited to:

  • Organize processes around the outcome, not the specific task;
  • One person owns a whole process, performing or coordinating all of the steps;
  • Those closest to the process should perform the process;
  • Databases and other technology systems can consolidate resources to cut down on duplication and increase flexibility;
  • Integrate corresponding activities, not just their results;
  • Built-in controls enable the employees who perform the work to self-manage, so that managers can become supportive rather than directive.
  • Information should be collected once and at the source and data redundancies are erased..