People power

Your people, both staff and volunteers, are your greatest asset. You will have heard this before but it is not a cliché, it is true and you should acknowledge the fact.

Training and Development

• Always make sure that you are celebrating your volunteers and the role that they play. Everyone likes to be told that they are appreciated.
• You could have a pack of information for your volunteers – information on the collection and specific items of interest, history of the museum, contact details (you cannot assume everyone knows these), training opportunities etc
• Find out what the skills are of the people you have as staff and volunteers and make use of them. Don’t put a square peg in a round hole.
• Work to keep people involved. Find out why they are involved with your museum and use this knowledge to make sure that they are motivated to continue to be part of your operation. If a person with a skill in a particular area does not want to use that skill in your museum do not push it or you may lose them.
• Plan for training and developing volunteers as well as staff. This can be printed information for volunteers/staff as well as events and  information packs
• Plan for training throughout the time that your volunteers/staff are part of your museum. This will be part of the motivation of your people.
• Have an annual review of skills within your organisation and make sure that they are being used in the right place.

Recruiting

Formal recruitment is a large issue. For more detailed information you can consult the Business Link website www.businesslink.gov.uk  but an overview of issues to consider are:

• You need to be registered as an employer with Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs
• You should be clear as to why you need to take on staff – could the work be shared amongst existing staff or volunteers?
• Check your legal responsibilities with regards to age, hours of work, days of work, country of origin/eligibility to work in the United Kingdom, debt collection, rates of pay etc
• Will the work involve working with children or adults considered to be at risk?You may need to consider a Criminal Records Bureau check.
• As an employer you must provide a safe working environment with adequate facilities.
• You must provide a written statement to the new employee within eight weeks of starting work laying out the terms and conditions of the work and workplace if they are working for you for longer than four weeks. If you provide a contract of employment you will include this information in that document anyway.
• Set up your record systems very carefully to comply with Data Protection legislation. Store personal employee information securely.

Staff Records - Data Protection Act (DPA)

All parts of all businesses are affected by the Data Protection Act and all businesses should comply or risk the possibility of legal penalties. Generally you have a responsibility to look after people’s information in a way that, as much as possible, you guard their privacy.

Your museum might keep contact names and addresses for your staff and volunteers, rota details and contact details for Friends membership. This information has to be managed safely, kept securely and has to be up-to-date and fit for purpose as detailed here.

Find out more from the Information Commissioner’s website www.ico.gov.uk

If you do not comply you could:

• Erode customer confidence – don’t lay yourself open to being sued for sharing an individual’s information with a 3rd party
• Incur legal penalties
• Lose opportunities for efficient contact with your customers (visitors, website buyers etc)

If you keep information about people and their business then you are responsible to comply with the Data Protection Act.

The DPA applies to all forms of records both manually kept and computerised.

What information is covered?

• Any personal information that is collected referring to identifiable living individuals (including emails, voice mail, manually held information, computerised information, employment details (salaries etc), contact details on websites etc)
• How this information is processed. Processing information includes how the information is held, how it is obtained, how it is corrected/updated, how it is used, to whom it might be disclosed and how it is destroyed

When you collect information that relates to people you should:

• Be clear that you are collecting it and that it will be stored within the museum.
• Take reasonable steps to ensure the accuracy of the information – you might introduce and annual reminder opportunity to update records to ensure that people are reminded that you have their information. You can put in a statement ‘ By supplying this information you are implying consent for the museum to make use of this information for the purposes of ……….. ‘ (maintaining the rota, circulating the newsletter, keeping in touch with members etc)
• Not keep the information for any longer than necessary, so if a volunteer leaves the museum their records should be erased. (when you collect the information or go through the annual update, you can state that information will be held for 6 months or a year after they have left but this should be stated clearly so that everyone knows what the situation is that they are signing up to)
• Keep only information that is relevant and needed by the museum
• Safeguard the security of the information – do not give out the information to a third party (not even a telephone number) without consent of the individual
• Be careful not to duplicate records. On looking at the records that your museum keeps you may find that you have personal information stored with the Membership or Friends Secretary, the rota organiser etc. The more people that have personal information relating to the museum’s people the more complicated it can be to check to see that you are storing the information appropriately. If various people within the museum keep personal information make sure that each record is up-to-date at each storage point and that it is still appropriate for that person to have this information

The key principles of the DPA - the information must be:

1. processed fairly and lawfully
2. obtained for specific lawful purposes
3. adequate, relevant and not excessive
4. accurate and up-to –date
5. kept no longer than necessary
6. kept according to data subject rights
7. kept with appropriate security measures
8. kept with adequate protection on overseas transfers

The following websites will give you further information:

The Alliance against Counterfeiting and Piracy www.aacp.org.uk
ACID (Anti Copying in Design) www.acid.uk.com
The Government backed home of UK intellectual property on the Internet www.intellectual-property.gov.uk
The Copyright Licensing Agency www.cla.co.uk
The UK Copyright Service www.copyrightservice.co.uk
The Patent Office www.patent.gov.uk