An update of all things IC
Dear Member
Welcome to the December issue of our Newsletter! In it, you have several opportunities to contribute to the work of your Institute:
Tell us what you want from your membership and what you want your Institute to do. Please let us have your opinions.
Our London and South East region is looking for new committee members.
There's a new set of tax rules coming next year, and most of you will be affected. Read about them, and e-mail us your views.
Also in this issue, Tony Lavender tells us about his consultancy work in South East Asia. And, there's a link to the second issue of our journal, the Management Consulting Journal.
Enjoy the festive season.
Kind regards,
Ian Watson FCMI FIC
Chair, Institute of Consulting Advisory Commitee
Progress on Chartered Management Consultant & Improving Membership
The Chartered Management Consultant project continues apace and we are on target to launch pilots of the award in the autumn of 2019. In the meantime we recognise the need to review and improve the membership benefits that we offer to all IC members. We'll be starting this review process in mid January 2019. We will share thoughts later in 2019 on how we plan to develop the membership benefits but if you have thoughts or ideas that you wish to contribute at this point please email us at membership@iconsulting.org.uk.
The second edition of the Management Consulting Journal is now available.
In this edition, amongst other things, we cover drivers of consulting, purchasing and building resilience.
Read the latest edition JournalTaxation changes to be aware of
The taxation of contractors is being reviewed by the government; an extension to the IR35 rules is expected. A set of proposed new rules was announced by the Chancellor in his October Budget statement. These will affect most of our members.
In 2017, the IR35 rules were altered for public sector bodies that purchase from contractors, including from consultants through 'personal service companies'. The decision on whether to deduct income tax and NI from payments became the responsibility of the client (the public sector organisation). This resulted in some public bodies opting to make deductions in almost all cases, to avoid any risk of not having made deductions. This impacted strongly on IC members.
The new regulations will extend those rules to private sector clients, making the client responsible for the decision on whether the consultancy company should or should not have tax/NI deducted at source. The proposed new rules, however, will not apply in the same way as the 2017 public sector rules. Following initial consultations, HMRC and the Treasury are proposing that they are not applied to the 1.5 million smallest businesses; they will be applied to medium and large businesses from April 2020. As we understand it, this means that any medium or large company which places a contract with an IC member’s company will be required to decide whether tax/NI should be deducted from payments. It is not yet clear exactly how the client company will be expected to make that appraisal.
Details of the proposals are given in the Treasury document. Members should note that this document states the views of the Treasury and of HMRC – there are very different views held by many independent bodies.
A further consultation period is to take place soon, and the finalised new rules will be in the Finance Bill expected in Summer 2019. IC intends to contribute to this consultation, and members are invited to send us their views so that we can make an informed contribution to the consultation. Please email membership@iconsulting.org.uk.
View the Treasury DocumentHelping to improve human productivity in Thailand
By Tony Lavender RD MBA FCMI FIC CMC
I provide consultancy and training -mainly abroad and have worked several times in South East Asia. This article is about a Manpower Audit programme that I ran in Bangkok for the Thai Productivity Institute (FTPI). This programme was sponsored by the Asian Productivity Organisation.I was asked to run this programme by the Executive Director of the FTPI who had attended one of my CMI Consultancy courses previously.
For this programme, I drew heavily on my experience in the Ministry of Defence where I was the Director of the Naval Manpower Requirement covering the Navy's Fleet Support area -some 25000 staff and on my time and the Cabinet Office having been responsible for training the UK Government's internal consultants. Basically I have modified the Civil Service’s ‘Staff Inspection’ methodology and renamed it 'Manpower Audit'. It looks at the need for work being done; organisational structures; staffing numbers and grading- job evaluation.
A key part of these programmes is to conduct pilot trials in local organisations to ensure that the methodology is applicable. In this case, we used a large carpet factory ( Carpets International -CI) HR staff attended the course and helped to organise the trials. These were very successful. CI has now adopted MA across their group. It was also most heartening that at the later public seminar, CI participated and were the strongest proponents of MA ! FTPI has also extended and developed MA for their member companies.
I am delighted to add that I have subsequently repeated this programme in Malaysia and Cambodia -with another planned for Indonesia.
Can you help IC in London and the South East?
The IC L&SE Committee is looking for additional committee members to shape the future of member engagement and run the region's active events programme. If the opportunity to get directly involved in the running of the IC at local level is of interest then please contact Veronika Weisweiller, the acting Chair of the Committee, on veronika.weisweiller@lse-cmi.org.uk attaching a short CV.