Cosocius Newsletter Issue 6

Issue No: 6 Date: 17 September 2013
I write this at the start of my fourth week and I definitely feel like I’ve hit the ground running
with lots going on since my arrival. We reached a significant milestone last Friday when
there was a special meeting of the SLE Executive Board and during which final approval was
given for the company name and brand. You can see the result below and I would like to
take this opportunity to say a few words about this.
The decision over a company name is important and needs to take account of many factors,
not least the views of the existing staff as well as the practicalities over availability of names
at Companies House, web domain names etc. Many of you will know that the word ‘socius’
was offered up as a potential name by Cheshire Shared Services staff and all along this has
been a favoured name by the majority of people that we have engaged with. However, on
its own, the word is already in use and therefore the marketing team worked up various
options that incorporated this word such as SociusPro as well as the alternative proposal for
Cornerstone Connect. Having had further discussion on the proposals it was felt that
maintaining Socius in the name, which means ‘shared, partner or ally’ in latin, was
preferred. The option of using the addition of ‘Pro’ was debated at length and a new
proposal for the use of ‘Co’ rather than ‘Pro’ was tabled last week. The context was to
emphasise the collaborative approach and this led to the final decision on CoSocius. I hope
you will all agree that the name is only part of the story, what is more important in building
a business and its brand is the quality and value of the service provision and the attitude of
the people in the business. To that end, we are ahead of the game as the Shared Service
staff are already providing an excellent service, as has been recognised in many of the
accolades and awards that have been gained over the past few years. I hope that you now
join me in embracing the new name and between us we can build a new brand that will
become synonymous in providing best in class business.
Floor Walks
It was good to meet more of you during the recent floor walks and to listen to the questions
and issues raised as we move forward with the transition work for the new company. The
list of questions is on our SharePoint site for you all to read and we will ensure that the
answers are posted alongside these as well. Unsurprisingly perhaps, there were quite a few
questions relating to terms and conditions and TUPE as well as number of queries on the
future business and its target market. I hope that our answers provided you with some
clarity on these issues and we will of course continue to provide plenty of updates through
the various communication channels. There will also be time at the forthcoming conference
for a question and answer session.
Staff Conference – Monday 30 September
We now have an outline programme for the two half day events to which every member of
staff is invited. I will talk a little about our future vision; we will hear views from our two
shareholders and customers on their expectations and we hope to have a speaker who has
very recent experience of taking a council led service through a similar process. John Callan
will be talking you through the key timelines and activity that will take place as we move
forward into ‘shadow mode’ and we will also host a question and answer session. Justin
Williams and Michele Sutton have kindly agreed to be our M.C.s for the event, although at
the moment we’re negotiating with Justin as to how much singing we will allow between
presentations! Please make every effort to attend one of these sessions and watch out for
more details that will be published shortly. We will also be organising another event later in
the year once the Board of Directors is properly established in order introduce the Board
members to you all.
Best Regards
Dominic Whelan