Mineworkers and Coal Staff Scheme

Business issues

• Trustees’ time was wasted maintaining their own filing systems

• Meeting papers could have been more effectively compiled and distributed

• Knowledge was not shared effectively between staff, trustees, and scheme advisers

• There was no searchable centralised database of historic documentation, causing inefficiency

• Deficiencies in disaster recovery plan with regard to much pension scheme knowledge were present

• There was an over reliance on paper

Solution

Through positive initial meetings with eShare, relationships were formed and in September 2005, CPT chose the eShare platform BoardPacks to improve the governance framework for both pension schemes.

“We primarily implemented Meetings to streamline the sheer volume of paperwork that we were having to produce. We also had a dependency on paper documents and this posed several risks,” says Mike. “Our trustees are spread right across the UK, so to meet quickly and function as a cohesive trustee body is not always easy. We needed a tool to help manage knowledge and bring the trustees and others closer together.”

The governance software was always intended to operate alongside other business practices, so it was important to be able to retain control over the functionality of the software, and the design. BoardPacks provided this flexibility. With two pension schemes and many subcommittees for each scheme, the Meetings module within BoardPacks has delivered a major improvement to helping trustees organise meeting information.

Each meeting has its own workspace containing an electronic agenda, a set of papers, links to knowledge and data in BoardPacks and a list of attendees. Compiling this information is simpler than traditional techniques because several people can collaborate around the draft meeting workspace.

Once a meeting has been populated, the secretariat simply reviews the information and, at the touch of a button, publishes the meeting. Trustees are alerted to the new meeting and are automatically alerted to changes to that meeting – until they choose otherwise.

Results

The benefits of Meetings are numerous. “Trustees and others have one centrally maintained database of papers. Non-attendees can access the papers if appropriate so in future we won’t have to distribute lots of unnecessary paper packs,” says Mike.

“All the information is searchable and forms part of the broader eShare Trustee knowledge base. Personalised automatic alerts allow people to define exactly what they do and do not want to be told about.”

Users can collaborate to produce documentation and minutes more effectively than the notorious email trails that can become very difficult to follow. Every meeting leaves behind a full, clear audit trail and new and existing trustees can easily refer back to past meetings. If appropriate, non-committee members can easily see exactly what committees are doing, increasing transparency.

“For us, one of the most beneficial aspects of Meetings is the ability to get papers out earlier, without being delayed in the post, and sometimes before all the ‘i’s’ are dotted and the ‘t’s’ crossed. With Meetings we can get all important material out to all trustees earlier because it doesn’t have to be 100% finalised; changes can be made after distribution. The trustees then have sufficient time to read and prepare for meetings,” said Mike.

Business outcomes

With BoardPacks trustees receive centrally maintained meeting papers; all parties are able to collaborate to produce meeting information; there’s an easily accessible, secure, searchable knowledge base for staff, trustees and principal advisers; all pension scheme knowledge is secure and backed up with no dependence on any individual or adviser; and there is a reduced emphasis on paper.