Due Process

A schools event where Team Managers found it unreasonable that Umpires do not penalise without a red flag being displayed promptly, got me thinking about due process.

A few months ago we had an incident locally. The organisation dealing with it insisted that they had to follow "due process". This was an important matter that would require all the facts to be present. They, therefore, requested written statements from everyone involved and of course since it was August they had to allow time as people might be on holiday. So it didn't get dealt with at their next meeting.

The people involved being volunteers, the requested statements did not appear, so the matter missed their next meeting. Meanwhile, the person involved in the incident has continued to operate. The landlord was not impressed by this and is now wanting things to be tightened up to the extent that it is probable that a number of activities will no longer be possible.

Another organisation expects volunteers to fill out an application listing your competencies for any post they want to fill. Only problem is that they fail to list the competencies they want - the form is generic and it says that they should list them only they haven't. It may be good process but can you be surprised if candidates cannot be bothered to apply.

Then yet another organisation spends two months producing a "Business Plan" and as soon as it is finalised there is a meeting to discuss changing the charging system as the projected income is too low ind it would be nice to increase it by a matter of several hundred percent.

Sometimes you need to consider whether you "due process" is fit for purpose.