Pay peanuts and you get monkeys. Use monkeys and you get bananas.

by Caroline Clark, Director of RMCSC Limited

Everyone is familiar with the cliché ‘pay peanuts and you get monkeys’ and experienced employers are also aware that to create a successful team you need to do more than just pay the highest salaries. Qualified professional people demand more than a lot of money; job satisfaction, career progression and flexibility of working hours are likely to be just as important as a good salary. And can we really be sure that the best people are those who demand the most money?

There is also constant pressure to reduce costs by delegating work to lower paid and less qualified team members, something that may appear low risk if the work is made to appear easy and straight forward, needing less professional judgement. Standard questionnaires, document packs and checklists can be provided to the less qualified employees, who may complete the standard documents very diligently and yet miss the implications of situations or combinations of facts that would have been recognised by a more experienced and qualified professional.

We all laugh at the standard questionnaires used routinely by some call centres without considering whether the questions are really appropriate. But the same mistake is made by professional firms that effectively replace many hours of professional training and experience with a series of standard questionnaires.

Many professional roles have been developed over a number of years so that well trained, qualified and experienced people carry out complex tasks, making individual decisions using their professional judgement. Such professional people have to complete a minimum number of hours of continued professional development each year and the professions themselves are usually regulated in order to maintain high standards.

‘Use monkeys and you get bananas’. Another cliché but if it implies that when professional judgement is replaced by standard questionnaires and document packs then it results in a lower standard of professional work, then it does ring true.

Please email Caroline on caroline.clark@rmcsc.co.uk if you would like to find out more about RMCSC and insolvency compliance.

Caroline Clark is the director of RMCSC, an established insolvency compliance consultancy that provides high quality advice that is tailored to the client’s needs. Caroline is an insolvency practitioner with about 30 years’ insolvency experience including senior national regulatory roles. Caroline graduated with an MBA in 1999 and qualified as a mediator in 2015 and is a member of Mensa. This additional expertise is of practical use for the clients of RMCSC.

Please be advised that all views expressed in these posts are those of the author and not of James Rosa Associates ltd.