FAQs

How will joining EGN benefit my company?

1.Many companies have a large number of employees who are school or college governors. Often, this happens as a result of encouragement for employees to contribute to corporate social responsibility in some way.

To do this really well, it is not enough to leave things at that: what companies want to know is that the time their employees spend in such activity is time well spent. The EGN enables employees who are governors to make effective contributions in this role.

The company also benefits by being able to co-ordinate its own support for employee governors in a way that is well-targeted and not hidden amongst all the other matters that companies need to communicate about with their employees.

Why are other companies taking up EGN membership?

2.They see the value that EGN brings to their employee governors, in being able to get on top – and to stay on top – of the sometimes bewildering array of issues that governors have to tackle. This gives the company a benefit: their employees feel better supported and their time is better spent. The company can then develop its own additional support by using EGN to get messages to employee governors and to receive feedback in the same way.

Can I talk to someone about what benefits EGN can bring?

3.Certainly. On the one hand, you might wish to talk to the FEdS team. For example, this may be about a technical matter or about the way that EGN works. Or, you may wish to hear from a fellow employer how they see the EGN working for their own company – or to talk to someone in one of our partner ‘governor’ organisations about how they see the EGN adding value. The FEdS team will be pleased to help you to do this.

How can our employees use the EGN to communicate with other governors?

4.The essential idea with the EGN is to enable all employees who are governors within a particular organisation to communicate with each other in a closed community – that is, where only members of that organisation can ‘meet’. This means that they can share and advise each other about issues and the organisation can join in the communications, perhaps advising of key events, access to company support, etc.

Beyond this, it is also possible for employee governors to communicate with their counterparts in other companies. The benefit here is being able to cast the net wider when it comes to sharing good ideas and seeking advice.

What is the advantage of being able to do this through EGN?

5.There are two advantages. The ‘closed communities’ of the EGN mean that communicating through it is secure and effective: members can access benefits with ease and know who they are communicating with. The other great advantage is the simple fact of a networked community with a single focus for discussion and dissemination. It means communicating about governing and with governors isn’t mixed up with lots of other things employees and companies want to discuss.

How does the EGN add to what other governors’ websites provide?

6.The EGN has been developed in partnership with each of the main associations for school and college governors, who have all seen the value that the EGN can add to the work they are doing. You can access their websites directly from the EGN, a fact that demonstrates the close co-operation. They wanted to see the EGN develop because it brings something new to their work too – networks for employee governors and the opportunity for them to communicate with each other and for their companies to be able to communicate with them.

How closed will our community of governors be?

7.The community your company creates will be entirely secure and will be accessible only to those people you authorise to enter the site.

Will our employees be able to communicate with other governors form other companies in the EGN?

8.Yes. This will enable them to share good ideas and to seek advice. However, this communication will be ‘outside’ the company’s own closed community.

We are already FEdS members: how will being an EGN member add value to this?

9.This is a specific service developed as an additional programme of FEdS as our members suggested it was needed. It goes well beyond normal FEdS membership services and is specifically for employee governors.

Why not simply encourage our employee governors to communicate through the company intranet?

10.One of the reasons FEdS members supported the development of the EGN was to make sure the important work of being an employee governor was given adequate status by properly supporting it. Their view – and ours – is that this means rather more than being tucked away in the intranet.

Why join us?

FAQs