Posted By Raymond Rapp
David

Fair enough, but as can be seen from the different views on this thread, there is more than one perspective when asking for templates. Whilst a sense of ownership is perfectly understandable for one's own work, making assumptions about the borrower and their use of the document is another matter.

Clair

I was not 'twisting' what you have previously said. Indeed, may I remind you of 'Nope. I do my own stuff wherever possible' from an earlier response. Cake and eat it springs to mind - no offence, of course.

Ray

Posted By clairel
Obviously not soon enough.

Posted By Karen Todd
I've sometimes asked for stuff and on other occasions I've provided stuff.

I used to be a self-employed consultant, but went back to paid employment due to credit crunch (as an accountant said to me, "Safety, training and cleaning are the things everyone will ditch"). Anything I've asked for has been used in paid employment, not during consultancy.

However, as I don't want my employer's name to be made known, I use my home e-mail address rather than my work one, but my "home" e-mail address is the one I used during self employment, and if you looked at it or the website you might assume, "Oh, she's a consultant, wants that for her consultancy work, profiteering and incompetent"...

What I generally do, as one poster has said, is come up with a hybrid document. I look at what I've got, if I'm not happy look around and see what others have done on the same subject, pick out the best bits of them all and merge them all together to form a super duper document.

e.g. I think I have a fab N&EM risk assessment, I'm happy with the ones I use for machinery & manual handling, and I've loads of good audit templates. My COSHH RA is adequate but I'm sure someone has a better one.

I do think the forums have changed over the years. There used to be a lot less postings, with more quality responses for each, and less bickering, but overall you were generally guaranteed to get the answer to your question. Not the case now - I don't post as much but lurk quite a lot, and sometimes pick up the "sympathy cases" where someone has asked a question a while ago but not really got any good answers.

I think this post also corresponds to previous postings on the subject of having a central repository where we can dump all the stuff we are happy to share, and indeed such sites exist. Would save all the "Me too" stuff - I do generally provide stuff to the "Me too"s but sometimes the requests go on and on and on...

Also, before I share anything I sanitise it - you won't see my name or any logos.

As for profiteering - well, unfortunately sometimes the people who do well for themselves aren't the people who are good at what they do, and people who are good at what they do don't always do well for themselves. I like to think that I'm good at what I do, but I lack that ruthless edge - perhaps why I ended back in paid employment rather than self-employed.

Now, if I was really ruthless, I'd go and set up a phone company in the Channel Islands, and bombard people with unwanted SMSs in batches of 30-40 at a time, costing £1.50 each! Risk? £20k fine. Gain? £millions! ;)

KT

Posted By B Smart
Good subject Claire, which has obviously got the attention of so many. One thing which we must all think about before we start sharing our work is "do we actually own it?"

If we do a presentation for work or introduce/improve a document/template or whatever for work purposes then this is owned by the Company that employs us (unless you are a Consultant). In these circumstances it may be rather foolish to openly share this information on an open forum.

Or am I wrong?

Posted By brian mills
I agree, help everyone and they will help you too.

we are here to help

regards

brian

Posted By Alison Parker
Some people do want an easy life and they’ll come on this forum ask for it and run, never to heard of again and not so much as a thank you. I will not share work (or templates)I have developed with anyone until a trusting relationship has been formed. At this point I have no issues at all.

I have helped and been helped on many occasions in my career in safety. I have also been ripped off, seeing my work turn up on a few occasions.

You have to use your judgment before sharing documents and indeed ideas. To say an outright no!!

Never, we must support one another where we can when we have formed the said relationships. Sometimes the only place to turn is this forum and I’m no prepared to shut that door on anyone new or old. For what it’s worth – there’s my two bobs worth.

One more thing, anyone out there in safety land who going to tell us that every document they have produced is from scratch is kidding themselves on and you know it…..