Highlands and Islands Enterprise Culture

Dozens of Highlands and Islands Enterprise staff have jumped on the last gravy train leaving it's headquarters.

It seems that employees were queuing up to get their hands on redundancy packages before changes in legislation would see their massive golden handshakes and job-jumping between agencies at public expense, brought to an end.

It was announced that 53 staff out of the 76 who applied had left through voluntary severance with pay-outs averaging £63,600, as well as one getting a nice wee £263,000 addition to his pension pot.

The new legislation will mean that public sector employees will be restricted to a maximum pay-out of £50,000 or two years' salary.

Another little bonus for this lot is that they can now walk into other public-sector jobs. The new legislation means that in future they would have to pay back some of the redundancy dosh.

However, those who opted for voluntary redundancy packages before the April 1st changes can move to another public sector job without penalty.

And why not?
This is been one the great perks of working for one of these agencies.

A couple of years back their Director of Global Communications, Stuart Black, job-jumped with a £138,000 golden handshake to take up a £100,000 a year post as director of planning and economic development with the arch money-wasters at the Highland Council two days later. At the same time, Donald McNeill who was Senior Transport Officer with the agency managed to secure himself a £43,000 a year post as Gaelic development manager with the same local authority.

HIE have assured anybody who is concerned that they can carry out all their responsibilities with the reduced complement of staff.

So it would appear that we are paying through the nose to get rid of a lot of people that we didn’t need in the first place.