As you know, the purpose of the ICG is to support independents and micro businesses working in or around insight. To make sure we can do this, and provide a fair, level playing field for all members, we have rules around the size and set-up of the businesses members own or work for.
Size
- New members can have a maximum of 3 full time equivalent employees, including the member themselves (total 112.5 contracted hours per week).
- After joining, businesses can grow to 5 full time equivalents, including the member (total 187.5 contracted hours per week).
- This refers to payrolled employees, or people who could reasonably be seen as employees, eg by HMRC – it doesn’t apply to ad hoc supplier relationships or individuals collaborating on a project basis.
Set-up
- ICG members’ businesses must be independent of any other business – in other words, they must not be benefitting by being part of something else. For example, if you are supported by a larger company’s finance / HR / marketing department, and not managing all of that yourself, you have benefits that micro businesses normally wouldn’t have.
- The majority of an ICG member’s work must be for their independent micro business.
- If a member works part time for their own micro business and part time for a larger company, the benefits of the ICG should be ringfenced for the micro business. For example, it would be fine to access the ICG hive mind through the egroup for your own business projects, but not to benefit the larger company.
We take care to check business size and set-up before accepting new members and do ad hoc checks on existing members. However, it’s not always clear to see how members’ businesses are growing or changing after they have joined, particularly if other platforms show conflicting information, such as members’ own websites, LinkedIn, the MRS and Companies House.
If your business has outgrown the ICG, please let us know. Even though you’re no longer eligible to be a member, we’d be very happy to discuss how you can still be a friend of the ICG, and be in contact with our members, via sponsorship or advertising, and by staying on our ezine mailing list. We appreciate that roles can evolve, and now perhaps more than ever we have squiggly careers, side-hustles etc, so if in doubt please get in touch – we can always talk through on a case-by-case basis.
We hope you appreciate the importance of us having, and monitoring, these limits, so that we can honour the purpose of the ICG and remain a fair place for all members. If needed, we reserve the right to withdraw membership if we believe a member’s business or employer is bigger than the rules allow.
Anne Rodger, ICG Membership Committee Member