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https://civilservicelocal.blog.gov.uk/2019/07/30/ld4u/

L+D4U

This pilot has ended and is being evaluated.

Civil servants are required to join the pilot for a new toolkit to create your own personalised Success Profile entitled -  Learning & Development For You!

Wall hanging sign showing for my learning and development, indicating success profiles, career progression, personal plans and take action.

We are the Lace Family, a cross-departmental team of middle managers (HEO/SEO  grades from the 2018-19 CS Local North Academy - and we’re looking for volunteers to help test a new Behaviours development toolkit.

We first met up last September in Huddersfield for two days packed with learning and development, followed by another two days in November to further expand our learning and begin steps to consolidation. The principal aim was to equip HEOs and SEOs (or equivalent grades) with the personal, professional and collective leadership skills needed to meet the​ current and future demands of the Civil Service. We had practical sessions to improve our pitching confidence, self-awareness, ideas production together with hearing from inspiring keynote speakers and workshops on behaviours and management styles that allowed us to reflect on what good leadership looks like.

We have come a long way since those first away days, with the loss of team members (happily due to promotions creating increased workload) and our project has evolved.

Original members of the Lace Family - Laura Croft, Dawn Rhodes, Carl Sweetman, Helen Kenworthy, Lizzie Axe, Joshua Todkill, Gill Jamieson, Sarah Laird, and initial facilitator Brian McGuiness.

For our 12-month Business Challenge, we looked at various ways to support our peers with their development plans, whilst aligning with the recently introduced Success Profiles and combining different learning opportunities into one handy toolkit.

Our Prototype

Although created to help staff develop a personalised success profile as they look to move into higher grades, it will also be beneficial for those new to middle management roles. The aim of the toolkit is to support middle managers with developing their team.

The toolkit has numerous benefits including:

  • the ability to create a development plan relevant to your specific learning requirements
  • provides a structure for performance conversations directly aligned with Success Profiles
  • increase your confidence in demonstrating and evidencing the Behaviours for your individual Success Profile
  • retaining a live record of examples against each Behaviour
  • record learning, development and practical experience
  • both managers and staff can use this toolkit to identify areas to focus on for improvement

It will present you with on- and off-line learning, along with practical activities you can do to put your learning into practice and develop your experience for applications and interviews. One of the keys to delivering A Brilliant Civil Service is the recruitment, development and retention of a diverse, representative, engaged and highly skilled workforce.

Instructions

For the pilot we have built a straightforward Excel workbook, which you can use to self-assess your experience and knowledge in delivering each of the Behaviours of the Success Profiles to HEO or SEO level. Upon completion of each tab, the evaluation sheet will track your scores and signpost you to specific development opportunities and suggestions, both theoretical and practical, tailored to your personal needs.

Before the end of September we are asking you to:

  • fill in each tab in the developing behaviours toolkit
  • complete one e-Learning task
  • have started one practical task or development opportunity

Would you like to be part of this pilot and influence its future development?

Please register your interest by completing this form

Feedback

We will also need you to fill in a short survey week commencing 1 October 2019, to give us your feedback, which will be used to assess if such a toolkit is a viable option and possibly further develop at a national level.

We will share anonymous results in a future blog, along with more about our development journey.

For further information or enquires, please email laura.croft@ofsted.gov.uk

 

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2 comments

  1. Comment by Laura Croft posted on

    More information

    A staff member can use the toolkit as their personal development plan or alongside. It will give a structure and focus for individual learning and development.

    It has been designed for HEO/SEO managers to develop EO/HEO staff.

    Anyone can register to test it.

    The registration form will ask you to fill in your grade, so we will know who has used it and who found it useful.

    There are no restrictions.

    We do need to know who is the staff member and who is the manager, as they will be sent different feedback surveys at the end of the pilot.

    It probably takes a couple of hours to fill in the toolkit, you can save it and come back to it.

    How much time you put into using it is up to you.

    We are asking for everyone to have completed the tabs for the behaviours and 1 learning or practical task by the end of September.

    We will gather feedback in October.

    • Replies to Laura Croft>

      Comment by Karen Dunning posted on

      Hi Laura,

      The opening part of the article indicates that this is aimed at developing HO and SO grades, but the comment added later suggests that the target audience are EO and HO grades. Can you confirm what grades you are targetting for development please?
      Many Thanks,

      Karen