Having benefited from investment in my personal development over the years, I am passionately committed to the Civil Service being a learning organisation. It’s good for civil servants and it’s good for the Civil Service.
You will know that as part of our commitment in the Civil Service Reform plan all civil servants – regardless of grade, organisation or location – are entitled to at least 5 days learning and development each and every year.
This could be a training course, some sessions of e-learning or perhaps shadowing, mentoring and coaching opportunities; anything which will help you to do your job more effectively.
When thinking about your learning and development a really good starting point is the Civil Service Learning website. They have a wealth of training courses available. But if, like many civil servants, you’re not sure where to start I can strongly recommend spending ten minutes on their self assessment tool.
I want all civil servants to complete the self assessment. It is such a powerful and simple way to personal improvement. Very quickly you can get a snapshot of where you think your strengths and weaknesses are on the civil service competency framework. You can discuss this with your line manager and together identify the courses or opportunities which are most suited to you.
The Capabilities Plan we published in June highlights four skills that we as an organisation need to improve – digital, project and programme management (PPM), commercial and change leadership – so if you have a specific need in one of those areas make sure you give it priority.
Whilst a lot of the responsibility for personal development lies with individual civil servants, managers have a key responsibility as well. This is why I am asking managers to put a particular focus on key skills and the Capabilities Plan when they do their Mid Year Reviews.
You can find the self assessment tool on the Civil Service Learning website. Once you’ve completed it why don’t you leave your feedback on how you found it below?
1 comment
Comment by George Arthur posted on
My 5 days of learning are split with my IT time. I work in HMRC at a contact centre when HMRC want to introduce new learning this reduces my IT which reduced the 5 days learning. Also IT is pulled at what seems every possible opportunity in contact centres and vary rarely paid back.