One of the things I enjoy most about going along to Civil Service Live is getting to try out some of the exciting tools developed for civil servants. While at Civil Service Live in Bristol, I heard about the fantastic qualifications that are now available to those of you in the Operational Delivery Profession (ODP) and had a go on the fabulous new “career mapper”.
As you know, my aspiration is for us to become an exceptional Civil Service. Learning and development is at the heart of this. We have gone a long way to improving our skills across the Civil Service. The next step is to deliver these professional qualifications which are recognised both in and out of the Civil Service, so you can improve your skills and be recognised for doing so.
Operational Delivery Profession qualifications
These internationally-recognised qualifications, which range from GCSE to postgraduate level, will help you to deliver an even better service to customers and help us to deliver the Reform Plan. We’re investing heavily in these qualifications and they offer a tremendous opportunity to improve your skills. I encourage you to find out more about them.
Putting the Operational Delivery Profession on the map
The career mapper is great at helping you to understand the sorts of things you’re expected to do in your current job at your level, which is really useful when you’re writing your performance objectives. You can use it to find other types of jobs that share the same skills as the ones you’ve got so you can think about moving on or up in the profession and progress your career right across the Civil Service. You can also get hints and tips from others who have already done just that.
Another plus with the mapper is that when you’re drawing-up your learning plans for your five a year it lets you quickly and easily find all of the learning and qualifications recommended for the work you do, including a great range of new internationally-recognised qualifications
More information
If you’re going along to Civil Service Live I highly recommend that you visit the Operational Delivery Profession stand to find out about studying for an accredited qualification or to check out the career mapper. If you can’t make it to the London event, just log in to the Civil Service Learning gateway to find out more information.
4 comments
Comment by Neil Sutherland posted on
'Fantastic'; 'fabulous' - the stuff of fantasy and fable?
Comment by Jimbo posted on
yep, like the "fantastic" "fabulous" PMR system that he is so very proud of and which so marvellously reflects our values
Comment by Miles Nelson posted on
I would like to see a blog which honestly addresses the demoralised state of the civil service, certainly of HMRC, where PMR is doing lasting damage. No doubt it is here to stay, as we are told when asked what we think of it, but there is huge amount of discontent at the unfairness both of the concept and the execution. Anyone who claims that PMR is a tool for "driving up performance" is either naïve or duplicitous. No doubt there will be some tinkering, but the damage is done, and talented people are walking away.
Perhaps at the same time you could address the marking distributions in HMRC by reference to age, ethnicity, disability and the full time/part time split, as well as being honest about the consequence of markings for future years. Also how a particular grade could achieve 0.9% Improvement Needed one year and 9.6% Must Improve the following year. Perhaps that was because in 2012-2013 the assessment was based on actual performance, rather than perceived quirks of character and a three line whip to deliver a quota.
I should make it clear that I am a Must Improve, and my remarks above have nothing to do with whether my own marking would, if arrived at based on evidence and a fair appraisal, be correct. My personal outcome is immaterial, though if I had exceeded, I would probably have been too complacent to bother with this.
Comment by Mary Hibbs posted on
Fabulous PMR... indeed. I spent four hours of my working day on Tuesday writing up 'evidence', justifying how I do my job (which I've been doing for over twenty years, and with no major complaints), and also typing up my own report. Same again next month. And the one after that. Time that I could have spent actually working cases. What a joke!