Rigid structures and poor data limit the civil service’s ability to make use of its skills. But Stuart Watson learns that by mapping existing expertise, departments can set training priorities and move staff to where they’re needed
It’s now more important than ever before that government departments make the best use of their existing skills. With recruitment frozen, headcounts falling and spending on consultants strictly limited, civil service managers need to make sure that they deploy the expertise within their teams where it’s most needed.
However, until recently few departments have had a clear view of where their strengths and weaknesses lie. “Historically, the public sector hasn’t assessed skills well once people are on board,” says Lesley Briant, client partner for government solutions at HR consultancy Kenexa. “Meanwhile, there are more tasks to do and fewer people to do them. To ensure the civil service can deliver outputs it needs to have the right people in the right roles, so they can do better for less.”
A number of departments have begun assessment processes, or “skills audits”, in an attempt to plug the knowledge gap. One of Whitehall’s newer departments, the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC), which was formed in 2008, is among them. Two years ago DECC’s learning and development team carried out an exercise that Rachel Watson, the department’s head of HR strategy and change, describes as a “rough and ready skills audit”. It concluded that while many of the department’s civil servants were well-qualified, there was a need to improve the delivery skills at its disposal.
DECC’s learning and development team worked with the heads of departments to compile a list of critical delivery skills such as programme and project management, commercial awareness, contract management and procurement. Three broad skills levels were also agreed: introductory, proficient, and expert.
When the departmental business plan was written in 2011, setting out the department’s objectives and the work it would need to undertake in order to fulfil them, a full skills audit was carried out to identify areas where improvement was needed if DECC was to realise its goals. Watson says: “It gave us an idea of what our recruitment needs would be, and training needs as well. We then checked it with senior managers so that we were sure we had a common understanding.”
As a result of the audit process the department developed a learning programme, with the aims of placing a higher priority on training and bolstering delivery skills. Watson claims that the positive impact of the scheme has already been demonstrated in the latest Civil Service People Survey. This showed a 20-point increase in the proportion of DECC staff who believed they could access the learning and development they needed – at a time when the civil service average showed a one-point decrease – and a 12-point increase in employees saying that learning and development had improved their performance (compared to a three-point decline across the civil service).
Watson stresses that skills audits should be conducted as part of the overall business planning process, so that skills needs are considered alongside the other resources required to deliver objectives. When the departmental business plan is reviewed, the value for money that the training programme has provided will be evaluated. She adds that in order to secure a commitment to develop the necessary skills, it’s crucial to build a consensus among senior managers about a department’s skills needs.
The usefulness of information gleaned from skills audits doesn’t end with identifying training or recruitment needs, however. Some departments have begun to monitor the capabilities they have available in order to utilise them more effectively on high-priority projects. Flexible resourcing or flexible deployment programmes allow the creation of multi-disciplinary teams to pursue specific policy or organisational goals.
This approach was first adopted in government by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, and it has been followed by the environment and business departments and the Ministry of Justice (MoJ). The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is now rolling out its own scheme. Rachel Nicholls, the central resourcing strand lead for the DWP transformation programme, says: “The approach emerges from our transformation programme. We have quite a challenging exercise to make sure we deliver our reforms, and we need to be more efficient and effective. Flexible resourcing is part of that, and also part of our wider commitment to being a department where we value each other and the skills that we have.”
Over the past two years some of DWP’s functions, including staff working on corporate IT, legal and financial matters and change management, have mapped the skills and competences required to fulfil each job role, providing a benchmark against which people’s training needs can be judged. Individual civil servants then carry out a self-assessment with an online tool, the results of which are validated by their line managers. The information is entered into an online skills management system, which records each civil servant’s level of expertise and the dates on which their current assignments end.
Managers assembling teams for new projects can then see who’s available, and their level and types of expertise. In the case of competing demands from different managers, the most vital tasks are given a higher priority. Nicholls says that DWP is designing a more systematic, department-wide approach that will be in place by April 2013.
The new system will “support us in living within our means, and also to be more agile and flexible so we can build multi-disciplinary teams and use our people’s skills on the right priorities,” claims Nicholls. She adds that assessing and developing skills is particularly important in a post-restructuring environment where many civil servants have moved into unfamiliar roles.
Nicholls argues that a clear lead from the permanent secretary that flexible resourcing is an important part of the transformation agenda is essential to securing buy-in across the department. She also emphasises that individuals need to know what is “in it for them” in terms of personal development.
She admits that there are challenges in introducing a system that provides rigorous control without creating excessive bureaucracy. “We shouldn’t get too hung-up on the IT,” she says, suggesting that too heavy a dependence on rigid systems could lead to inflexibility. Like any organisational change, the reform’s success will rest on the buy-in of top managers: “Senior leaders need to be responsible and accountable, releasing people when they feel other work should take priority,” she comments.
An even greater challenge will be to share skills not just across departments, but across Whitehall. Mark Sanderson, IT professional capability manager at DWP, is working with colleagues at MoJ and HMRC to facilitate the transfer of expertise: “We are working together to develop a common language of skills and common career paths to make it easier for staff to move between departments,” he says.
“There is a change occurring,” says Briant. “It won’t be swift – but while historically there has been a lot of talk about cross-departmental work, over the last six months I have seen real outputs for the first time.” The flexible deployment model is making rapid progress within departments; and the first tentative steps have already been taken towards a flexible deployment model that encompasses the whole of government.