Officials drafted into the civil service on a new “Mid-Life Career Fast Stream” should get a salary of £90,000 from day one and a deputy director role after two years, public sector focused think tank Re:State has said.
Earlier this month it emerged that the Cabinet Office is actively considering how to create “a new entry point for talent into the civil service for those joining mid-way through their careers” alongside a rapid review of the Fast Stream graduate programme.
Re:State supports the proposals for a new way into the civil service for high-performing professionals who are eight or more years into careers in other sectors – and has set out its stall for how the Mid-Career Fast Stream (MCFS) should work.
It says the programme should be a fraction of the size of the current Fast Stream and should have an initial intake of just 50 “exceptional” individuals, such as consultants 10 years into their career, entrepreneurs who have sold a business, military officers leaving at the rank of major, or charity directors who have delivered “hard outcomes”.
Re:State says that getting on the MCFS should be difficult, with success rate comparable with the Fast Stream’s approximately 4% and entry “decided by rigorous, skills-based assessment” rather than “behaviours”.
Once accepted for the two-year programme, the think tank says recruits should join the civil service at Grade 6 on a salary of £90,000 a year and should complete two one-year postings in different departments, in roles selected by a central talent team.
Postings should be in roles selected for their challenge and leadership opportunities, with at least one being in a “delivery” or “operational” environment. MCFS participants should be leading teams of civil servants from the start of the programme, and delivery of their posting objectives would form part of their final assessment.
According to Re:State, each participant should be assigned a mentor at director general level and a “talent partner” responsible for tracking their placement and progress.
In addition to in-post training and mentoring, Re:State says the MCFS should run a curriculum of formalised learning and development that should be designed and quality-assured by the new Leadership College for Government.
“Participants will need a core body of knowledge and expertise relating to how the civil service, government and the state work,” it says. “Understanding this is crucial for exceptional talent to have exceptional impact in Whitehall.”
The report says external hires to the civil service often fail for “predictable reasons”. “One of those reasons is the lack of a thorough onboarding process,” it says. “Individuals new to the civil service are unlikely to have a detailed understanding of subjects such as how parliament works, how the public finances work, what a submission is for, or the way government legal advice works.”
Re:State says that the MCFS curriculum should exist to “close these gaps fast”, so that participants can spend their two years delivering.
At the end of their two-year programme, Re:State says MCFS participants should sit a formal end-point assessment, with those who pass being promoted to the grade of deputy director.
It says the gate for promotion to deputy director level must be “robust” to ensure that having successfully completed the programme is “meaningful”. According to Re:State, those who do not pass should either be managed out of the civil service or “mainstreamed” at Grade 6 level, depending on how far away from passing they were.
Report authors Charlotte Pickles and Joe Hill conclude that a properly run MCFS could be the “catalyst for a new cohort of exceptional individuals” making the leap into the civil service.
“It will provide higher compensation, fascinating opportunities, and professional learning and development, all in exchange for a high-standards approach that talented people should be particularly drawn to,” they said.
“The Mid-Career Fast Stream should be an exceptional offer, for exceptionally talented people who want to make a difference by serving their country. But it is also a chance for the civil service to test a new approach which could be spread throughout Whitehall – paying higher salaries in exchange for higher standards and modernised terms and conditions, getting serious about structured and deep induction and training, and proactively managing the careers of future leaders.
“This model should be the future of the civil service, and the MCFS is a route to testing that, freed from the constraints of the current operating model.”