Every day’s a school day!

Just a few short weeks ago the UK like other countries in Europe was looking forward to the spring. After a long dreary winter new plans would be forged and many service managers started to look forward to developing services and their workforce to meet the challenges of 2020-2021. Then the world changed. Fiona Sutton-Wilson, APSE Head of Training, shares her thoughts on making the most out of a very different situation and ensuring we capture the opportunities for learning and development.     

As the saying goes ‘every day’s a school day’ and haven’t we all learned that in the past few weeks! Going from ‘business as usual’ to local councils deploying staff to homeworking, seconding staff to new roles, and being thrown in at the deep end to manage unique situations, from emergency closures of public facilities, to ensuring welfare provision for the most vulnerable people in our communities, it is once again local government frontline services that have donned the metaphorical capes and come to the rescue.    

Whilst the speed of response is commendable there is also a risk that the ‘day job’ gets forgotten, and alongside that well thought-through training needs and staff development plans that create the very resilience within frontline services that are carrying communities through this crisis. Like all local authorities, you will no doubt have staff who are actively engaged, as key workers, carrying out vital services. However you may also have staff who are working at home, or remotely, and with that space away from the usual office or depot environment, could usefully engage in developing new skills during this period; and you may be using the time to refresh your training and development plans to address whatever the future holds.

APSE Training has been developing its on-line offer to support authorities as we move through the current challenging climate towards the new normal. APSE can help you with emerging training needs within your workforce. Now is an ideal time to learn new skills, refresh old ones, build capacity and reinforce resilience in the workforce.

APSE training is offering the following on-line services to support you during this time:

1. Training: We provide a varied range of useful and engaging courses to help councils deliver efficient and effective services across departments. We are delivering most of these online for small groups, with in the comfort of your own home or where ever you are working remotely.
2.  One-to-one coaching: if you are looking for professional development as you move through your career or want to hone your skills to meet emerging challenges, we can support you through this process, with bespoke packages tailored to your needs.
3.  Psychometric Testing: Our on-line service is incredibly helpful for authorities looking to recruit new staff or redeploy existing staff to new teams or roles. In addition, if you are setting up a new task force, or project team, our supportive assessment processes can help you to shape the ideal team. If you would like APSE Training to help you with your recruitment process as we move out of lockdown, please contact us to find out more about our on-line assessment centre. We compliment this with our brand-new training course “Induction to Local Government”.
4. Training Needs Analysis: If you are refreshing your training and development plans and need specialist support to help you, in a friendly advisory capacity, we can assist you with this. If you are looking to conduct training needs assessments, we can support you using a methodology which asks the right questions, analyses responses and identifies solutions which embed learning.

APSE training is a responsive service – if you identify a need, we will do all we can to meet it. We are here to support and champion our amazing local authorities, across the UK.

Please use this Expression of Interest to let us know how we can help you now and going forward.  Or if you would prefer to discuss our offer in person, please don’t hesitate to contact Fiona Sutton-Wilson, Head of APSE Training: [email protected]