These are all important. But one area that I believe is critical and should be a priority is training. There are lots of highly talented and skilled people already working in public sector bodies – so a significant piece of the puzzle is to train and develop them in line with changing and evolving organisational needs. Upskilling is cheaper than recruiting, so it ticks the cost box. And one of the wonderful things about people is that we all have the capacity to learn things and acquire new skills – so why not take full advantage of that?
It's something we put into action for an NHS employer recently. They had a strong team of analysts – but wanted to develop their capability further and were looking for a training programme to do this.
We set to work to design an approach. The client was clear that they wanted something different, and we were happy to oblige. So much training has limited impact, because it is essentially more of the same: off-the-shelf, generic training that doesn’t directly address participants’ daily work and priorities. As a result, it doesn’t fully engage them or motivate them to learn. They do the training, come back to work, and often forget what they’ve learned, if they learn anything new at all.
So, one thing we were clear about from the outset was that the training would need to be completed around delegates’ day jobs – there would be no two-week release here. Part of learning is realising that you always must learn, not just in specific moments, so you need to make room for it as part of your working life.
Then, we made sure the programme would address real needs by asking ourselves: what does the analyst of the future look like? One important aspect is that it’s not just technical skills that are needed. Look at ChatGPT for example, it can support and, in some cases, even replace some technical skills. So increasingly, the focus will need to be around soft skills too – listening, communicating, presenting – so this had to be a focus.
Many analysts for example, by their nature, are somewhat introverted and prefer working alone. They may tend to do things in the same way they’ve always done them – preventing them from learning form others and innovating and acquiring new skills.
